Day 68: For heaven's sake, Shakespeare didn't invent ALL the words!

So I still haven't read Love's Labour's Lost, which is the play I'm supposed to be reading this week. I have read this book though:

Brush Up Your Shakespeare! 

An Infectious Tour Through the Most Famous and Quotable Words and Phrases From the Bard

by Michael Macrone

(available on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca)

It's not bad. It has a collection of words and phrases made famous by Shakespeare--like a million other books I suppose--but my favourite thing about the book is the section on phrases NOT invented by Shakespeare but usually attributed to him anyway.

We've all heard the claims of how many words Shakespeare "invented." Two thousand or more according to various sources. But I've always thought "invented" was a strong word. I'm sure Shakespeare did invent some words, but I also think the vast majority of the words attributed to Shakespeare were perfectly normal words in his time. He wanted his audience to understand him, for one thing. If half his words were brand-new, made-up words, that might have been a problem. 

Plus, it wasn't like there are millions of other text sources from before Shakespeare's time that we can use for comparison. When his plays were first published, the printing press with movable type was still a fairly new invention. The mass market publishing world that we know today simply didn't exist yet. In fact, most of Shakespeare's plays might not have been published at all if it hadn't been for the fact that King James closed the theatres, and because some of Shakespeare's actors collaborated to record his work. 

My point is, most of Shakespeare's so-called invented words were probably in existence long before he wrote them, but we simply don't have earlier examples of them in print. Or at least none that still exist today.

And, in fact, in a lot of cases we actually do have examples of earlier usage but certain words and phrases get attributed to Shakespeare because his was the earliest FAMOUS use of it. Some examples include (according to Brush Up Your Shakespeare):

"ALL THAT GLISTERS IS NOT GOLD" from Merchant of Venice. Chaucer said something similar two hundred years earlier.

"FOOL'S PARADISE" from Romeo & Juliet (and Love's Labour's Lost apparently...though I wouldn't know since I STILL haven't read it). William Paston said that in 1462.

"IN A PICKLE" from The Tempest. Both Thomas Tusser and John Foxe said this in the 1570's and 1580's.

"BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE" from King John. It actually traces back to at least 1300.

"IT'S GREEK TO ME" from Julius Caesar. George Gascoigne's play Supposes used that phrase in 1575. But you probably never had to read that in high school.