A revelation

A Minor Awareness:

I remember reading of Tolkien that he thought Shakespeare marked the point at which the English language was ruined. I always thought that was one of those charming stories that couldn't possibly be true -- that even if Tolkien had said it, he was probably joking -- until I took a moment to examine my bookshelves tonight. I was looking for something to read on an evening when I've decided I've done as much work as I can.

I do not own, I realized to my shock, a single work by Shakespeare. No, not even a textbook from college. I don't own any movies or recordings of his plays or poetry. I've seen quite a few of Shakespeare's plays in my time, and I've always liked them. Somehow, though, I never wanted any.

Now, probably lots of people don't own books by Shakespeare -- nothing wrong with that. Lots of people probably prefer detective stories, which I can certainly understand. But here are some things I do own, and have read:

1) The entire surviving corpus of Old English poetry, and most of the corpus of Old English period, mostly in translation but much of it in the Old English as well. These are accompanied by Old English grammars and dictionaries, to help me sort through it.

2) Several collections of Middle English poetry. These are in the original Middle English, which I can read just fine.

3) Several collections of Old Norse poetry and sagas, mostly in translation some in the original Norse. With grammars and dictionaries, per 1.

4) The histories of Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturlason, in translation.

5) The histories of Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth.

6) Copies of both the Caxton and Winchester manuscripts of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthurian writings.

That's just a start. Yet Shakespeare didn't make the cut. I do have a copy of the King James Bible, which is from the same period, but in a high version of early Modern English. In any event, maybe Tolkien really did believe it. It's a prejudice I guess I share, without having noticed it until now.