Photo of Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

Shakespeare's Missing Smile

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Scan of a yellowing page. The ext has no brackets.

Exactly a decade ago, I wrote about how Shakespeare invented the emoticon. Nestled deep in "Winter's Tale" is the first recorded use of the typographic smilie :) As I discussed, Sir Smile's smile appears in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th folios. One hundred years after the 4th folio was printed, the smile vanished. The 1786 edition simply omits it. At the time, I didn't have access to any other versions between 1685 and 1786 - but I'm delighted to tell you that I've now found one! The Hathi…

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Shakespeare And Emoticons

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Scan of the first folio of Shakespeare's work. It mentions Sir Smile. Which is then followed by a colon and close bracket.

Rob Pensalfini has written a delightful blog in which he accuses (or perhaps credits) Shakespeare with inventing the emoticon. He claims that this is within A Winter's Tail, Act I, Scene ii - in the first folio. So, I turned to the First Folio viewer which allows people to see scans of the first printing of The Winter's Tale - in this case, the New South Wales scan. Direct link to scan. The "emoticon" is also present in the second folio, the third, and the fourth. However, at some point,…

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