While I was writing my final paper on Macbeth, I stumbled upon a phrase in the assigned quote that intrigued me, especially when I looked it up on OED online. The term “rook” in Act 3, Scene 2, Line 50 can have so many different meanings that give Macbeth’s speech entirely different qualities. “Light thickens; and the crow/Makes wing to the rooky wood.” According to the OED, “rooky” could just be a reference to the place the crows go to sleep, or it could reference a different species of bird called a Rook, which is closely related to the common crow. Rook can also refer to a human thief or “bad guy” or it could mean “misty or foggy.” I thought this was a perfect example of classic “Shakespeareism.” So many of the meanings drawn from Shakespeare’s works can be completely objective, and can change with even a slightly different interpretation of a word or passage.