Shakespeare digression

Although a certain amount of tangential discourse and banter is allowed in MB, the same ILP rules apply here as they do on the formal boardsā€¦ you have all been warned.

There are few persons from the Elizabethan era that we know so much about as Shakespeare, and for sure WS has more written about him, and there is more of a paper trail of Ws that any other literary figure of his time.
There is no positive evidence for the attribution of any of his works for another author.

Was this also a forgery?

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22661992

What if Shakespeare used ghost writers? It is quite possible. If demands on his time increased , his time to write decreased, but, demands for his work either remained or increased. Its his work he just subbed it out. Maybe?

Maybe he was a slave driver who had lots working doing the job for him, paid them nothing and then he took all the glory.

Either is possible :slight_smile:

I think the whole Shakespeare didnā€™t write 'em controversy began when some scholars noted that the plays contained a humungus vocabulary, not the typical word choices available to commoners.
bardweb.net/language.html

Yes, but of course the prejudiced and rather classist assumption from the early Victorian period was unjustified.
The Elizabethan period was a period of cultural growth and population decline. Wealth from the New world was creating more opportunities and a growing middle class was enjoying access to books that their ā€˜high bornā€™ contemporaries had less interest in.
WS was part of a new literati benefiting from the abundance of books, and in a profession that was roundly scorned by the ā€œhigh bornā€, as entertainers.

I for one am glad you men do not dress like that anymore. :slight_smile:
Wether he did it all or not, the work stands on itā€™s own.

According to Wiki answers, the average university professor has command of about 15,000+ words, whereas Shakespeare had command of about 60,000 words.

Do you prefer todayā€™s fashion with men having baggy trousers which give the impression they were falling down? :slight_smile:

ā€œForever in bluejeans.ā€

Jabs I am not even a cougar, That fashion is a bit young for my tastes. Although it is more seemly than the 70s spandex fad :slight_smile:

I had to read in a dictionary what you meant by cougar.

By the way in the USA do builders have a reputation for showing a bit of their bums as they bend down whilst working, it is commonly referred over here as builderā€™s bum, it is a kind of fashion as well. :smiley:

Carpenter crack, mechanicā€™s breather, there are different names for that little show :slight_smile: It all depends upon what region you are in. The older they get the more is shown with out care. It cracks everyone up :slight_smile: :slight_smile:
The size of the belly decides how much gets shown. We work for a fence company. I am walking to the office to report in, I get a comment from one of the guys " Hey Kris your husband needs to put a fence around that crack." I look over and there is my love kneeling and bending over a tractor repairing it. Yep, crack city. I could only smile and reply that I am just his wife not his keeper, that would be our bossā€™s job. :slight_smile:
It is nice to know some stlyes are worldwide

Ok but, Shakespeare was a cad and irreverent, You cannot deny our play on words while a tad shoddy are in Shakespearean mode. What would Shakespeare do with the crack? His works influence humor. Come on Magsj, come up with a Shakespearean comment about cracks :slight_smile: :slight_smile: You know you want to :wink: :slight_smile:

That would depend on which moderator is breathing down your neck at the moment you want to make a joke.

Oh for godā€™s sake pipe down and take your bans like a man, ok some of them are probably wrong, but letā€™s face it we are all human, they make mistakes like we do. When you get banned stop making it so personal, there is no conspiracy to hate you, you act bad you get banned, it happens, deal with it. Look at it this way, if you are going to get banned and you will, trust me (no one who is remotely human and has emotions can live up to forum rules anywhere ever) do it right, make it a nice long rant, and make it stick, go out with a bang not a whmper. Get banned like you love the smell of napalm in the morning, with ride of the valyries playing. Stop whining about it, it happens to everyone, me more than most. Breathe in that petroleum and orange juice and smile. :slight_smile:

In that case the average university professor is a moron. When youā€™re writing books, you donā€™t just have access to your own limited language, you have acces to a myriad of peopleā€™s language you use as sources in a myriad of prose, so when you read their material your word base increases by the amount of books you have read, plus of course the fact that you mix with great writers who inspire you. Shakespeares command of words in literature was average at best, his ability to write prose, mediocre at best considering his peers, his diversity of work well less than even mediocre, but what he did have was imagination, a rich wife and access to lots of material with lots of verbosity.

Is there actually a method to test a writers vocabulary, over a common or day vocabulary? Is there a VQ? Do you have that test to hand? If you gave me the ability to draw all the words in all the books sitting on my bookshelf would my VQ go up?

These arguments are frankly asanine, moribund and worthless, an author who was no more prodigious than most, with no more vocabulary than most, with no more adriotness than most except in one area - to have imagination - wrote a small amount of texts, who the hell cares. Itā€™s not a conspiracy that Shakespeare didnā€™t write so little, itā€™s a conspiracy of people who really cannot fathom how many people could of done so. Hell Phillip Marlow would of beaten him if he had lived. What sort of vocabulary did he have? If there were both Shakespeare and Marlow would we be having this discussion? You donā€™t like Shakespeare, boo fricking hoo, but donā€™t dislike a man because you cannot fathom someone ordinary who did something great, that was because he had so many sources.