English Language

While there has always been loud debate about ‘the author of William Shakespeare’s plays’ –  the concept is foolish – there is always a doubt in academe not just about possible or mooted authorship, but also about exactly when WS wrote the plays. Dividing the thirty-seven (38?) into separate sections – comedy, tragedy, history and romance – we present here what could be called a concerted opinion on this contentious subject. As to authorship, it hardly matters! All we need to know is that the plays exist; some of them might have been copied from other authors, some were most definitely inspired by others. It really does not matter. The plays exist, and we choose to place them under the authorship of a man called William Shakespeare. Some might have been written by a man called William Wickleigh. We can be certain that neither C. Marlowe nor F. Bacon wrote any of them. We can also be certain that among Shakespeare’s colleagues in the theatre world there were men clever and erudite to have taken the Master’s notes and sketches and formed them into plays. That was how the First Folios were published. The illustration shows Shakespeare around 1609. (more…)

‘Nouns of assemblage’ as the earnest Mr Ben Schott has it, are words that indicate an ‘assembly’ of objects, animalspersons etc. They are also called ‘collective nouns’. Here are some examples from Schott, and a few of my own will follow: (more…)