“The World is your Oyster”… and Old School Hipsters.

William Shakespeare was a good writer. Pretty influential, and his little theatrics and phrases have penetrated the modern English language and culture for quite the while. He was a “Titan” of his words, and he was certainly the best smooth talker out there. We all can probably rattle off a handful of Shakespeare’s works.

But, I begin this blog of randomness by questioning the timing of Shakespeare’s “convenient” writings. While nowadays we acquaint Bill with “classic” English Literature, at the time he wrote his tales, they were mere “pop culture.” They were the London fad, and Bill had the luxury (read: coincidence) of a few things.

*PS. All my info is gathered via Wikipedia. I take the info I read, and infer and come to conclusions (ALL logical.) So you can guarantee that is it 110% reliable. Yes, extra-reliable. But, I mainly mean to say, don’t blame me for any misinformation that comes out of this blog, but the reasoning might be a refreshing touch (especially for those of you readers in the USA right now… where reason and logic seems to be getting treated like the smelly kid in school was…especially politics.)

So here comes logic and reason.

Luxury #1 – Emergence of a new language
Middle English was so “Old School” and “Dark Ages.” Nobody wanted to live like that anymore, shoveling the Kings proverbial (and probably not so proverbial) shit. In getting away from all that, people in London started to speak a new tongue, use a few different words here and there. These language hipsters (oh they hate being associated with their invention of language now!) had influence, and the underground scene was flourishing. Bards, writers, and anyone else in the late 15th-early 16th Londoner Hipster movement was the place to be for intellectual thought.

This new language needed some complete influential hipsters. Bill was one of those guys who happened to be so gifted at words that he could influence a donkey to unpin his own tail or get a lady to take off her… (well he was gifted is what I’m saying.) The modern English was so “fresh” at the time, Bill filled the niche nice and snuggley-like, and he created a number of words and phrases that we use to this day. Look ‘em up. Bill was essentially just a hipster, trying to explain the way the world worked via the touch of eloquence.

Luxury #2 – Gutenberg Press makes it across the English Channel, via the Channel Tunnel some means of boat.

Gutenberg was an inventor, as we all know, who is credited with inventing the first printing press. Pretty rad invention I might say. But today his printing press is old fashioned. What would Greatx5 Grandpa Gutenberg say today if here were watching me type this blog. He would probably be annoying, getting in the way of my “creative flow,” and probably would be looking up porn all day, allowing me to get nothing accomplished.

Onward we go…

Some Londoner, William Caxton, thought it wise to bring his translation and printing techniques to the “King’s land” sometime in around 1470. It was wise. Maybe the wisest thing he ever did. He took the dialect at the time in London, and began to standardize it. Wikipedia states that “he often faced dilemmas concerning language standardization in the books he printed.” This tells me that the early modern English language was basically a crap-shoot. One word could have been interchanged for another etc. While Caxton probably did wonders for trying to bring in a common dialect… it likely sounded ridiculous when it was spoken. So while it caught on because it was the printed language, people were subconsciously sick of speaking like they had marble-mouth syndrome (an actual disease) and Mr. T. Syndrome (AKA Jibber-Jabber Syndrome.)

Have you connected the dots yet?

Bill came along, with his oh-so-eloquent hipster speak, around the late 1500′s (thank you random memory and Dr. Schrand 12th grade English class.) Coincidentally, it was in London, where Caxton rocked the language boat a few years back, printing a standard dialect. This was only a hundred years later, and people were still speaking “Modern English” (with a side of Jibber-Jabber.) But it was still fresh enough that Bill’s knack for words made everyone swoon, and want to speak like Bill wrote.

Bill wrote some poetry, and plays, and stories… but remember… they were just pop culture. Bill had a theatre group as we know, and eventually, likely having something with his living in London, his works became printed nearly as he was writing them (by 25 years old the man was printed!) This printing, as well as just attending The Globe theatre, changed the speak and actually made it sound cool. Hipster speak quickly hit the mainstream, and Hipsters turned against him labeling him a “sell-out.”

Luxury #3 – England (Britain) Rules the Planet

While I say the planet, and this may be an western exaggeration, we all know the British Empire to have spanned the globe, influencing forcing the people who’s lives they touched destroyed to “get with the times” and speak the language of the scholarly king en-slavers. India, Australia (Bill Shakespeare “Penal Colony Rehabilitation”), Africa, Canada, Caribbean. This disseminated English Language everywhere. While their rule (Britain) did not last… some other English speaking nation seemed to take the limelight in the mid-20th century.

In short:
- Had Bill been born earlier, later, in a different location, his works might not have been printed, or given us hip phrases like “The world is your oyster.”
- The same goes for Caxton, who could have brought the printing press to the French (yeah… ponder that for a few) leaving England in the dust. Or another city in England, where another Hip writer lived to get printed. Whoever this hipster is today lives on in Hipster Legend.
- People may have wanted to stick with Middle English. Bill would never be born into exciting new language emergence times.

If you have read this far, props to you. Stay tuned. The background story is done, and life on the Peace Corps range is heating up, like a hearty Bob Evans “Country-Style” breakfast eaten at 10am on a Sunday Morning after a ridiculous night out on the town.