Bardolatry

Bardolatry baa(r)'dó-lu-tree

While doing some random reading of Shakespeare’s plays on Google Books I came across this really interesting word “bardolatry”. Quickly I checked in the dictionary on my desktop and was quite surprised by the meaning. Bardolatry means idolization of William Shakespeare. I was not convinced, how can there be a word defining idolization of some person, there are so many great people in history worth idolizing and we don’t have special words coined for them then why Shakespeare ??. So I did some google search on it and found a page on Wikipedia dedicated to this word (really ??). Well this is how they have defined this word, “Bardolatry is a term that refers to the excessive adulation of William Shakespeare, combining the words "bard" and "idolatry". Shakespeare has been known as "the Bard" since the nineteenth century”. Shakespeare was one of the greatest English writers and I love his work but bardolatry still surprised me and the fact that this word was coined by George Bernard Shaw, another great writer.