Is now that we can fully search 60,000 books printed from 1473, and 1700, i now know that shakespeare did not invent 1700 words. What we will learn over time is that number is going to come way down. Lexicographers at the Oxford English dictionary went for the first book they read when they wanted to use the word first, shakespeare borrowed things all the time and it is no bad thing to say he likes to borrow. That made him a great writer. This works here. Look at this. Three words attributed to william shakespeare. Oh my gosh. Let me think. He has a lot of negations. On house on household. I am trying to think. Certainly have encountered them in the past. Michael whitmore. This is a phd qualifier. Stump the professor. The answers are all down spirit. Used as a verb in macbeth is definitely shakespeare but it is also said he created words like bedroom, marketing, lonely used in a particular sense. If shakespeare invented the modern meaning of lonely my heart breaks, i think that is amazing. The phrase harmonious, charmingly, which i love in the tempest, a strange syntactical construction, very indicative of the inventiveness i like best about shakespeare, pooling from language we know but messing with it. Another tweet sent to the folger library, happy birthday you swag master. Words in sacramento, california, we are listening, you are on booktv, go ahead. Shakespeare is a very personal thing to me. I went through the normal High School Education which was terrible about it and turned me off completely, but my wife insisted i go with her to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in ashland, oregon, one year and we started sitting through henry vi part iii which i found pretty dreadful until i got to the end and the character names gloucester came out who i absolutely fell in love with completely. I love politics and i love you lenny in politics and i finished i would love to see more of that guy. There is a whole play about him. We have got to come back for that next year. Every year since 1982 my family had an annual summer visit to ashland, i have a daughter in washington dc and another at purdue and every year the one absolute family thing is everybody flies back in august and we drive to ashland for a week, i was involved in a case with the Supreme Court, we walked up the night after the argument to watch a hilarious thing about 12 night. In the last two days i keep posting quotes from shakespeare i have randomly collected including last night the eulogy from cymbeline for shakespeares death which is a better eulogy than the one on his gravestone, but anyway, since you are asking a lot of trivia questions i had when i would put to the panel because this is one that we debate. Let me say we perform shakespeares plays here in the first elizabethan theater in north america throughout the year except the summer months. When you think about a road trip you should come to washington and see the first folio and see shakespeare performing this beautiful tutor theater. When i am in dc i go to the folger every visit. I try to see a show if it is there. I remember seeing the 12 night because we were exhausted from a Supreme Court argument and that was our way of getting over that exhaustion. Let me ask you this. Which play is most performed, richard iii or hamlet, and who has more lines, hamlet or richard iii . Hamlet has the largest number of lines. Hamlet has the most lines in a single play but met margaret has the most lines. In multiple plays i would bet for the most performed it is richard iii, hamlet is a long and demanding play, you need a fabulous actor to play that role and handle all those lines. I know the internet will answer this question. Maybe not correctly. What is your advice to High School Teachers . I respect High School Teachers who teach shakespeare a tremendous amount and i want to send out all my praise and affection to them because once they come to me they are already interested. They are already oriented to shakespeare because of the great work teachers are doing. My advice to High School Teachers is as much as it is possible and not only school board will allow it in this way, to allow students to come at shakespeare at any level from any perspective from any side, to pick up any piece of the play, because those kind of encounters that come from curiosity are the best way to learn, to find a point of access. In the past, the prior age in which it was thought to curate shakespeare and try to keep the saucy bits out of childrens years, that doesnt work. I think understanding shakespeare as someone who tries to address the full range of Human Experience is crucial in bringing children and High School Students and middle School Students and junior high students into a really robust and pleasurable experience with the play. Lee is a teacher in maryland, happy birthday, shakespeare, my life in my classroom would not be the same without you. Catherine in albuquerque. Hello. This has been a delightful experience. I had trepidation but i will tell you it is organic and will would have loved it. I have discovered an International National treasure in Michael Whitmore which was a delight and i do have a question for doctor mckay. Before you ask that question why did you have trepidation . I am a spoiled child of a certain era where i had professors like professor mckay so i have been in this desert, no pun intended, you dont have conversations like this regularly and the children of today have been shortchanged certainly in their literature, all of the fun whitmore had with all the things he learned, this wonderful great mind, we dont encourage children to have that kind of mind. We dont have literature at their disposal. In junior high school, junior High School Teachers and High School Teachers are the gateway to the arts and humanity. If you arrived in college and had a great professor there is something that happened before that and we realize that which is why we want every child who has an experience with shakespeare before they are 18 to have a fantastic experience because those doors are going to open and that is where you get great professors like the people here on the stage. That is the place and we really love those teachers. Catherine, please go ahead and ask your question. I want to start a thespian group called Whitmore Mckay thespians is a celebration. Can you think of a better gift to give the bard than to have a bunch of thespians in a little troop and we live in a place where we can develop them because we have no competition. I thought a little thespian group named my question was about the bible and the translation. Do you feel shakespeare was a great listener . Oh yes. That is an easy one. Absolutely. What michael said, that he was pulling out of the air this convergence of cultural phenomenon, religious change, scientific revolution, the emergence of rapid promulgation of prints and of course in this period the auditory experience is pronounced. In london you will be walking past openair pulpits where people are sermonizing and your attention will be drawn to words from all directions and all walks of life. That is what we see richly embedded in the plays, a range of characters and the social positions they occupy perfectly replicates the life of england at the time he happened to be alive. Hillary, hill valley high school, alabama, shakespeare, hit me up on twitter because it is your birthday and i am throwing you a party. I am a huge shakespeare fan. I am when i heard about Folger Shakespeare doing translations of shakespeare into modern english i was kind of torn because i thought maybe it is good because it gives some sort of accessibility to shakespeare but i am also thinking maybe it is dead because does it take away the magic, the beauty, the mystery of coming to shakespeare and learning more about it, as you come back to it throughout your life. I wanted to know what your opinion was or do you have to be politically agnostic about it . I am wondering what you think about it. I think if it turns out to be great art and people love it that is fantastic. I think shakespeare is a writer who launched 1000 ships and if this is 1001, that is terrific. I also think we dont we probably dont have to defend shakespeare as a great writer because he is so successful. Even if you go to see these play that you see something new because you grasp some part of the plot you never got before, it is going to be hard to keep you away from the original. I always go with the fact that we keep coming back to this writer. We would certainly want to collect the script from this initiative in oregon because we are the library of record for shakespeare and we want to know about the legacy but we dont have to handicap shakespeare, he will be just fine. Final word. I was thinking in response to that question i was born in england, multiplied by canada. Shakespeare is a bilingual national poet, Multilingual National poet and i think his poetry, his language is phenomenal and it sticks with us and if we are lucky enough to be born into englishspeaking language, have this great privilege of accessing him in his language of origin but also there is fantastically gorgeous and wonderful about encountering him in translation too. I really feel there should be no handcuffs in the approach to shakespeare you want to take. He is doing just fine. He will be all right. His plays are still around, we can find a language with no difficulty. I kind of feel, bring it on. Our time is up. Happy birthday, will, thanks fo will air tonight at midnight eastern time, 9 00 pm on the west coast, thanks. Booktv now continues, thank you. Thank you all for being here today. We are the ones who were here when we did it. [appla