Quick pop quiz!

[conuly]

Just off the top of your head, and without double checking, how many Shakespeare quotes can you recite?

Determining how many words constitute "a quote" is an exercise I'll leave to the reader, as well as the question of "where does one end and another begin".

I'm leaving comments screened for the show-offs, of which I actually totally am one, so no judgment. I'll unscreen them when I get around to it, so probably in a day or two.

Poll #27751 Shakespeare quotes

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

View Respondents

So, approximately how many?

View Answers
Mean: 29.70 Median: 11 Std. Dev 40.57

1		2 (8.7%)
11		11 (47.8%)
21		3 (13.0%)
31		2 (8.7%)
41		1 (4.3%)
51		2 (8.7%)
61		0 (0.0%)
71		0 (0.0%)
81		0 (0.0%)
91		0 (0.0%)
101		1 (4.3%)
111		0 (0.0%)
121		0 (0.0%)
131		0 (0.0%)
141		0 (0.0%)
151		0 (0.0%)
161		0 (0.0%)
171		0 (0.0%)
181		0 (0.0%)
200		0 (0.0%)

Comments

[sallymn]

I actually have no idea, but probably quite a lot, I have always been something of an aural and verbal packrat and my head is studded with bits of quotes from all over, both 'literary' and anything but - if Shakespeare and the Bible come first, the Goon Show very likely comes next.

[pauamma]

Assuming you mean from plays only, and that mangled quotes count.

[conuly]

Hey, you got sonnets, toss 'em in!

[pauamma]

I would need to think about these - which probably means, per "off the top of your head", that they don't qualify.

[foms]

I experienced that difficulty, too. Even reciting them in my head takes enough time that, by the time I reach over a small few, I'm not sure whether it counts as off the top of my head.

[jhetley]

This is an impossible task -- Shakespeare quotes are woven throughout the English language.

[conuly]

Well, it only counts if you know you know them.

[landofnowhere]

Pretty sure the answer is "a lot", as (a) I have a very good memory for this sort of thing and (b) I did a lot of youth Shakespeare in my time. Not sure how I'd measure!

[pauamma]

Hmm, something in the Dreamwidth poll-handling code has to be wrong. How can the mean be 36.71 with all values less than that?

Oh, never mind. Poll display code was hiding the 191 answer for some reason.

[the_siobhan]

My answer is 100% guess and might actually be more. The longer I think about it the more I come up with.

[cactuswatcher]

Eleven might be a bit generous, but it's well more than one.

[readerjane]

I have no idea how many. Shakespeare quotes just pop into my head from time to time. I follow https://twitter.com/Wwm_Shakespeare , so that probably contributes. Whoever runs that account finds a quote for any imaginable situation.

[adafrog]

Holy crap, can some people quote over 100?

[darkoshi]

I can still recite (though not perfectly) a section from Macbeth I had to memorize as a school exercise (we got to choose which section and I chose one of the shortest I could find, the scene with the witches).
Other than that, I can't think of anything right off except "Oh Romeo, my Romeo!" which I don't think is long enough to count, and I'm not even sure that phrasing is correct.