ivory tower'd

I keep forgetting to write about this, which is incomprehensible considering my violent and righteous indignation, and I've probably already told you about this anyway. Shakespeare did not write in Old English, he wrote in Early Modern English. This is Old English, via Beowulf:

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

I don't care whether you are a tenth grader or a professor of education, if you insist that the two are the same, you are arrogantly ignorant of the truth. Do they even look similar? Saying otherwise is as patently incorrect as saying people in France speak Latin. And no, just because people always say that Shakespeare is Old English doesn't make that correct. They mean to say archaic English, if anything, and they simply don't know what they are talking about. Remember: common usage does not excuse the bastardization of the English language.