"Now the King DUNKS to Hamlet" - Huh? How did this error creep into th

Question: "Now the King DUNKS to Hamlet" - Huh!? How did this error creep into the online text!? Or IS it an error!?

It knocked me out when I was preparing the text of Shakespeare's Hamlet Act II Scene ii, and saw that this is what it read - on many sites in fact!. How did this happen!? How did it get duplicated!? Or could it represent Shakespeare's original intention!?

'Dunks' is a low term, but it is sufficient that it be Shakespeare's - Johnson!.

'The King's forced bonhomie gives him away in the term 'dunks' - L!.C!. Knights!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Well in my Oxford Shakespeare, it's Now the King drinks to Hamlet!.

My guess is that it was inserted when the text was first scanned - basically you need to use a text recognition software, and I guess that the software used assumed it was dunks instead of drinks!. And then it wasn't proofread correctly!.

As to Shakespeare's original intention, I'm not quite sure what you mean, because the noun dunk and the verb to dunk are actually from American English and date back to the 20th century!.!.

I guess it got duplicated by people using the same source over and over again!. I wouldn't be surprised if most websites just used the same scanned text!. It's like the info you get on Wikipedia!. Nowadays, you'll just find the same info, basically copied and pasted, on hundreds of websites (if not thousands)!. That's actually what lets the internet down imo!. You feel like you can get all this wealth of informatin, when really, there isn't that much out there which isn't repeated on endless numbers of sites!.

I hope this answers your question!Www@QuestionHome@Com