Hobnobbing in the New Normal, or A Happy Birthday Shoutout to Shakespeare!

A good way to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday this coming Thursday, April 23rd is to hobnob with the people you love.

Uh, hobnob? What exactly is....?

Hobnob? Well, it's a good Lambent Literacy word that implies what we all crave right now during this Coronavirus quarantine, but it's also a word attributed to the coinage of the great William Shakespeare, one of hundreds of words he invented.

The origin of hobnob is Old English (habban--to have + nabban--not to have) and as two words, hab nab, the expression came into use some time between 1595 and 1605. The shortened version hab nab eventually became hobnob, which first appeared in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night in a conversation between Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek. The English of his day began using it not only in the context of  drinking together but also in mingling or associating casually with friends.

Although Shakespeare couldn't have predicted the Covid-19 of 2020, he knew firsthand what it was like to be quarantined in a pestilent epidemic in the 1590s and again in 1603. His only son Hamnet contracted the Bubonic Plague, spread by fleas on black rats, and died in 1596 at the age of eleven. In 1593, when the plague closed theatres and quarantined ships as well as victims of the disease behind doors marked with a red cross, Shakespeare wrote a long poem dedicated to his patron the Earl of Southampton called Venus and Adonis. He did what we're all doing now, engaging in alternative activities at home. And with the theatres closed perhaps he was also hobnobbing with his fellow actors of the King's Men, the troupe assembled under James I. Pubs were closed only to infected citizens. Unfortunately social distancing between 1590 and 1603 was limited, which may be why the plague returned in waves.

In 1603 at the height of the return of the plague, the dark tragedy of Othello was written. When the disease died down and the Globe Theatre reopened, the romantic Measure for Measure was produced, reflecting the sanguine change in the general mood of the public in London and its suburbs.

An interesting note here is that wealthier citizens relocated to their country homes away from London, the epicenter of the plague, to escape contagion. King James I, who had recently succeeded Elizabeth I, warned them of spreading the disease to the rest of the country. Right. No personal travel restrictions, just a warning. Ah,the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thanks to scientists and the age of information, we know better now. We can hobnob to our heart's content on our phones and internet: Face Time, Zoom, WhatsApp, Skype, and many potential sources that keep growing.

Shakespeare not only wrote plays and poems; he also coined over 1700 words, many of which we still use today. On this 456th birthday celebration, let us hobnob together in the safest way possible and drink a toast to the greatest writer who ever lived.