I just finished an entertaining and informative book by Bill Bryson called Shakespeare, which wittily explored "centuries of mysteries, half-truths and downright lies about Shakespeare.." Bryson writes that ," It is because we have so much of Shakespeare's work that we can appreciate how little we know of him as a person."
What especially interested me was that William S. invented a lot of words and phrases, many of which we still use today. Some first words found in his writings are: antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, excellent, eventful, lonely, well-read, zany, and, says Bryson, countless others, including countless.
His particular gift was creating memorable phrases which entered the common language. Among them:
one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, bag and baggage, be in a pickle, budge an inch, cold comfort, to thine own self be true, salad days, flesh and blood, blinking idiot, with bated breath, pomp and circumstance, forgone conclusion, and many others.
The end of the book describes anti-Shakespeare "experts" who claimed that Shakespeare was actually not himself. I was amused by Bryson's debunking commentaries, saying of one that he proved Shakespeare's actual and other identity "to his own satisfaction" and of a countess believed by some to be the great bard "all that's missing to connect her to Shakespeare is anything to connect her to Shakespeare."
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