Section VI:
Shakespeare's Language
 |
Everybody knows these Phrases
2.
Shakespeare's Vocabulary
3.
Word Games
4.
Does Shakespeare Write in Old English?
5.
Shakespeare as Poet
Shakespeare
is both a dramatist and a poet: he writes plays in poetry.
His
stories and his wonderful characters are known universally. He combines a
playwright's sweep and flair and love of action with a poet's keen eye and
sensitivity - the perspective of a dramatist with the dose-up vision of a poet.
Shakespeare
is frequently quoted, because his words and ideas stick in our minds.
The English poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) defined poetry as "the best
words in the best order", and that is why we remember Shakespeare's words.
His art lets him choose, craft and coin the finest words and images.
Bernard Levin, the famous English journalist, tells us:
"If you cannot
understand my argument, and declare 'It's Greek to me', you are quoting
Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting
Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting
Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish
is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting
Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed
jealousy, if you
have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower
of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a
virtue of necessity,
insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood
on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into
stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen
better days or lived
in a fool's paradise— why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it
is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting
Shakespeare."
From
The Story of
English. Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil, eds.
Viking: 1986, pp. 99100.
The
average educated English-speaking person today has a vocabulary of 5,000 to
15,000 words.
Shakespeare's
vocabulary is almost 30,000 words.
We are told that he used 29,066 different
words in his works and 884,647 words altogether.
• Shakespeare invented many new words (over 1,700 in
all). He did this by combining words, adding beginnings or endings, changing
words into different parts of speech, and minting brand new words. Here are
some examples:
Accommodation,
assassination, dexterously, dislocate, indisting uishable, pedant,
premeditated, reliance, submer g ed, lonely, fixture, madcap, torture,
Olympian, bump, caked, discontent, bet, aroused, bloodstain, moonbeam, torture,
skim milk, banket, laug hable.
Click this link to find more words coined by Shakespeare, and to see
where they are first used in his works: http://shakespeare.about.com/librarv/weeklv/aa042400a.htm
Shakespeare loved language. The language in his pays is exuberant and
lively. It is said that Shakespeare brought new life, discoveries and beauties
to the English language, just as the great Elizabethan explorers who discovered
the New World brought new riches, knowledge and wonders to England.
Shakespeare was very much a man of the
people, and he wrote for mass audiences, 3,000 people at a time; for noblemen
and street seers, princes and queens, hangmen and pub owners. Everyone enjoys
humour, and Shakespeare often used bawdy —that is, he made "naughty
jokes", particularly in Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet:
•
The hand is on the very prick of noon
•
Do you speak of country matters?
Shakespeare also frequently used puns (pays on
words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the
similar sense or sound of different words) for comic effect. Like bawdy,
Shakespeare's puns are sometimes difficult for us to understand, as our
vocabulary has changed. Also, words were pronounced differently 400 years ago.
Shakespeare seemed to think that were are appropriate at any time, and he used
them liberally, both in comic scenes and at what we would consider most
un-funny moments.
• HAMLET: Whose grave’s this, sirrah FIRST CLOWN: Mine, sir.
HAMLET: I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in’t.
Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t and say it
is thine:
‘tis for the dead, not for the quick;
therefore thou liest.
Hamlet to the gravedigger (Act V, sc. i, l. 118 -127)
• KING: How is it that the
clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET: Not so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun.
Hamlet responds to the King's question, "How
is it that the clouds still hang on you?" (Why are you still depressed?).
Hamlet means that he is far too close to the hated Claudius (the King), as a
stepson. (Act I, sc. ii, l. 66-67)
•
Juliet,
desperate to learn whether Romeo is dead, puns on "I / ay / eye" as
she interrogates the Nurse:
Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but
“ay,”
And that bare vowel “I” shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice:
I am not I, if there be such an “ay,”
Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer
“ay.”
If he be slain, say “ay”; or if not, “no”;
Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.
(Romeo and
Juliet, Act III, sc. ii, l. 45-51)
•
After Mercutio is fatally stabbed by Tybalt, he
says,
“Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me
a grave man.”
(Romeo and Juliet, Act III, sc. i)
One of Shakespeare's favourite ways of getting a laugh is to have his
comic characters use words incorrectly.
