Transcript The Language of Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Language
Professor Palella
The Renaissance (14th-15/16th century)
“Rebirth” of classical culture: Ancient Greece and
Rome, Greek and Latin, early religious figures
Humanism: belief in the Ideal self
Great Chain of Being: hierarchical system, system of
order, everyone has their station, King by divine right
Earth is the center of the universe
Protestants and Catholics at odds
Language
Flexible syntax
Language separations
Elevated language
Metaphors
Puns
Vocabulary
Poetry
Language~Syntax
Flexible syntax: Modern English uses a more rigid syntax than in
Shakespeare's day: subject--verb--object.
Active voice: The subject performs the action of the verb.
Passive voice: In a sentence using passive voice, the subject is acted
upon; he or she receives the action expressed by the verb.
Think of Yoda when reading some of Shakespeare's lines.
Language~Syntax
Examples from Shakespeare:
“Goes he”
“That can I”
“Him I hit”
“My noble partner/You greet with present grace and great
prediction”(Macbeth 1.3.57-58)
“Sense sure you have,/ Else could you not have motion" (Hamlet 3.4.712).
Language~Separations
Shakespeare often uses sentence structures that depend on
the separation of words that would normally appear
together.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen
Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we (as ‘twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole)
Taken to wife . . . Hamlet (1.2.8-14)
Practice
Our last king,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands . . .
(Hamlet 1.1.80-88).
Language~Separations
Our last king,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands . . .
Archaic Language
Thou/ Thee/ Hath/ Doth
Thou, thee and thy : You, you, and your, respectively.
These words dropped out of our language a couple centuries ago. The
verb that is used with “thou” changed as well.
Doth: do/does
Language~Metaphors
Metaphors: Shakespeare’s plays are dense with powerful metaphors
that are not clichés (although some of them, such as "the green-eyed
monster," have become clichés).
it’s Greek to me
played fast and loose
slept not one wink
seen better days
knit your brows
Language~Puns
Pun: a play upon a word or the sound of a word, often used for
emphasis or to suggest multiple word meanings.
"No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but 'tis
enough, 'twill serve: ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a
grave man." Romeo and Juliet (Act iii, S.1)
Language~Insults
Notice character reactions- helps you pinpoint negative or
positive words that are unknown to you.
Shakespare insults: https://twitter.com/WilliamHatesYou
Vocabulary
Shakespeare added many words to the English language that would
have been new to his original early modern audience.
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pedant
•
arouse
•
besmirch
•
bet
•
drug
•
dwindle
•
hoodwink
•
hurry
•
puke
•
rant
•
swagger
Vocabulary
He added suffixes to words:
"the be-all or end-all
“countless”
“worthless”
He added prefixes to words:
“uneducated”
“undress”
Vocabulary
We still add suffixes to words to make new meanings:
• cheesetastic
• heatpocalypse
• mansplaining
• bromance
We also add prefixes to words:
• declutter
• up-tick
Vocabulary
He made compound words of shorter words.
"beef-witted“
"night-tripping"
“hot-blooded”
“lackluster”
We also still do this:
•
carnapping
•
crowdfunding
Vocabulary
He uses words that no longer exist in the English we speak.
Anon: soon
Fain: gladly
He uses words that are in our language, but now have a different
meaning to us.
Today
Awful: bad
Then
Aw(e)ful: awe inspiring
Vocabulary
He took words and gave them new meaning (puke).
We also do this:
Grungy –envious (1920s)
Grungy –sloppy, shabby (1965)
Grungy –music and fashion style developed from Seattle (1990)
Poetry
Shakespeare was a poet
Used stress~emphasis on certain syllables
telephone
Used these stresses to create poetic meter (rhythm)
A foot is a distinct metrical unit with a certain number
of stressed and unstressed syllables
A line of verse is usually made up of several feet
Poetry
Trochee: a two syllable foot, stressed and then unstressed
“Double, double, toil and trouble/ fire burn and cauldron
bubble” (Macbeth 4.1.10-11).
Poetry
Iamb: two syllable foot, unstressed and then stressed
“To be or not to be” (Hamlet 3.1.58)
Iambic Petameter: five feet of iambs
“To be or not to be that is the question (Hamlet 3.1.58)
Word endings and punctuation do not matter.
Poetry
In general, Elizabethan stage actors had about two weeks to
rehearse and then put on each new play. Iambic
pentameter and blank verse were helpful to memorization.
•
Sound patterns close to natural human speech.
•
A line is basically the length of one breath.
•
The sound mimics the heartbeat.