Shakespeare vs Rappers

Summary

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More or Less – “Shakespeare vs Rappers”

Host: Tim Harford (with James Fletcher)
Date: September 15, 2014
BBC Radio 4

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Episode Overview

This episode investigates the oft-repeated claim that Shakespeare had the largest vocabulary of any writer in history—and puts it to the test against hip hop artists. Prompted by a listener’s question and recent viral internet data, Tim Harford and James Fletcher use numbers (and expert voices) to explore whether literary merit can, or should, be measured by word count. The discussion expands to ask: What makes writing “great”? Is more vocabulary always better? And what can new data analysis techniques really tell us about literature and music?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Listener’s Challenge: Shakespeare’s Vocabulary Supremacy

• Listener Alex Wegemann, an English teacher, explains that he has always told students Shakespeare had the largest English vocabulary. Now, he’s not so sure.
  • Quote: “Every year I tell my students that Shakespeare had a larger vocabulary than any of us can ever aspire to...but now I'm thinking maybe I've been lying all those years.” (01:20 - 01:51)

The Viral Data Analysis: Rappers vs. Shakespeare

• Enter Matt Daniels, data scientist and hip hop fan, who created an online chart comparing the vocabulary size of around 100 rappers, and included Shakespeare for comparison.
  • Used token analysis: counts the number of unique words in a specified chunk (35,000 words for each candidate).
  • Aesop Rock, not Shakespeare, topped the chart by a large margin, outstripping even the Bard in unique word count.
  • Quote (Matt Daniels): “He was actually off the chart...orders of magnitude higher.” (02:50)

Comparative Rankings

• Shakespeare still outranked most mainstream rappers (Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Kanye West), placing in the top quarter—but not at the very top.
  • “Shakespeare had 22 rappers ahead of him, and they're mostly these more underground rappers.” (03:22)

Is Word Count a Fair Measure?

• Harford questions the validity:
  • “Can you actually just grab 35,000 words from everyone, bung them in a computer and name the winner?” (03:47)
• Matt Daniels concedes it’s not “apples to apples”:
  • Shakespeare’s prose vs hip hop lyrics; different styles, genres, conventions.
  • To be methodologically rigorous would require extensive work; Daniels intended it as a “fun” side project, not scientific proof.
  • “It’s not a direct comparison...I wanted this to be fun and really a side project versus a scientific analysis.” (04:00-04:25)

Expert Input: Stylometrics and Literary Merit

• Professor Hugh Craig (University of Newcastle, Australia), an expert in stylometrics, supports the method of using equal sample size but offers a reality check:
  • Previous belief in Shakespeare’s word hoard mainly arose because so much of his work survived.
  • When using uniform samples, Shakespeare is “a little bit below the average” compared to contemporaries like Marlowe, Ben Jonson, etc.
  • Quote: “If you take six plays by Shakespeare and six plays by a group of his contemporaries...Shakespeare comes out as just a little bit below the average.” (05:35)

The Limits of Quantity

• Professor Craig argues that sheer number of unique words doesn’t equal literary greatness:
  • “Using an awful lot of different words...is not necessarily...a sign of literary quality.” (06:29)
  • Bringing in foreign languages, technical jargon, or invented words can bloat counts but doesn’t guarantee impact or beauty.

Underlying Temptation: The Search for Objective Proof

• Fletcher observes our urge to rank artists based on quantifiable metrics, seeking “evidence” of talent or greatness.
  • “People are desperate for evidence that this rapper is better than that rapper...these sophisticated analytical tools really tempt us to believe there must be a number that proves...greatness.” (05:57)
• Craig: There is no magic metric—neither for Shakespeare nor for rappers. Vocabulary size is only one tiny part of artistry.

Memorable Segment: “Alphabet Aerobics”

• The rapper Gift of Gab (Blackalicious) scores above Shakespeare in unique words, showcased with his track “Alphabet Aerobics.”
  • Entertaining but underlines that exhaustive word lists (like a dictionary) aren’t the endpoint of literary merit.
  • “Who would ever read a dictionary cover to cover?...what could be more boring than a list of words in alphabetical order?” (07:07)

Final Reflections

• Listener Alex Wegemann sums up the matter with humor and perspective on literary value.
  • “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse sounds much better than a hoe, a hoe, my kingdom for a ho. I think it would be difficult to measure the quality of the vocabulary. And if all there is is quantity, maybe this is much ado about nothing.” (07:41)
• Harford’s final verdict: “It’s not the words you know, it’s what you do with them that counts.” (08:00)

