Shakespeare and the Covid-19 vaccine in the British and European news: An analysis of partially filled constructions (PFCs) and snowclones

This articlepresents ananalysis of a restrictedcorpus of British,Italian, and other Europeannews from different media (e.g., newspaper articles, blogs, social media, etc.) about William Shakespeare –an 81-year-old man from Warwickshire with the same name of the well-known Elizabethan playwright –andtheCovid-19 vaccine. Mr.Shakespeare was the first man,second only to a90-year-old Northern Irish womannamedMargaret Keenan,to receive adose of the vaccine in the United Kingdomon 8 December 2020 (he died on 25 May 2021 for reasons unrelated to the vaccine), and both British and Continental communication media did not miss the opportunity to capitalise onthis piece of news as an advertising gimmick. Nevertheless, news about Mr.Shakespeare’s vaccination offersincrediblyfertile ground for a linguistic analysis ofpuns and wordplaymainly about the titles of and famous quotes fromthe Bard’s plays, such as“The Gentleman of Corona” and“The Taming of the Flu.” Also resorting to the Coronavirus corpus, released in May 2020on english-corpora.org (https://www.english-corpora.org/corona/), this paper argues that such puns and wordplay have a commonstructure, known in linguistic terms as partially filledconstructions(PFCs).A particular kind of PFC, known as snowclones,isintroduced and discussed, with special emphasis on the productivity of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be,” understood as a PFC, with the purpose of demonstrating its high productivity.