Sir, Your leading article (“Word perfect”, Aug 31) states that “The words available to Shakespeare sufficed to write Hamlet, didn’t they?” Apparently not. In Mother Tongue Bill Bryson points out that of Shakespeare’s vocabulary of 17,677 words, some 1,700 were his own invention (including, for example, leapfrog, monumental, obscene and pedant). Hamlet speaks of “this most excellent canopy, the air, look you”, the adjective being another Shakespeare invention.
Richard Need
Cheam, Surrey