Shakespeare vs Rappers
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2014
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's a 'fact' beloved of English teachers around the world: that Shakespeare, the greatest playwright in English, also had the greatest vocabulary. But research published earlier this year suggests English teachers might have to look elsewhere to establish the superiority of the Bard - apparently his vocabulary lags behind the best and most famous rappers of the last decades. Is this comparison fair, and if so, does it diminish the Bard's lustre? This programme was first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:42.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:45.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, |
| 0:49.0 | go to BBCworldservice. com slash podcasts. Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. |
| 1:00.4 | We're the program that fact checks the numbers in the news and in life. |
| 1:04.0 | I'm Tim Harford and this week James Fletcher has poked his big smiley face around the studio door. |
| 1:09.0 | Hello James, what have you got from me? |
| 1:10.0 | I've got a question for you. |
| 1:12.0 | Which of these do you think has more literary merit this what a piece of work is a man how noble in reason |
| 1:20.3 | how infinite in faculty or this. |
| 1:24.0 | Like smoke and joke Fraser the Hellwiser, raising hell with the flavor. |
| 1:29.0 | To be honest, I've got a lot of time for both Shakespeare and hip-hop but I'd be a bit shocked if school children |
| 1:34.8 | stop learning Shakespeare and started taking rap lessons so I'm I'm gonna go for Shakespeare. |
| 1:40.0 | Well Tim I think that's a bit wishy-washy. This is more or less, I want to see the numbers. |
| 1:45.0 | Where's your evidence base for saying Shakespeare is so great? |
| 1:49.0 | Where is it? |
... |
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