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• Alex Wegemann:
  “Every year I tell my students that Shakespeare had a larger vocabulary than any of us can ever aspire to...” (01:20)
• Matt Daniels:
  “He was actually off the chart, like, orders of magnitude higher.” (02:50) “It’s not quite apples to apples...” (04:00)
• Prof. Hugh Craig:
  “Shakespeare comes out as just a little bit below the average.” (05:35) “Using an awful lot of different words...is not necessarily of itself and by itself a sign of literary quality.” (06:29)
• Alex Wegemann’s Sign-off:
  “Much ado about nothing.” (07:41)
• Tim Harford:
  “It’s not the words you know, it’s what you do with them that counts.” (08:00)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:19-02:01: Listener challenge and origin of the vocabulary claim
• 02:03-03:47: Matt Daniels’ analysis – rappers vs. Shakespeare
• 03:47-04:25: Methodological concerns and the “apples to apples” problem
• 04:32-05:49: Professor Hugh Craig on stylometrics and Shakespeare among contemporaries
• 05:57-06:56: Philosophical reflection—can metrics ever capture greatness?
• 07:04-07:41: “Alphabet Aerobics” and final listener reflection
• 08:00: Conclusion—what matters is what you do with words

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Conclusion

This episode debunks the simplistic notion that a huge vocabulary automatically equals literary greatness—whether you’re Shakespeare or Aesop Rock. It’s a playful, thoughtful examination of how we measure art, demonstrating the limits of statistical approaches and reaffirming the complexity (and subjectivity) of what makes writing, or rapping, truly resonate.

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Transcript

[Ruth Alexander]

This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

[James Fletcher]

Thank you for downloading from the BBC. For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts

[Tim Harford]

hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. We're the programme that fact checks the numbers in the news and in life. I'm Tim Harford and this week James Fletcher's poked his big smiley face face round the studio door. Hello, James. What have you got for me?

[James Fletcher]

I've got a question for you. Which of these do you think has more literary merit? This. What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty? Or this?

[Tim Harford]

Well, 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 stopped learning Shakespeare and started taking rap lessons. So I'm. I'm gonna go for Shakespear.

[James Fletcher]

Well, Tim, I think that's a bit wishy washy. This is more or less. I want to see the numbers. Where's your evidence base for saying Shakespeare is so great? Where is it?

[Tim Harford]

Come on. I don't have it.

[James Fletcher]

Well, here's a suggestion from a loyal listener in Northern China, Alex Wegemann.

[Alex Wegemann]

I've been an English teacher for many years now. Every year I tell my students that Shakespeare had a larger vocabulary than any of us can ever aspire to.

[James Fletcher]

Now, students everywhere are probably going to be familiar with this. Literary merit is very hard to quantify, but this is an exception, an objective reason why Shakespeare sits at the very pinnacle of English literature. That he had the largest English vocabulary of any writer in history. But Alex got in touch with us because he's worried.

[Alex Wegemann]

I am usually greeted with many wise nods, but now I'm thinking maybe I've been lying all those years.

[Tim Harford]

So what's caused Alex to lose faith?

[James Fletcher]

Well, he saw a chart which was doing the rounds on the Internet earlier this year comparing the vocabulary sizes of various rappers. It was the brainchild of data scientist and hip hop fan Matt Daniels. And while his main purpose was to compare the rappers to each other, he thought it would be good to throw in Shakespeare too.

[Tim Harford]

So how'd you go about comparing the vocabulary of Shakespeare and a bunch of rappers?

[James Fletcher]

Well, Matt used a method called token analysis that counts the number of un words in any body of text that you feed into a computer program. He analyzed the first 35,000 words of lyrics recorded by around 100 hip hop artists. And for comparison the first 5,000 words of seven Shakespeare plays. So 35,000 words again. Matt ran the numbers and found one name at the head of the pack.

[Matt Daniels]

He was actually off the chart, like, orders of magnitude higher. So that was eye opening and I actually had to. I should have readjusted the scale for him.

[Tim Harford]

I really hope he's talking about Shakespeare.

[James Fletcher]

You just know that he isn't, Tim. It's actually this guy. That's Rickety Rackety, a track from a rapper called Aesop Rock.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah, I know who it is. He's not a mainstream star. He's got a loyal underground following. But what about Shakespeare?

[James Fletcher]

Ah, not too bad, Tim. I'm impressed by the infinite variety of your knowledge. Shakespeare doesn't do too badly. He does come out ahead. Head of most of the big mainstream stars like Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Jay Z or Kanye West. They're all back in the pack behind Shakespeare. The size of his vocabulary puts him in the top quarter, but barely. Shakespeare had 22 rappers ahead of him and they're mostly these more underground rappers.

[Tim Harford]

Well, I can see why our listener Alex is worried. But hang on, can you actually just grab 35,000 words from everyone, bung them in a computer and name the winner?

[James Fletcher]

Fair enough. Question. I asked Matt if it's fair to compare Shakespeare to the rappers this way.

[Matt Daniels]

It's not quite apples to apples. Shakespeare is writing prose. Often in hip hop, you're obviously writing song lyrics. There's much more slang in hip hop, so it's not a direct comparison. And to get it actually methodologically bulletproof and publishable in, like, a linguist journal would take probably years of data cleaning. And again, I wanted this to be fun and really a side project versus a scientific analysis.

