Shakespeare's Language

Shakespeare’s Language
Romeo & Juliet
By Erin Salona

Shakespeare’s English
Shakespeare did not write in Old English or Middle English.
Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English.
Early Modern English is only one generation of language from the English you speak today!

Shakespeare’s Contributions
Shakespeare only had an 8th grade education.
There were no dictionaries.
Shakespeare is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the introduction of nearly 3,000 words into the language.
His vocabulary numbers upward of 17,000 words (quadruple that of an average, well-educated conversationalist in the language)

A Few Words By Shakespeare
Accused
Addiction
Admirable
Assassination
Bloodstained
Cold-blooded
Coldhearted
Deafening
Disgraceful
To drug
Excitement
Fashionable
Fortune-teller
Gloomy
Mimic
Obscene

Phrases Coined by Shakespeare
As good luck would have it
Be-all and the end-all
Break the ice
Eaten me out of house and home
Elbow room
Fool's paradise
For goodness' sake
Full circle
Good riddance
It was Greek to me
Heart of gold
In a pickle
Kill with kindness
Lie low
Love is blind
Not slept one wink

In the England of Shakespeare's time, English was a lot more flexible as a language.
The most common simple sentence in modern English follows a familiar pattern: Subject (S), Verb (V), Object (O). (Will caught the ball).
However, Shakespeare was much more at liberty to switch these three basic components
Shakespeare used a great deal of SOV inversion (Will the ball caught).

Switching the S-V-O order to S-O-V made it easier for Shakespeare to rhyme and to manipulate his words to flow easily in poems and plays.
Shakespeare could effectively place the metrical stress wherever he needed it most by switching word order
Shakespeare also used an O-S-V construction (The ball Will caught) for the same reasons.

Inverted Word Order
Lady Montague:
O where is Romeo, saw you him today?
Right glad I am he was not at this fray.
Translation:
O where is Romeo; did you see him today?
I am very glad he was not in this fight.

Inverted Word Order
“Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung.”
Translation:
You have sung at her window in the moonlight.
From A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Shakespeare’s Language in Plays
The language used by Shakespeare in his plays is in one of three forms
Prose
Rhymed Verse
Blank Verse

Prose
Prose is writing which resembles everyday speech
Prose is often used by Shakespeare for lower-class characters in his plays
Prose lacks meter and rhyme and is informal
Shakespeare blends prose with poetry in his plays

Rhymed Verse
The majority of Shakespeare’s plays contain rhymed verse which looks like poetry
Characters– especially of the higher classes--speak in poetic form
Their words have form, meter, and rhyme
Rhymed verse in Shakespeare's plays is usually in rhymed couplets, i.e. two successive lines of verse of which the final words rhyme with another.

Iambic Pentameter
Iambic pentameter is meter that Shakespeare nearly always when writing in verse. Most of his plays were written in iambic pentameter.
Iambic Pentameter has:
Ten syllables in each line
Five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables
The rhythm in each line sounds like: ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM

Iambic Pentameter Example
Examples of Iambic Pentameter:
If mu- / -sic be / the food / of love, / play on
Is this / a dag- / -gerI / see be- / fore me?
Each pair of syllables is called an iamb. You’ll notice that each iamb is made up of one unstressed and one stressed beat (ba-BUM).

Rhymed Verse in Iambic Pentameter
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedyhaste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
- from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Blank Verse
Blank verse refers to unrhymed iambic pentameter.
resembles prose in that the final words of the lines do not rhyme in any regular pattern
There is meter: a recognizable rhythm in a line of verse consisting of a pattern of regularly recurring stressed and unstressed syllables.
Most lines are in iambic pentameter.

Blank Verse
BLANK VERSE is employed in a wide range of situations because it comes close to the natural speaking rhythms of English but raises it above the ordinary without sounding artificial
Rather than prose, blank verse may suggest a refinement of character.
Many of Shakespeare's most famous speeches are written in blank verse.

Blank Verse Example
ROMEO: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. from Romeo and Juliet

Prose, Rhymed Verse or Blank Verse?
Juliet: Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Blank Verse

Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sampson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.
Gregory: Do you quarrel, sir?
Abraham: Quarrel, sir? No, sir.

Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.

Rhymed Verse

NURSE: He was a merry man—took up the child.
“Yea,” quoth he, “Dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,
Wilt thou not, Jule?” and, by my holy dame,
The pretty wretch left crying and said “ay.”

Blank Verse

ROMEO:
Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear,
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

Rhymed Verse

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.

Rhymed Verse

ROMEO
Here's goodly gear.
BENVOLIO
A sail, a sail!
MERCUTIO
Two, two—a shirt and a smock.

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Shakespeare's Language

by Carmel High School; Carmel, Indiana

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