Here are 25 kickass and interesting William Shakespeare facts.
1-5 William Shakespeare Facts
1. William Shakespeare is credited for introducing more than 3,000 words to the English language. His vocabulary was more than 4x that of an average well-educated man. – Source
2. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited Shakespeare’s house together and chipped off a piece of his chair as a souvenir. – Source
3. A man wanted to introduce all the birds mentioned in the plays of William Shakespeare, this is the reason why starlings exist in North America. – Source
4. William Shakespeare coined the names Miranda, Jessica, and Olivia. – Source
5. The word “swagger” was first used in 1590 by Shakespeare in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. – Source
6-10 William Shakespeare Facts
6. Reverend Gastrell, the owner of William Shakespeare’s final place of residence, New Place, demolished the place himself in 1759. He was frustrated by the tourists visiting Shakespeare’s former house. The man was kicked out of the town because of it. – Source
7. The complete works of William Shakespeare are hosted online by MIT at shakespeare.mit.edu since 1993. – Source
8. There is no written contemporary description of Shakespeare’s physical appearance and no evidence that he ever commissioned a portrait. – Source
9. Matteo Bandello had written Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare wrote the play based on that existing plot. – Source
10. William Shakespeare’s daughter Judith was illiterate. – Source
11-15 William Shakespeare Facts
11. In all, the six surviving Shakespeare signatures, he spells his name differently, but none of it is spelt, William Shakespeare. – Source
12. A version of Star Wars was written as if it were penned by William Shakespeare. – Source
13. There is no evidence of how William Shakespeare died. – Source
14. The doubt regarding Shakespeare’s actual authorship of the plays attributed to him was started by Delia Bacon, who had no proof, but just a “feeling” that Shakespeare couldn’t have done it all himself. – Source
15. William Shakespeare is the only author with his own Dewey decimal number; it’s 822.33. – Source
16-20 William Shakespeare Facts
16. Shakespeare wrote his own epitaph as a curse to repel grave thieves. It reads, “Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To digg the dust enclosed here, Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.” – Source
17. Shakespeare intentionally made grammatical mistakes to develop the attention of his audiences before key points in his plays – the technique is called “functional shift” and the use of it keeps the brain alive! – Source
18. Out of 154, 126 of Shakespeare’s sonnets about love were written to a young man who Shakespeare addressed as the “Fair Youth” – Source
19. If William Shakespeare were alive today he’d be earning around $15 million per year from his body of work. – Source
20. Leo Tolstoy disliked William Shakespeare works so much that he considered him “an average author.” – Source
21-25 William Shakespeare Facts
21. William Shakespeare got married at the age of 18. His wife, Anne Hathaway, was 27 years old when they got married in 1582. – Source
22. In his will, the only thing Shakespeare left his wife was his “second best bed”. – Source
23. There’s a programming language known as “Shakespeare Programming Language” that is designed to make code look like a Shakespearean play. – Source
24. All 27 moons of Uranus are named after the characters from the plays of Shakespeare. – Source
25. Shakespeare’s handwriting was so bad that scholars have immense difficulty in reading what he actually wrote. – Source
No. 24 is not accurate. They’re named after characters from plays by Shakespeare AND Alexander Pope.