Shakespeare’s Linguistic Innovation Shakespeare’s Linguistic Innovation Author Katelyn Ekker Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Katelyn Ekker, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Language Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. updated author respStmt. Created File. Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Katelyn Ekker Katelyn Ekker

Katelyn Ekker was an Honors student at Utah Valley University.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
Context

The early modern period was a time when English bloomed as a literary language, and many writers played with its possibilities. According to recent scholarly investigation, Shakespeare probably invented or coined about 500–1000 new words, usually by borrowing a word from another language like French or Latin, adapting existing English words with prefixes, or using a known word as a different part of speech. He is often credited with inventing many more words and phrases, but some of those attributions may be due to Shakespeare being over-represented in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Some examples of words Shakespeare coined include: assassination bandit courtship obscene pageantry tranquil remorseless

Techniques

One of Shakespeare’s favorite techniques was to add the prefix un to an existing word, as when Lady Macbeth exclaims, Come you spirits, unsex me here (1.5.39). He also loved to create compound words, such as describing someone as a lack-beard, or extolling the beauty of the temple-haunting martlet, sky-aspiring thoughts, or lazy-pacing clouds.

Nominalization

Shakespeare also used nouns as verbs or adjectives as nouns throughout his plays, a process called nominalization. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare parodies this technique as he allows Evans to say, I will description the matter to you (1.1.196). Another example is Prospero’s the dark backward and abysm of time (The Tempest 1.2.50). Backward is used as a noun, instead of performing its usual adverbial function.

Compounding

One example of the way Shakespeare played with compound words as an indicator of a character’s pretentiousness was in Love’s Labour’s Lost. In this play, Don Armado is a knight who loves words, and he is writing to the young King of Navarre, reporting that he has seen a servant meeting with a young woman, and says: Great deputy, the welkin’s vice-regent, and sole dominator of natureSo it is, besieged with sable-colored melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humor to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving airWhereI did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-colored ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or see'st.(1.1.218–43)

Much of this play parodies and delights in excesses in language, which Don Armado has on full display in this passage with its many compounded descriptions. Small wonder that at one stage the page Moth remarks that They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol’n the scraps (5.1.37–38). Shakespeare clearly loved that kind of feast, and it is one of the things that readers, audiences, and actors clearly also love centuries later.

Key Print Sources Crystal, David, and Ben Crystal. Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion. Penguin Books, 2004. Salmon, Vivian. Elizabethan English. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, ed. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Key Online Sources Batistella, Edwin. Shakespeare’s Linguistic Legacy. Oxford University Press Blogs. 10 Apr. 2016. https://blog.oup.com/2016/04/shakespeare-linguistic-legacy/. Accessed 20 Jun. 2023. Best, Michael. Fire-New Words. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/language/puns.html. Accessed 12 Mar. 2016. Mabillard, Amanda. Words Shakespeare Invented. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. https://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html. Accessed 24 Apr. 2016.