The Language of Shakespeares Plays
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Although certain grammatical treatises were published in Shakespeare's day, organized grammar texts would not appear until the s. Shakespeare as a youth would have no more systematically studied his own language than any educated man of the period.
The most striking feature of Shakespeare is his command of language. have made a living out of students who don't want to read the plays for themselves. Many words and phrases in the English language were first written down by William Shakespeare in his plays and poetry.
Despite this, Shakespeare is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the introduction of nearly 3, words into the language. His vocabulary, as culled from his works, numbers upward of 17, words quadruple that of an average, well-educated conversationalist in the language.
Shakespeare's English, in spite of the calamitous cries of high school students everywhere, is only one linguistic generation removed from that which we speak today. The following table illustrates the time periods and differences between Old, Middle, and Early Modern, and Modern English:. Although the Elizabethan dialect differs slightly from Modern English, the principles are generally the same.
There are some present day anomalies with prepositional usage and verb agreement, and certainly a number of Shakespeare's words have shifted meanings or dropped, with age, from the present vocabulary. Word order, as the language shifted from Middle to Early Modern English, was still a bit more flexible, and Shakespeare wrote dramatic poetry, not standard prose, which gave some greater license in expression.
However, Elizabethan remains a sibling of our own tongue, and hence, accessible. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.
Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse , composed in iambic pentameter with clever use of puns and imagery.
And in Macbeth's preceding speech:. The dialogues in his plays were written in verse form and followed a decasyllabic rule. The Passionate Pilgrim To the Queen. Selections from the Work that Defined the English Language. Shakespeare as a youth would have no more systematically studied his own language than any educated man of the period.
In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones.
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It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines , with the risk of monotony. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind: Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep.
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Methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly— And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well…. After Hamlet , Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical".
These included run-on lines , irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. Was the hope drunk, Wherein you dress'd yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely? And in Macbeth's preceding speech:. And Pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's Cherubins, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air,. The audience is challenged to complete the sense. Shakespeare's poetic genius was allied with a practical sense of the theatre.
This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama.
He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In his late romances , he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.
Language of Shakespeare's Plays
In some of Shakespeare's early works, punctuation at the end of the lines strengthen the rhythm. He and other dramatists at the time used this form of blank verse for much of the dialogue between characters to elevate the poetry of drama. I go, and it is done: His plays make effective use of the soliloquy , in which a character makes a solitary speech, giving the audience insight to the character's motivations and inner conflict.
His works have been considered controversial through the centuries for his use of bawdy punning, [28] to the extent that "virtually every play is shot through with sexual puns. For example, comic scenes dominate over historical material in Henry IV, Part 1. Besides following the popular forms of his day, Shakespeare's general style is comparable to several of his contemporaries.
His works have many similarities to the writing of Christopher Marlowe , and seem to reveal strong influences from the Queen's Men 's performances, especially in his history plays. His style is also comparable to Francis Beaumont 's and John Fletcher 's, other playwrights of the time.
Shakespeare's language
Shakespeare often borrowed plots from other plays and stories. Hamlet , for example, is comparable to Saxo Grammaticus ' Gesta Danorum. After Shakespeare's death, playwrights quickly began borrowing from his works, a tradition that continues to this day. Shakespeare's works express the complete range of human experience. Shakespeare's characters were complex and human in nature. By making the protagonist's character development central to the plot, Shakespeare changed what could be accomplished with drama.
All references to Hamlet , unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Arden Shakespeare Q2. Under their referencing system, 3. All references to Macbeth , unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Arden Shakespeare second series.