Essay On The Use Of Words In Hamlet

There is another rumor that Shakespeare had created a surplus of new words, over 25,000 words. By the time he wrote the play Hamlet, according to Craig, “Hamlet is the supreme example of Shakespeare's delight in and command of fresh and forceful words. By this time he had written twenty-two plays and all his poems, and could draw upon a vocabulary of 13,765 words, yet to this enormous stock he added another 606 words, all previously unused.”

(Shakespeare’s Vocabulary: Myth and Reality1). Most of the words that he created are common words that we use today like addiction, bloodstained, dwindle, worthless and many more. Many of the phrases that we use today, Shakespeare used them also in his plays. Such phrase include:

“Fair Play” (The Tempest), “Wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve” (Othello), “A laughing stock”

Some words that Shakespeare invented did no good for us. The word “congreeing” used in Act I, Scene 2 of Hamlet V., means to agree basically. The word “kicky-wicky” used in Act II, Scene 3 of All’s Well That Ends Well, simply means housewife. The word “slugabed” used in Act IV, Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet, it really means somebody that sleeps in, like a typical teenager on a weekend. The word “tanling” used in

Act IV, Scene 4 of Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare’s three “problem plays”, really does not have any specific meaning. No one actually knows the meaning of “tanling.” The word “incarnadine” used in Act II, Scene 2 of Macbeth, is a bright crimson or a pinkish-red color.

In conclusion, Shakespeare’s life was a real roller coaster. For starters, Shakespeare married a cougar! Hathaway was 26 years of age while Shakespeare was 18 years of age when they first got married. They had three kids together, Hamnet, Judith, and Susanna. Hamnet