The Abracadabra Man

       Imagine a world without the word “excellent” or the word “lonely.” Shakespeare invented those words. He invented the words “vast” and “horrid” and “critical” and “dwindle” and “frugal” and two thousand other words that had never existed before. He invented “bedroom” and “alligator” and “addiction” and “swagger” and “zany” and “gloomy” and “exposure” and “bump.” And if you’re in a “hurry,” it’s because he made up that word. There was no “hurry” before Shakespeare. No “eyeballs” either. He gave us countless words through which we see and feel and know the world (including the word “countless”).
            From where did his words come? Out of “thin air,” perhaps. Which is a phrase he also invented, along with “flesh and blood” and “one fell swoop” and “foul play” and the “milk of human kindness.” According to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, one tenth of all the most quoted utterances ever written or spoken in English came from this one man, this miracle man, this abracadabra man, this country boy who changed the world. Even German soldiers in the trenches of World War I carried translated versions of Shakespeare in their knapsacks, because he reminded them of the grandness of the human experience.
            Which is what we’ve lost these days—a sense of the grandness of the human experience. Turn on the news. The talking heads, on both sides, tell us we’re “divided” and “angry.” That’s all they tell us. Ever. So, we’re left not only enraged, but bored and exhausted. Words are used to neutralize and normalize what is morally abhorrent. They’re used to explain and summarize, but in ways that flatten and deaden everything.
          Shakespeare, however, took “anger” and “division” and packed the house. People came and people listened, and people stood for hours. They felt smart and wise. Because the language was smart and wise, and they could see that there were worlds within worlds and beauty in the meaning of their lives, in the depth and complexity, and nuance, and paradox of their lives, lives that so often felt small and mean, but were, now, grand, because a man, through the magic of his words, showed them the magic of their lives.

 Jon Pearson 12-21-2025