Look out, William Shakespeare: There’s a new bard in town and her name is Sarah Palin. The Twitterverse has taken note that the former Alaska governor compared herself to the English playwright Sunday and responded with the search phrase #Shakespalin.

Thousands of people have taken to the microblogging site to offer their own version of Palin prose, and the result is an onslaught of famed Shakespearean quotes from plays such as “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Juliet” tweeted with a barracuda twist. So far such phrases as “Friends, Tea Partiers, lend me your guns” and “Russia, Russia wherefore art thou Russia?” have been coined.

The craze began after Palin created a new word, ­”refudiate” — a hybrid of refute and repudiate — in a tweet last week. The former Republican vice presidential candidate tried to brush off criticism by comparing herself to Shakespeare, tweeting: “‘Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”

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