[Tim Harford]

Well, we're all in favour of fun, but this is the reputation of the Bard that's at stake here, James, So this has got to be rock solid. I want a second opinion, please.

[James Fletcher]

Well, in that case, I think it's time to talk about stylometrics.

[Tim Harford]

Oh, yeah? Yeah, I know another hip hop group.

[James Fletcher]

Yeah, I think I just flushed you out there, Tim. Not quite the hip hop fan you claim to be. Stylometrics is a field of literature studies and it uses computers and data analysis to tell us things about literary styles. So for your second opinion, I went to Professor Hugh Craig. He's director of the center for Linguistic and Literature Literary Computing at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

[Professor Hugh Craig]

Yep, they did the right thing by taking exactly. I think it's 35,000 words, blocks of 35,000 words for each of the candidates. That's a good way to do it.

[James Fletcher]

Now it turns out that this technique has had an impact in Shakespeare's studies as well. The reason people thought Shakespeare used so many more unique words than anyone else is that a relatively large amount of his work survives and people were simply counting all the words in his entire output. But a couple of years ago, Hugh Craig used a broadly similar technique technique to Matt Daniels to analyze Shakespeare's vocabulary. And he came up with a surprising result.

[Professor Hugh Craig]

If you take six plays by Shakespeare and six plays by a group of his contemporaries, maybe Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, John Fletcher and so on, Shakespeare comes out as just a little bit below the average.

[Tim Harford]

Oh, brilliant. Really? Really? All these years we've been told Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary and actually it was just that lots of his plays survive.

[James Fletcher]

Yeah, exactly. That's it. It's strange that people are so keen to find some objective proof of Shakespeare's greatness. And you can see the same urge in the responses to Matt Daniel's Hip Hop chart too. People are desperate for evidence that this rapper is better than that rapper. These new sophisticated analytical tools really tempt us to believe that there must be a number out there that proves the greatness of someone like Shakespeare. But Hugh Craig says he hasn't found such a number yet. And for rappers as much as for Shakespeare, vocabulary is of limited use.

[Professor Hugh Craig]

Using an awful lot of different words in your place isn't necessarily such a wonderful thing. If you use different languages within a play, if you bring in lots of technical terms, you'll increase your vocabulary. And that might be actually tedious to listen to if you're in the audience. It's not necessarily of itself and by itself a sign of literary quality.

[James Fletcher]

Now it's time for our wrap up. It makes sense when you think about it, Tim. Can you name a book which might have the highest number of unique words?

[Tim Harford]

Words like Billabong and Dinkum and so on. Yeah, the. The Oxford English Dictionary.

[James Fletcher]

That's a low blow, Tim, but you're exactly right. Who would ever read a dictionary cover to cover? I mean, what could be more boring than a list of words in alphabetical order? Casualties canceling. Cats got the canopies collapsing. Detonated diamond tank. Daily doing dope demonstrations. Don Dada on the down low, Meeting other editors with each and every energetic epileptic episode. That's the rapper Gift of Gab there, who incidentally rates above Shakespeare on Matt Daniel's charts with a track called Alphabet Aerobics. But perhaps I should give the last word to our English teaching listener, Alex

[Alex Wegemann]

in China, a horse, a horse, My kingdom for a horse sounds much better than a hoe, a hoe, my kingdom for a ho. I think it would be difficult to measure the quality of the vocabulary. And if all there is is quantity, maybe this is much ado about nothing.

[Tim Harford]

It's not the words, you know, it's what you do with them that counts. Thank you, James. Now just time to dive into the post bag with Ruth Alexander. And Ruth, after last week's program about the charity Ice Bucket Challenge that so many people around the world have been doing, a number of listeners have let us know they agreed with our analysis, which is cheery.

[Ruth Alexander]

Yes, they liked the idea of choosing to give their donation to a charity where there was evidence that you could help the largest number of people for each dollar you gave.

[Tim Harford]

But not everybody liked this approach.

[Ruth Alexander]

They didn't, including Jenny, who emailed to say that giving to charity is a personal matter. She says it's prompted most often by definition by personal experience or emotion, not by mathematics. It's an area where mathematics cannot go, she says. I found it presumptuous, superfluous, distasteful and verging on the obscene to try to slot charity giving into a sort of supermarket best value lineup. Some things transcend pure calculation and profit, I hope.

[Tim Harford]

Well, thank you, Ruth, and thank you, Jenny, for writing in. We always like to hear your comments, whether you agree or disagree with what we're doing. Our email address is more or lessbc co.uk our website is bbcworldservice.com more or less. Until next week. Goodbye.

[James Fletcher]

There are dozens of different podcasts now available from the BBC, including news, documentaries, science, business, arts and sport. For details of them all, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts.