Yeah, but one has to be wary of that one. Unlike the his brothers’ nicknames, his wasn’t contemporary ( it dates to the 14th century ) and was based on a certain amount of propaganda. At one time it was claimed he translated Aesop’s Fables from Greek :D. In point of fact it seems he was probably somewhat literate in Latin but anything beyond that has to be considered highly uncertain. His contemporary William of Malmesbury showers him with hagiographic praise, comparing him to a philosopher king out of Plato’s Republic. Then grudgingly admits Henry read openly “only occasionally” and displayed his education “sparingly” ;). Which probably means he read haltingly or was uninterested in literature and wasn’t as scholarly as rumored.
Still he probably did have some education, which likely puts him one up on his dad, who apparently wasn’t literate at all.
Interesting point md2000. I was just wondering whether alternative spellings or lack of consistency in spelling words could account for the fact that (much later of course) writers like Shakespeare could coin so many original words. How many of those words were deliberately coined /created and how many were the result of misspellings?
davidmich
For what it’s worth, I suspect that saying that Shakespeare invented all these words and phrases isn’t really accurate. What is meant is that the first appearance of these words in writing was in Shakespeare’s works. I suspect that while Shakespeare invented some of these words and phrases, he also heard other people use some of them and included them in his works.
Incidentally, in any edition of Shakespeare that you’re likely to read today, the spelling of words and the punctuation has been modernized. The spelling and the punctuation was noticeably different in the early editions and wasn’t very consistent. No scholar would refer to a misspelling of an already existing word as a new word.
Of course Dr Johnson’s dictionary was 100 years or so after Shakespeare. Words, including names were spelled any way the author chose, and abbreviations were common.
Shakespeare himself is known to have half a dozen different signatures: Willm Shakp; William Shaksper; Wm Shakspe; William Shakspere; Willm Shakspere; By me William Shakspeare.
Shakespeare “inventing” words due to misspelling? Here’s a link to one such possible case. The word “scamels” from The Tempest. It’s useage though did not in fact take off.
There is also manuscript of a Play called Sir Thomas More, a part of it suspected of being in Shakespeare’s own hand. It’s difficult to prove for certain.What is interesting is that its author uses the word “sherrif” six times in only a few pages. He spells it six different ways - sherriv,sherif, cheriv etc
Thanks Wendell Wagner. I think crediting Shakespeare with 3,200 is nonsense. Recent scholarship seems to suggest he probably coined no more than 1,700 words (and even that figure may be too high) since many of the words he used were already in circulation before he used them.
davidmich
You have to separate the notion of a word from its written representation. Changing a spelling doesn’t create a new word and nobody counted Shakespeare’s words according to spelling.
I just read a review of Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers by Paul Dickson. It’s about the words that were created or first appeared in the works of important writers. It includes a section on Shakespeare’s creations.
The notion that there’s one “correct” spelling for a word, and all the others are “incorrect” is I think a fairly recent one. Maybe nineteenth century? Up to that point, as long as what you wrote was intelligible, unambiguous in context and didn’t cause the reader to stumble, I’d say one spelling was pretty much as acceptable as another.
My own surname is one of those which of which several spellings are found. At one stage, when people asked me how to spell it I would reply that I really didn’t mind; I would answer to it no matter how it was spelt. For some reason people found that hard to accept, and eventually I had to give up the attempt to have no standard spelling for my own name.
FWIW, the Old Normanform of the name is “Williame.” The Normans originally immigrated to France from either Denmark or Norway. In Danish, the name is Vilhelm; in Norwegian, Vilhelm or Wilhelm; in Icelandic and Faeroese, Vilhjálmur. The Old Norse form of the name must have been something like Vilhjálmur. The origin of the name is not Norse, though, but Old High German: Willahelm, from Proto-Germanic *wiljô and *helmaz.