The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 21.0304 Friday, 23 July 2010
[1] From: Carol Barton <
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Date: July 20, 2010 3:50:53 PM EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
[2] From: Connie Beane <
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Date: July 21, 2010 11:30:29 AM EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
[3] From: Ward Elliott <
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Date: July 21, 2010 8:47:32 PM EDT
Subj: RE: SHK 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
[4] From: Arlynda Boyer <
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Date: July 21, 2010 9:32:57 PM EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Carol Barton <
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Date: July 20, 2010 3:50:53 PM EDT
Subject: 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
Comment: Re: SHK 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
What seal is that, that hangs without thy bosom?
Yea, lookst thou, Palin? Let me see the writing.
Richard II, V.ii.56-57
The moon's an arrant thief,
And her Palin fire she snatches from the sun
Timon, Act IV,iii.
"What fools these mortals be" sums it up better, methinks; the lady doth protest too
much.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Connie Beane <
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Date: July 21, 2010 11:30:29 AM EDT
Subject: 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
Comment: Re: SHK 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
I know Will Shakespeare, and Sarah, you're no Will Shakespeare. (With apologies to
Lloyd Bentson).
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ward Elliott <
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Date: July 21, 2010 8:47:32 PM EDT
Subject: 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
Comment: RE: SHK 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
Shakespeare, who was much more recorded, studied and catalogued than most of his
contemporaries, got a lot of word-coinage credit not extended to others on anything
like the same terms. He got more credit than others for nonsense-words, nonce-words,
proper nouns, and words that would be considered malapropisms today if they came
from the lips of Sarah Palin or George W. Bush. If his word appeared in a play, it
was assigned to the year the play was first mentioned, not the year it was
published. Others had to wait for publication. Even if his word seemed to be in
general currency at the time, he, much more than others, tended to get the credit
for being the first to use it.
Over the years, thanks to more standardized procedures for the OED, and thanks to
the work of people like David Crystal, Joseph Shipley, Jurgen Schafer, and Bryan
Garner, extravagant earlier estimates of 6-10,000 coinages have been whittled down
to something more like 1,700. The meltdown is far from over. A chapter by Giles
Goodland in Mireille Ravassat and Jonathan Culpeper, eds., Stylistics and
Shakespeare's Language -- Transdisciplinary Approaches (London: Continuum Press,
forthcoming), based on his examination of a slice of words in newly-digitized early-
modern texts, gives strong evidence that even the much-deflated 1,700 is still
overestimated by a factor of at least two.
When Bush comes up with "Bushisms" like subsidation, analyzation, hopefuller, more
few, and explorationists, we suppose that he is struggling to follow accepted rules
of word formation but has gotten in over his head. Everyone sniffs at such gaffes,
and no one praises them as additions to the language
(http://slate.msn.com/id/76886/). If Bush gave us words like insultment, omittance,
opulency, revengive, thoughten, more better, or casted, these would likewise be
gathered and laughed at as "Bushisms." But it was not Bush who gave us the second
set, it was Shakespeare -- and his gaffes are hailed as brilliant landmarks of
"linguistic daring," fresh evidence of his peerless mastery of the language, 24-
carat coinages for Shakespeare that would be dismissed as pot-metal if they came
from Bush, Palin, or anyone else. It seems like a double standard to us.
We discuss Shakespeare coinages at greater length in a second chapter in the same
forthcoming Ravassat-Culpeper collection which contains Goodland's article. We also
discuss and debunk the parallel, equally persistent notion that Shakespeare's
vocabulary dwarfed everyone else's. Several high-tech tests show that it didn't and
doesn't. Hugh Craig, of the University of Newcastle, Australia, has independently
and impressively arrived at the same conclusion, also using high-tech tests. His
findings will be forthcoming in the Shakespeare Quarterly. Whether either of these
heavy-duty studies will be enough to dislodge the myth of Shakespeare's outsized
inventory of words and coinages remains to be seen. It is still enthroned and
entrenched, despite several previous efforts to debunk it.
We would be the last to deny that Shakespeare did have a peerless mastery of the
language. He did, of course. But his mastery was not so much in the number of words
that he knew or coined as in the way he put them together. As for Bush, perhaps his
talents as a word-coiner have been misunderestimated.
Ward E. Y. Elliott and Robert J. Valenza
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Arlynda Boyer <
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Date: July 21, 2010 9:32:57 PM EDT
Subject: 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
Comment: Re: SHK 21.0292 FYI: ShakesPalin
What, no "exit, pursued by a bear"?!
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