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SLHS: William Shakespeare

There is so much written about Shakespeare that it is not intended to deal with the subject in great detail but here are a few offerings taken from the Big Histories presentation..

For more information see below and the links pages.

Writings

Some statistics for The Bard Of Stratford..

1. •In 24 years he wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets and several poems;
   

2. •These have been translated into > 100 languages
   

3. •These plays contain 1,223 speaking characters.
   

4. •Who deliver 34,895 speeches
   

5. •There are 884,421 total words with 28,829 unique word forms of which 12,493 occur only once.
   

6. •He had the rare ability to distil human nature into and elegant turn of phrase.
   

7. •There are >100 deaths in his plays of which 52 are by stabbing.
   

8. •However there are 10 times more references to love than to hate.
   

Expansion Of The English Language

1. •William and/or others added roughly 3000 words or phrases, For example:
   

2. •Blood stained, eyeball, frugal, hint, fashionable, sanctimonious, lackluster, foregone conclusion, in a pickle, wild goose chase, one fell swoop, etc..
   

3. •His vocabulary is estimated to be 17 -29 thousand words – far, far more than the King James Bible !
   

4. •He invented the following person’s names: Cordelia, Jessica, Miranda, Nerissa, Olivia & Tatiana
   

International Renown

1. •His writings have been translated into over 100 languages including Cockney and Klingon
   

2. •On average there are 410 ticketed productions of his plays/year - which translates to an average of at least 3 simultaneous productions per minute round the clock 365 days/year.
   

Surprising Facts

1. •Shakespeare was threatened with jail due to tax evasion just like so many politicians etc then and now.
   

2. •The National Portrait Gallery was opened in 1856 and their first purchase was a portrait of Shakespeare by John Taylor.
   

3. •The year 1611 was Shakespeare’s 46th birthday. The 46th word of Psalm 46 is “shake”. The 46th from the end of Psalm 46 is “spear”.
   

4. •The moons of the planet Uranus are named after characters in Shakespeare’s plays namely: Oberon, Ariel & Juliet.
   

5. •The RSC’s three venues sell tickets to over ½ million people/year. Of which an estimated 50,000/year are first timers.

● These items have aspects that uniquely contribute to national or world history.

● See this page for so many unique contributions

15 Henley Street, and New Place, Chapel Street

This was a compilation of 18 of Shakespeare’s plays and is considered one of the most influential books ever published after the Bible.