You probably noticed a bit of a hoo-hah at the weekend surrounding the 400th deathiversary of someone called William Shakespeare. We marked the day with a video about 10 unsolved Shakespearean terms over on YouTube and a missing words quiz here on the HH blog, while over on Twitter we were ridiculously busy bombarding you with half-hourly tweets about the great man himself all day Saturday. And apologies to all non-Shakespeare fans out there, but we’re going to do the same again now.
There were quite a few calls over on Twitter for us to collate all our Shakespeare facts in one place. And as ever, your wish is our command. So from a Shakespearean shipwreck to a man extinguishing his trousers with beer, here is our #Shakespeare400 list in full:
Word of the Day: QUADRICENTENNIAL (n.) a 400th anniversary— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare coined the phrase ‘be-all and end-all’ in Macbeth. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespare coined the word WATER-STANDING to mean ‘flooded with tears’. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
When The Globe burned down in 1613, no one was injured apart from a man whose trousers caught fire. #Shakespeare400 pic.twitter.com/3m5E8rdY06— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare coined the word BED-PRESSER to refer to a lazy, idling person. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The first Shakespeare ever performed on film was the death of King John in 1899. #Shakespeare400 https://t.co/YRBIZXg6eR— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare started work on ‘The Tempest’ after hearing about a real-life shipwreck in Bermuda in 1610. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The last play Shakespeare worked on, The Two Noble Kinsman, features a scene in which a baboon dances a Morris dance. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare used the word HOUSEKEEPER to mean 'watchdog'. He also invented the word WATCHDOG. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
There is no record of what Shakespeare did between 1585 and 1592. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
‘Macbeth’ is the only Shakespeare play to include the word RHINOCEROS. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
John Dryden called Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus & Cressida’ a “heap of rubbish” in 1679.— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The name DESDEMONA means “ill-fated”. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Tolstoy called Shakespeare “an insignificant, inartistic writer”, who was “not only not moral, but immoral.” #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The 10 words THE, AND, I, TO, OF, A, YOU, MY, IN and THAT account for 20% of everything Shakespeare wrote. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare's shortest play, 'The Comedy of Errors' is only 280 lines longer than the role of Hamlet. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare's father, John, was illiterate and used a drawing of a pair of compasses as his signature. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The longest word used by Shakespeare was HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS. It means ‘the quality of being able to be honoured’.#Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare used the word FEATURELESS to mean ‘ugly’. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The earliest record of 2 warring families called Montagues and Capulets is in Dante’s Divine Comedy.#Shakespeare400 pic.twitter.com/DSra4ZFqc9— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare's father, John, was illiterate and used a drawing of a pair of compasses as his signature. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare coined the word HEAD-LUGGED to mean ‘pulled along by the ears’, or ’tormented’. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
There are 6 known records of Shakespeare’s signature—including 3 from the same document. All are spelled differently. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
Shakespeare used the word MONSTER to mean a cheated spouse. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The shortest scene in all of Shakespeare contains just four lines. #Shakespeare400 pic.twitter.com/OpIj9KRf1E— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The only word Shakespeare used beginning with X was XANTHIPPE, the name of Socrates’ wife, in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 23 April 2016
The WHEREFORE of “wherefore art thou, Romeo?” means ‘why’, not ‘where’. #Shakespeare400— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 24 April 2016
That's it! Non-Shakespeare fans—you've made it through our #Shakespeare400 odyssey unscathed. Normal HH service will be resumed soon...— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 24 April 2016
I have a T-shirt (from Stratford Ontario) with HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS.
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