Shakespearologist

plural Shakespearologists · alternative rare Shakespeareologist

1. One who studies the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare (1564–1616).

   We are sure to find here “the better opinion” of the most expert Shakespearologists.

   1889 August 19, “The Henry Irving Shakespeare”, in The Pall Mall Gazette, volume XLIX, number 7619, London, page 2, column 3

   4 more examples

   We learn that “Mr. G. Linnæus Banks, the eminent Shakespearologist and Shakespearolator,” is coming to America to “orate.”

   1873 August 24, The Missouri Republican, number 15,880, St. Louis, Mo., page 4, column 3

   This constant effort to hamper and confine the works of genius within the narrow limits of time and space, is matched by the pedantry of the German Shakespearologists (an abominable word to express a horrid thing), one of whom is reported to have devoted a lengthy treatise to discussing the question whether Juliet’s nurse’s husband really was “a merry man,” as his widow claimed him to be, or whether it was not more likely that he had been a very serious character, transformed after death into a memory of what his widow would have liked him to be.

   1875 October 18, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, volume 1, number 152, St. Louis, Mo., page 4, column 4

   Otherwise I shall offer it on the same terms to the united nations for the construction of a mid-Atlantic homesite as a substitute for the one Mr. Eugene Tunney, the Shakespearologist, is so reluctant to surrender.

   1946 February 8, Commodore, “What Price Kansas?”, in Chicago Daily Tribune, volume CV, number 34, Chicago, Ill., page 16, column 3

   The overall winner of a pair of tickets to the RSC’s autumn production of his choice, is Richard Fife of Nottingham, whose answer to the tie-breaker, asking why he would be a good Shakespearologist, was the most drily succinct: “I have receding hair and a small beard. I was once ordinary Brain of Britain. I love Shakespeare. My answers would be usually entertaining and often right.”

   1994 August 4, “Results of the Bard Brain Contest”, in Evening Standard, London, page 29