Annotation: the article is devoted to English agnonyms and their groups in the text of the play of William Shakespeare. The analysis of agnonyms makes it possible to identify their essential features and criteria necessary for their subsequent classification and systematization. The study of agnonyms helps to better understand the artistic intent of the work, to eliminate gaps in the active and passive vocabulary necessary for a meaningful reading of any work of W. Shakespeare, to comprehend all the subtleties of storylines and the depth of the author’s intent. Any work of art rich artistic images. Their creation involves words, phrases, sentences, and superphrase unity – dictems, cumules, and so on. If the meaning of a word, phrase or larger units is not clear when reading, then the phenomenon of agnonymy appears. Agnonymy can be not only at the level of words and phrases, but also at the level of more complex formations – artistic images, stylistic techniques, tropes, stylistic means. The impossibility of decoding a particular artistic image, expressive means or stylistic reception in a work leads to a loss of its value to the reader, a complete misunderstanding or oblivion, which Famousov writes in the Griboedov comedy «Woe from Wit»: «Sergei Sergeyitch, no! Oh, if you stop evil: Pick up all the books would burn. To which Voland replied with the phrase «manuscripts do not burn» in Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous novel «The Master and Margarita». Here the agnonymic turn «to burn the books» and «manuscripts do not burn» is used in a metaphorical, hyperbolic sense – understanding and misunderstanding of the work. Although in the first case it has a tinge of struggle with free-thinking, and in the second it is a defense against this struggle. But the core of agnonymy here is precisely the lack of understanding of the work, since the one who understands it is unlikely to want to fight with it, knowing its true artistic and aesthetic value for science, art, culture, and so on.
При чтении трагедии У. Шекспира «Отелло» в оригинале с первой страницы по последнюю реципиенту будут встречаться такие слова, как [13]: thou (p.1), hast (p.1), shouldst (p.1), thine (p.1), thy (p.123), withal (p.110), thence (p.96), thither (p.96), harlotry (p.96), sup (p.86), hence (p.73), cannon (p. 73), prithee (p.73), beget (p.73), catechize (p.68), warrant (p.51), baptism (p.46) и другие, которые либо по причине устаревания, археизации (перехода в разряд архаизмов и архаической лексики) и историзации (утраты исторических реалий, обозначаемых словом, и перехода лексики в разряд исторической, так если историзмов), либо в виду своей многозначности, либо отнесённости к различным стилистически окрашенным и маркированным особыми коннотациями слоям лексики создают проблемы понимания текста целиком и ведут к утрате его смысла. Подобное явление следует охарактеризовать как агнонимия, а слова, перечисленные выше, мы будем называть агнонимами.