Shakespeare Would Have Done Well On Any Job Interview

I remembered something Professor Mulready said about Shakespeare knowing the vocabulary of a multitude of professions as I was reading Act 2, Scene 1 the other day. I think in particular the dialogue in this scene is a great example of that point. Here Shakespeare is talking about the profession of being a carrier, or one who transports goods from one place to another, and a lot of unfamiliar terms are used throughout the scene. I found myself constantly looking back to the footnotes to see just what the hell Shakespeare was talking about. For example, in the very beginning of the scene the first carrier cries out "What, ostler!" (2.1.3). Now I'd never heard the term ostler before (maybe that's ignorance on my part, but I don't think I've ever been in a situation where it has been needed to be used), and the Norton had a footnote for it which read "One who attends to horses at an inn". Certainly that would be a familiar term to a carrier. I further looked it up in the OED to see if the term is still being used. The last usage they had of it was in 1992, but they noted that it's primarily a historical term, and for the most part obsolete (not much need for ostlers nowadays). Interestingly the Oxford also listed as one of it's quotations for the word this scene, but that's not surprising; Shakespeare is the most commonly cited author in the OED with over 33,300 quotations (he knew 25,000 words, go figure). Ostler is not so bad though, compared with the next speech by the first carrier: "I prithee, Tom, beat cut's saddle, put a few flocks in the point. Poor jade is wrung in the withers, out of all cess." (2.1.5-7) I was left saying "Excuse me?" and referring back to the footnotes. This speech required three footnotes to explain what he was talking about. "Beat cut's saddle" just means to soften it, "put a few flocks in the point" is to "put a few tufts of wood in the saddle's pommel" i.e. to soften it, and "Poor jade is wrung in the withers" means the horse is sore behind the shoulders. Shakespeare perfectly captures how a carrier would actually speak in this scene, and, being unfamiliar with the profession and the terms I was naturally a little confused at first. I tried to imagine the impact this would have on his audience. I'm sure most people at the time were more familiar with horses than most people are now, so I'm betting the majority of the audience would know what he was referring to, just as now even if you don't know what it does you know that a spark plug is part of a car, and most people today would know how to change a tire (I would hope). I imagine though that it would make even more sense to those members of his audience that were ostlers or carriers. They might think "hey, that's me up there" or "that's what I do". He includes everyone in his plays, and when he does they speak the common language of their profession. It's a truly remarkable feat. He speaks the language of the court, the language of merchants (think Merchant of Venice), and here even the language of the common ostler and carrier. He even uses other languages to his advantage at times, such as in 3.1 with the placement of a character who only speaks Welsh. This dramatic portrayal of love's unspoken language sufficing where words cannot is truly moving, though I was left wondering a little how they fell so deeply in love with each other if they can't understand one another (and why they didn't just learn each other's language), but then I remembered that they're gentlemen and women who may have been set up to marry each other, and also that sex is a universal language so maybe it's not so strange after all.