10 Interesting Myths about

William Shakespeare
Ten common misconceptions about Shakespeare
As this Saturday sees the 400-year anniversary of William Shakespeares death, we
thought wed turn our attention to the Bard and the numerous myths that have grown
up around his life and work. Here are ten of our favourites. As with many of the
details of Shakespeares life we cannot be sure these are all complete nonsense, but
nor can we confidently say the opposite; but we should be wary of making too many
assumptions about Shakespeares life.
He coined hundreds of new words. Shakespeare was clearly a linguistic innovator, a
poet who could use words in ways hitherto unseen. Light thickens (Macbeth), for
instance. But did he really coin all of the words usually attributed to him? He may
well have invented some of them, but the actual number is undoubtedly somewhat
exaggerated. The more we learn about word history, the more we realise that words
once attributed to Shakespeare actually predate him. He used to get the credit for
alligator for instance; scholars have since traced that word back to the mid-sixteenth
century, before the Bard was born.
He was poorly educated. Shakespeare attended a grammar school where he would
have studied a range of classical writers, including Ovid, whose work would have a
profound influence on his plays and narrative poems. He didnt go to Oxford or
Cambridge, but then neither did his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, or John
Webster, and their plays are shot through with classical allusions and learned literary
and historical references. The fact that he only went to school would not have barred
him from a career on the London stage, though its true that he did probably face some
class snobbery from the Cambridge wits when he first arrived in London most
notably Robert Greene, who branded him an upstart crow.
The stories and plots of his plays are original. In fact, of the 37 plays usually
included in Shakespeares Complete Works (38 including The Two Noble Kinsmen),
there are only four that we cannot find a source or precedent for: The Tempest, The
Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Nights Dream, and Loves Labours Lost. The
history plays all draw on historical chronicles written by people like Raphael
Holinshed, his Roman plays (such as Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra) draw
on works like Norths translation of Plutarchs Parallel Lives, and his comedies and
tragedies often borrow from prose works and narrative poems of the Elizabethan
period. Sometimes, he even took existing plays and then rewrote them Hamlet,
arguably his most celebrated and acclaimed play, was almost certainly a rewrite of an
earlier (sadly lost) play based on the same story. Shakespeares skill was taking this
source-material and creating something dramatic and psychologically complex out of
it finding the human essence of the story, if you like. Indeed, this is arguably what
made him the great playwright he was as a number of the best books written about
Shakespeare, which we include in our top 10 list, have shown.
He wrote his plays on his own. The early nineteenth-century Romantic idea of the
solitary genius did much to bolster and confirm the Bards reputation, but it also
skewed our perception of him no end. Shakespeare, like many playwrights of his time,
collaborated on a number of his plays, including Macbeth (which has songs and lines
of dialogue thought to be the work of Thomas Middleton), Pericles, Henry VIII, and
several others. And, as weve seen, often he reworked existing stories and, indeed,
plays, such as Hamlet or King Leir (sic).
We dont have any more of his writing than half a dozen signatures. Although it is
not completely conclusive, it is widely believed that a page of manuscript from the
collaborative play Sir Thomas More is written in Shakespeares hand.
He didnt care whether his plays were published or even whether they
survived. Jonathan Bate examines this idea in his excellent biography of
Shakespeare, Soul of the Age. In fact, many of Shakespeares plays were published in
quarto form during his lifetime, though its true that if it hadnt been for the 1623 First
Folio we would have lost a considerable number of his plays forever. But to argue that
Shakespeare himself didnt care for posterity simply because many plays such
as Macbeth werent published while he was alive misses the point: first, his plays
didnt really belong to him but to his theatre company, and second, with the exception
of Ben Jonson, few playwrights did make an effort to publish their work at the time.
Shakespeare invented the Shakespearean sonnet. The type of sonnet that bears
Shakespeares name, which is also known as the English sonnet, was certainly
popularised by him in the 154 sonnets he wrote about the Fair Youth and Dark
Lady. But he didnt invent it himself: it had been used earlier in the sixteenth century
by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who was probably the originator of it. (We have
more about the history of the sonnet here.)
He retired to Stratford after The Tempest. This is not so much an out-and-out myth
or misconception we cannot be sure precisely what Shakespeare did but we cannot
take it for granted that he definitely did pack up his bags from his London digs and
head home to live out his final years with his family in Stratford-upon-Avon. For one
thing, he continued to collaborate on plays after he wrote The Tempest, most notably
with John Fletcher. Indeed, in the years following his farewell to the stage, the
plays Cardenio, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen were all staged, and
Shakespeare had a hand in all of them. For another, documents written after 1611
when The Tempest was staged suggest that Shakespeare was still spending some of
his time in London.
He died following a particularly heavy drinking binge with his fellow
playwrights. The story goes that Shakespeare developed a fever shortly after a heavy
boozing session with Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton in Stratford-upon-Avon, and
that he dropped down and died as a result. This story appears doubtful.
Shakespeare obviously hated his wife because the only thing he left her in his will
was his second-best bed. Much ink has been spilt over this issue, and the truth is
that we dont know exactly why Shakespeare left his wife their second-best bed.
Why no mention of his other possessions going to her? It may have been a snub, but
the truth is that this, too, is an assumption. Much of the evidence points towards the
second-best bed being the marital bed the idea being that the best bed would be
reserved for guests, which would remain with the house. If he hated her so much, why
the insulting reference to the bed at all? Why not cut her out of the will altogether?