
Was Shakespeare a snob?
HistoryExtra podcast
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Is There a Difference in Learning?
The word idiot to the Elizabethans and Jacobians meant a person of no social stat. And so somebody said, everybody except for a tiny number would have been regarded as idiots because they didn't have social standing. But because of what then happened in attitude to intelligence and intellectual ability, this kind of weird confusion emerged or change,. which said that when that Shakespeare when he says a tale told by an idiot or when people are referred to as clowns, they're obviously intellectually very limited but they don't. What he's talking about is a class difference, not not an intellectual difference.
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