Bottom in A
Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, often uses the wrong word:
'"Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet’ " (III%i,81!■
Audiences in Shakespeare's day would have known that Bottom meant "odorous
savours sweet," as in sweet-smelling, rather than "odious,"
which means hateful.
Dogberry in Much
Ado About Nothing says, "Comparisons are odorous"
(i.e., odious;
III, v); and Launcelot in The Merchant of Venice says, "Certainly [Shylock] is
the very devil incarnal..."
(i.e., incarnate;
II, ii).
No. Shakespeare's work is written in early Modern Eng lish.
Here is an example of Old Eng lish,
from the epic poem Beowulf
(composed around the eighth century AD):
Hwst! We Gardena in geardagum,
Ceodcyninga, ^rym gefrunon, hu Da A^elingas ellen fremedon.
Translation:
Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings, of spear-armed Danes, in
days long sped, we have heard, and what honour the athelings won!
You can really recognize nothing of
today's language in Old English, a mixture of West Germanic, old Norse, and
Latin languages.
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath
perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt
and ende The ender croppes...
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
When April, with its sweet showers,
Has pierced the drought of March to the root And bathed every vein in
liquor that has power To generate there and sire the flower;
When Zephyr has with his sweet breath Filled again in every holt and
heath The tender crops..
Then people long to go on pilgrimages.
In Middle English, you can recognize
English words, and you notice that many words end with "e" and that
"has" is always "hath."
Shakespeare's early
Modern English:
It worries me. you say it worries you. (The Merchdnt Of Venice)
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. (Romeo dnd Juliet)
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. (Hdmlet)
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain of Heaven Upon the
place beneath; it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that receives.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest. (The Merchdnt Of Venice)
Shakespeare did away with the final "e" at the end of many
words; he eliminated "th" and replaced it with "s" dlmost all
the time; and he started using "you" in the singular, instead of the
gentler "thee" or "thou."
Most of Shakespeare's work is poetry.
Three aspects of language that make Shakespeare a poet are rhythr , imagery, and rhyme.
Shakespeare writes his pays in blank verse. His
preferred rhythm is iambic
pentameter.
Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, and
is the most common dramatic form of the Renaissance.
•
Iambs
(pronounced "I-ams") are the natural rhythm of the English language.
We speak in iambs naturally, all the time.
•
An iamb has the rhythm of a heartbeat—the first
syllable unstressed, the second stressed: da DA.
“But soft / what light / through yon / der win /
dow breaks?”
(This is a line of iambic pentameter from Romeo dnd Juliet,
FIVE feet long.)
Lines consisting of five (penta) iambs. Like bars of
music, the "feet" all have the same number of beats.
Shakespeare sometimes uses run-on lines, where the sense continues
into the next line of the speech; he also often uses several speakers to make
up the rhythm of a line. e.g., Hamlet, Act I, scene iv:
MARCELLUS: You
shall not go, my lord.
HAMLET: Hold
off your hands.
HORATIO: Be
ruled; you shall not go.
HAMLET: My
fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion’s
nerve.
Occasionally Shakespeare uses heptameter (six feet) or tetrameter
(four feet). The witches' incantations in Macbeth (IV.i. 12- 21) are in
tetrameter:
SECOND WITCH: Fillet
of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of d^
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
No. Shakespeare also writes in prose.
Prose is simply ordinary speech and
sentences, with no definite rhythmic pattern.
•
Shakespeare often has characters of lower social
status speak in prose.
•
He also uses it for joking, and often for
bawdiness, with any character.
•
Occasionally major characters speak serious,
moving speeches in prose, as if the speeches need to be set apart from the
verse everyone else is speaking, to create a particular response in the
audience. We might call these speeches poetic prose:
HAMLET (to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern):
I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my
mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my
disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in
apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—no, nor
woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
or
SHYLOCK:
'What’s his reason? Iamajew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the
same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed
and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us,
do we not bleed?
We can understand Hamlet's despair, expressed
in polysyllabic, elegant words, and feel Shylock's human agony, expressed in
monosyllables. One speech reaches our minds, one our hearts. Both are poetic
prose.
•
Rhyme is
not used often in Shakespeare's pays. Yet rhymin g couplet: often end a scene or an
act with great emphasis.
The bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell. (Macbeth)
•
Rhyme is
sometimes used just for the fun of it, or to emphasize events:
o Each
of the three scrolls contained in Portia's boxes (The Merchant of Venice) includes a
message written completely in rhyme. The rhyme strengthens the importance of
the scrolls and the action surrounding their use. o After
Bassanio opens the box made of lead and is shown to be the right suitor for
Portia, his acceptance is delivered entirely in rhyming prose, stressing the
significance of that event.
•
Of
course, Shakespeare uses rhymes in his lovely songs within the pays.
O mistress mine! where are you roaming?
O! stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know. (Twelfth Night, II.iii.20)
o Sometimes Shakespeare writes poems
within a pay. In these lines from Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet share
a sonnet at the dance:
ROMEO [ToJULIET]
If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy
shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two
blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm
is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim,
lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear
saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to
despair.
JULIET
Saints do not
move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO
Then move not,
while my prayer’s effect I take.
•
Shakespeare invented a new form of sonnet.
•
The Petrarchar or Italian sonnet was
invented by Petrarch in the 14th century. It consists of 14 lines,
divided into an octave(8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines), and each part has its
own definite rhyme scheme: abbaabba, cdecde.
•
A Shakespearean sonnet also has 14 lines, but the
pattern is different:
three quatrains (4 lines each) rhyming abab, cdcd, efef, followed by a
rhyming couplet, gg.
•
Imagery
is the use of words to create pictures in the mind. Metaphors, or indirect
comparisons, in particular can help us understand the similarities between two
seemingly unlike things. Imagery adds rich layers of meaning, because it adds associations
(otherwise unexpressed) to deepen our understanding.
•
Shakespeare's favourite sources of imag ery are
common objects from his everyday life: gardening, nature, sports, birds,
occupations.
•
Read Caroline Spurgeon's Shakespeare's
Imagery and What It Tells Us.
Shakespeare uses allusions (references) to add imagery and meaning to his
work. He often alludes to Greek mythology and to the Bible.
Shakespeare uses patterns of
images. Many plays contain several images from the same source. Like background
music in a movie, the consistent images create mood and add meaning.
A Pattern of Images in Romeo and Juliet: Light
Whereas Hamlet
is dominated by images of disease and Macbeth has a dominant pattern of blood,
the dominant image in Romeo
and Juliet is light and its contrast with darkness, emphasizing
the bright innocence of young love in a hostile adult word. Moreover, the
frequent references to celestial bodies remind us that Fate is always lurking
around the corner ("I am Fortune’s fool!" howls Romeo), and will
determine events; and that this young love is doomed.
• When Romeo
first sees Juliet, he compares her beauty to the light of the torches in
Capulet's great hall: urn
bright! (I.v.46)
•
In the famous balcony scene, when Romeo sees a
light glowing in Juliet's window, he again compares her to bright light:
It is the east andjuliet is the sun!
(II.ii.3)
The brightness of her cheek would shame
those stars/As daylight doth a lamp. (II.ii.20- 21)
O speak again bright angel! (II.ii.26)
•
In turn, Juliet compares their new-found love to
lightning (II.ii. 120.). When the
Nurse does not
arrive fast enough with news about Romeo, Juliet laments that love's heralds
should be thought " n’s
beams/Driving back shadows over lowering
hills. (II.V.4-5)
Juliet proclaims that if Romeo is cut out
into little stars... all the world will be in love with night and pay no
worship to the garish sun.” (III. ii .23-26)
•
However, light is not always glorious: dawn
brings danger to Romeo:
Look, love, what envious streaks/Do lace
the severing clouds in yonder east./Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund
day/Stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops./l must be gone and live, or stay
and die. (III.V.6-11)
•
From this point on, darkness begins to triumph:
Romeo exclaims, “ More light and light : more dark and dark our woes!”
(III.V.36).
When he returns to Verona to visit Juliet
in the dark tomb, he still associates
Juliet with light: A grave? O no! a lantern. For here lies Juliet, and
her beauty makes/This vault a feasting presence full of light.
At the end of the pay, the Prince, in full
authority, pronounces: A glooming peace this morning with it brings/The sun for
sorrow will not show his head. (V.iii.304-305)
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