Shakespeare's personal dictionary on eBay
by Robinson Meyer
Scholars say that William Shakespeare used as many as 30,000 words in
his plays and poetry. They further estimate that he knew about a quarter
of all the words circulating in English during his lifetime.
This is remarkable, and it raises a question: How did he learn them?
Some, we know, he invented; some he borrowed from Latin or French. But
others he simply looked up, in any one of a number of reference books
available to Londoners in the late 16th century.
Now, two New York City booksellers say they have found one of those
books. And it's not just any guide: This is William Shakespeare's
dictionary, owned and annotated by the man himself.
"The ordinariness of the individual annotations is, to me, precisely
what argues for their authenticity."
For more than half a century, many scholars have believed that
Shakespeare consulted a 1580 dictionary published in London called An
Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionarie. Assembled by Cambridge Latin
instructor John Baret, the Alvearie was one of the most popular
dictionaries of its time. It was "quadruple" because it covered four
languages: English, Latin, Greek, and French.
T.W. Baldwin, the first critic who argued for Shakespeare's use of
Alvearie, made no claim that the Bard used a certain copy. The evidence,
he said, just pointed to Shakespeare consulting some copy of the
reference guide for his work.
Other scholars have agreed. In 1996, Stanford prof Patricia Parker
wrote that Hamlet's speech to the players resembled Baret's ideas about
interpretation. Now, two antiquarians, George Koppelman and Daniel
Wechsler, believe they've found the copy. It surfaced on eBay,
naturally, where the book's 1580 publication date and a seller's
reference to "contemporary annotations" caught Koppelman's eye.
Suspecting the book was what he now believes it to be, Koppelman paid
$4,300 for it in 2008, he told the New Yorker.
Once he and Wechsler had their hands on the Alvearie, they studied
its annotations for evidence that Shakespeare himself had scoured and
marked up the pages.
This, they say, is indeed Shakespeare's Alvearie.
Koppelman and Wechsler announce their work in a new book of their
own, Shakespeare's Beehive: An Annotated Elizabethan Dictionary Comes to
Light. It seems to be half-reproduction of the alleged dictionary and
half-discussion, and it's accompanied by a website that itself includes
photographs of the Alvearie. Already, though, senior Shakespeare
scholars have publicly doubted the announcement. There isn't yet a
preponderance of evidence, they say, to prove this book was the Bard's.
If the two booksellers are right, the finding could add a great deal
of knowledge to contemporary understandings of Shakespeare. Although he
has given rise to reams of scholarship and speculation, the material
legacy of William Shakespeare-the objects known to have been owned or
touched by him-is pretty slim.
Scholars know him to have signed all of six legal documents, and he
perhaps hand-wrote three pages of an unpublished play. A whole new
annotated book, and a proverbial dictionary at that, would be a major
find.But let's step back. What makes Koppelman and Wechsler so sure this
Alvearie is Shakespeare's?
According to Henry Wessells, another antiquarian who had early access
to their work, Koppelman and Wechsler see Shakespeare's hand in two
kinds of annotations.
First, there are mute annotations: handwritten "underlinings,
slashes, and other small marks" that don't accompany any added words.
Then, there are small spoken annotations, new handwritten words
commenting on the dictionary.
-The Atlantic
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