Diff — Shakespeare Programming Language

{{infobox

| title = Shakespeare Programming Language

| first appeared = 2001

| paradigm = esoteric · stack-based · theatrical

| typing = characters hold integer stacks

| filename extensions = .spl

| influenced by = the works of William Shakespeare

| influenced = the natural-language branch of esolangs

}}

# Shakespeare Programming Language

A program is a play: it has a title, a dramatis personae, acts and scenes, stage directions, and dialogue. The variables are characters — restricted, by the specification, to names from actual Shakespeare plays — and they hold integer values on stacks. To compute, characters must take the stage and speak to each other; to print a character, someone must say **"Speak your mind!"**; to print a number, **"Open your heart!"** Input arrives when a character is told to **"Open your mind"** or **"Listen to your heart."**[[cite: [SPL language overview](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Shakespeare#Instructions) — the stage-direction model and the four I/O utterances]]

# Drama as control flow

The staging rules are the machine. At most **two characters may be on stage at once** — every `[Enter]` and `[Exit]` is effectively register allocation. Acts and scenes are not structure but **labels**: "let us proceed to Scene II" is `goto`, and conditional jumps are achieved by one character asking another *"Am I better than you?"* — followed, if so, by an exit to the appropriate scene.[[cite: [SPL language overview](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Shakespeare#Language_Overview) — the two-character stage limit and scenes-as-labels]]

Arithmetic is where the design becomes deranged in a rigorous way:

- A **noun is worth 1** if complimentary (a *rose*, a *summer's day*) or **−1** if insulting (a *codpiece*, a *festering wound*).

- Each **adjective doubles** the noun's value — so "a beautiful fair warm peaceful sunny summer's day" is 1 × 2⁵ = 32.

- *"You are as lovely as the sum of Hamlet and a brave tree"* assigns Juliet the value of Hamlet plus 2 — a compliment that is simultaneously an addition statement.

- Insults are therefore not optional: negative numbers *must* be delivered as abuse.

Which produces the language's famous consequence: **to print ASCII characters, you must construct their numeric values out of compliments and insults**, so every output program reads as an escalating drama of flattery and offense.[[cite: [SPL expression rules](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Shakespeare#Instructions) — noun/adjective valuation, similes, and "the sum of / difference between" operation expressions]]

# The Hello World that insults a Danish company

The canonical SPL Hello World is a genuine three-scene play: Hamlet — billed in the dramatis personae as *"the flatterer of Andersen Insulting A/S"* — takes the stage and, by alternating abuse and praise at Romeo, Juliet, and Ophelia, drives each one's value to the ASCII code of the next output character:

```

Hamlet:

 You lying stupid fatherless big smelly half-witted coward!

 You are as stupid as the difference between a handsome rich brave

 hero and thyself! Speak your mind!

```

That produces a character of output. The whole program is several scenes of this — Romeo getting insulted into punctuation. It is possibly the only Hello World in computing that reads as a defamation lawsuit.[[cite: [SPL Hello World](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Shakespeare#Hello_World.21) — the full program, Hamlet's insults included, as distributed with the language]]

```fact

The "flatterer of Andersen Insulting A/S" in the cast list is a layered pun — "A/S" is the Danish/Norwegian equivalent of "Inc.", and "Andersen Insulting" ribs the consulting giant then called Andersen Consulting. The dramatis personae descriptions are free text, so every SPL program contains a cast biography nobody will enforce.

```

Shakespeare is Turing-complete — a Brainfuck-to-SPL translator exists (Brain2Speare), which means every computable function can be staged as a tragedy. Whether anyone *should* watch the performance is a separate question.

# Where it sits in the wing

Where [[LOLCODE]] attacked vocabulary by borrowing a meme, SPL attacked it by borrowing **literature** — the assumption that source code should look like a program at all. Alongside [[Whitespace]] (programs as absence) and [[Piet]] (programs as paintings), it completes the trio of languages whose source code you could show a civilian without them recognizing it as code.

## Check your understanding

- [ ] What does "Speak your mind!" do — and what outputs a number instead?

- [ ] How is a negative integer written in SPL?

- [ ] What are acts and scenes used for mechanically?

- [ ] How many characters may be on stage at once, and why does that matter?

```hide Show answers

1 — **"Speak your mind!"** outputs the addressed character's value as an ASCII character; **"Open your heart!"** outputs it as a number.

2 — as an **insult** — negative nouns (codpiece, festering wound) are worth −1, and each adjective doubles the magnitude.

3 — they are **goto labels** — "let us proceed to Scene II" is control flow, and conditional questions direct the jumps.

4 — **two** — it is the register file: only the two on-stage characters can exchange values, so `[Enter]`/`[Exit]` is resource management.

```

[[Category:Languages]]

[[Category:Esoteric languages]]

[[Category:Programming]]

[[Category:History]]