I don’t know why I link these things, I hate sending them the traffic. But it is still a chance to talk about Shakespeare, so we take what we can get.
Today, 19 Interesting Facts About Shakespeare You Might Not Know is on the chopping block.
Did you know that Shakespeare’s top 10 most famous plays include Timon of Athens, Richard II and … Sir John Oldcastle?
His first poem was published in 1609? Venus and Adonis would like a word.
His most famous poem or sonnet is the “Fairy Song”. Take that, Shall I Compare Thee!
“William Shakespeare had seven siblings, two of whom were named Joan and they were born a year apart.” The first Joan, who died before Shakespeare was born, was born in 1562. The second Joan was born in 1569. And we know Will was 1564. So I still can’t figure out who “they were born a year apart” refers to.
Fact #8 is that Shakespeare invented “assassination”, but fact #13 is that he invented the words “eyeball” and “fashionable”. Not even getting into the whole “invented” thing, I think dear reader’s getting screwed out of an interesting fact there. Methinks the author was double-dipping in the apparently shallow pond of facts they were fishing from.
One of the facts is that the Globe burned down in 1613 during an appearance of “one of the plays”. Now, see, here’s a golden opportunity missed, because while this might be a fact, it’s not a very interesting one. But I’ll bet neither the author of this article nor his readers would have known that the only injury was a man whose pants caught on fire? Luckily somebody poured a beer on him and put him out.
That’s what you call an interesting fact!
It reminds me of this equally-obscure list of Shakespeare trivia:
https://www.shakespearegeek.com/2010/10/twenty-bits-of-shakespeare-trivia-you.html
Well, what do you know! That was originally published on this very blog!
kj (Bardfilm)
p.s. There’s also this one you posted some years ago:
https://www.shakespearegeek.com/2008/09/facts-about-mr-shakespeare.html