Open Literature

The word “quondam”, as any latinist will tell you, means “formerly”. It, like “i.e.” (‘id est’, or ‘that is’), “vice versa” and other Latin terms, was current in the English of Shakespeare’s time. It occurs twice, for example, in Henry VI part III: first, the keeper spots the “quondam King” (deposed Henry VI) and an …

“Neapolitan” describes someone or something from Naples. The difference between the adjective and the noun is the result of the latter having evolved much more rapidly than the former. from its original Greek ‘neapolis’ (‘new city’) to modern Napoli or Naples. The city, despite a name that proclaims its newness, is one of the oldest …

This word, which only occurs once in Shakespeare’s works, is a neologism, a new word invented by Shakespeare. Of course, it is far from being the only neologism in the bard’s works: we have Shakespeare to thank for the words “brittle”, “bump”, “countless”, “dwindle”, “eventful” and many more. “Kated”, though, is a rather special neologism …

There are two hundred and twenty five defintions of the word jump, as adjective, noun, and verb, in the OED, many of them now obsolete (compare Merriam-Webster’s three). Shakespeare only uses the word fourteen times, but the way in which he does shows a marked divergence between modern usage and his own. Personally, jump for …

Only three mentions of this rare wood occur in Shakespeare, twice in Love’s Labour’s Lost and once in Twelfth Night. The word itself could and still can refer to any of several different varieties of timber, found in India, Africa, and Indonesia. These valuable woods were extensively exported by the Dutch in the seventeenth century, …

The word “alabaster” is now part of an established style of poetic language, and has been since Shakespeare’s time. However, this does not mean that there is nothing to say here: for example, there are in fact two kinds of alabaster, gypsum and calcite. The former constitutes modern alabaster and the latter that of the …

In 1592, Robert Greene provided what many now take to be crucial evidence of Shakespeare’s rise to fame in the London theatre scene when he mentioned, in his Groats-worth of Witte that …there is an upstart Crow, beautiful with our feathers, that his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well …

This article could have been about the verb, which is used to describe, variously, Jupiter’s eagle (in Cymbeline), Berowne’s stereotypical lover (in Love’s Labour’s Lost), and the dangerously ambitious Worcester (in Henry IV part I). However, I will continue to mine the rich depository of Shakespeare’s foodstuffs and concentrate on the noun. It occurs eight …

This word, used twenty-two times (including the stage directions) in Shakespeare’s works, does not refer to a piece of furniture, but rather a profession. You would, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, find drawers in a tavern, drawing. Mercutio, in Romeo and Juliet, puns on the many meanings of the verb. MERCUTIO Thou art like …

“Good dawning to thee, friend: art of this house?” So Oswald greets the disguised Kent in King Lear, providing us with the first of eight uses of the word “Dawn” in Shakespeare’s works and a neat example of his own superciliousness. By calling Kent (disguised and serving as one of Lear’s entourage) “thee”, and not …