Transcript english language – 2° year a history of the

ENGLISH LANGUAGE – 2° YEAR
THE LANGUAGE OF SHAKESPEARE
Annalisa Federici, Ph.D.
D. Crystal, “Think on My Words”:
Exploring Shakespeare’s Language, CUP
2012 (chapters 7-8).
GRAMMAR: SIMILARITIES AND
DIFFERENCES
When studying Shakespeare’s grammar it is interesting to focus
on:
• Forms or constructions used by him that we still use today
• Forms or contructions used by him that we no longer use
today
• Forms or constructions we use today which are not used by
him at all.
We should then avoid reading into Shakespeare the grammatical
norms from a later period, i.e. such prescriptions introduced
by eighteenth-century grammarians and their successors as:
GRAMMAR: SIMILARITIES AND
DIFFERENCES
• Subject-object concord in the present tense:
My old bones akes (Temp. 3.3.2)
What cares these roarers for the name of King?
(Temp. 1.1.16)
The Duke is comming from the Temple, and
there is two or three Lords & Ladies more
married (MND. 4.2.16)
GRAMMAR: SIMILARITIES AND
DIFFERENCES
• Double Negatives: after centuries of using
multiple negative words to express increasing
intensity of negation, the practice was banned
from Standard English. In Shakespeare the rule is
not fixed: the more negatives in the clause, the
more emphatic the negative meaning.
I sawe Marke Antony offer him a Crowne, yet ’twas
not a Crowne neyther, ’twas one of these
Coronets (JC. 1.2.234)
Nor understood none neither sir (LLL. 5.1.144)
GRAMMAR: NOUNS
• Nouns generally provide an interesting
example of the similarities (singular vs.
regular/irregular plurals, proper vs. common,
singular vs. plural possessive case) and
differences
(no
apostrophe
marking
possession, capitalisation used for some
common nouns) between grammatical usage
today and in Shakespeare’s time.
• Some notable differences are:
GRAMMAR: NOUNS
• Nouns which are uncountable today but countable in
Shakespeare’s time:
I haue assayl’d her with Musickes (Cym. 2.3.38)
Their discipline, / (Now wing-led with their courages)
(Cym. 2.4.24)
In seeking tales and informations / Against this man
(HVIII. 5.3.110)
• Similarly, we find kindreds, behalfs, moneys, revenges.
• Two forms of a plural coexist:
You shew’d your teethes like Apes (JC. 5.1.41)
Defiance Traitors, hurle we in your teeth. (JC. 5.1.64)
GRAMMAR: ADJECTIVES
• The system according to which we express a higher/lower
degree of an adjective by means of inflected or periphrastic
forms had already been established by Shakespeare’s time,
but it had not finished developing.
• Thus we can find: more great, more long, more near.
• Conversely, we can find: honester/honestest, oftener,
perfectest.
• Other irregular forms (double comparatives and superlatives
for a more emphatic effect):
Our worser thoughts (Ant. 1.2.63)
A more larger List of Sceptres (Ant. 3.6.76)
This was the most unkindest cut of all (JC. 3.2.184)
GRAMMAR: ADJECTIVES
• Sometimes the choice depends on the
constraints of metre. Cf. As You Like It 3.5.51:
You are a tousand times a properer man
Then she a woman. ’Tis such fooles as you
That makes the world full of ill-fauourd children:
’Tis not her glasse, but you that flatters her,
And out of you she sees her selfe more proper
Then any of her lineaments can show her
GRAMMAR: ADJECTIVES
• Different word order: sequence of adjectives
which may appear both before and after the
noun they modify:
Her Mother is the Lady of the house,
And a good Lady, and wise, and Vertuous, (Rom.
1.5.113)
• Reversal of word order in friendly greetings,
e.g. “good my lord”, “good my friend”.
GRAMMAR: VERBS
• The most distinctive features of Shakespeare’s verb usage relate to
the way these forms are used to express time (tenses).
• As for the present, a noticeable difference is the presence of the
two Middle English verb endings which were still used in the Early
Modern period: -est for the second person singular (thou) and -th/eth for the third person singular. The latter was gradually replaced
by -s (alternation is due to metrical constraints: the -eth ending
gives an extra syllable).
The Bird of Dawning singeth all night long (Ham. 1.1.161)
It is the Larke that sings so out of tune, (Rom. 3.5.27)
• The forms of the verb to be also included four older items: art,
beest, wert, wast.
ALL THESE FORMS WERE IN FREE VARIATION AT THAT TIME.
GRAMMAR: VERBS
• As for the past tense, it is interesting to note that:
 Some verbs which are irregular in Shakespeare’s
time have become regular today, e.g. durst
(dared), holp (helped), ought (owed).
 Some verbs which are regular in Shakespeare’s
time have become irregular today, e.g. digged
(dug), shaked (shook), builded (built).
 Some verbs which are irregular in Shakespeare’s
time stay irregular, but assume different forms,
e.g. brake (broke), drave (drove), spake (spoke),
writ (wrote).
GRAMMAR: PRONOUNS
• Many different forms for the second person singular
pronoun: thou, thee, you, ye.
• The forms thou/you are important markers of social
difference. In OE, the former was singular and the latter
was plural, but then you came to be used as a polite form
of the singular (probably because of French tu vs. vous).
As a result, you was regularly used by inferiors to
superiors, and thou in return. Thou also became common
for intimacy, and when the lower classes talked to each
other.
• In the plays, the way in which characters switch from one
pronoun to the other may therefore signal changes in
attitudes and relationships.
GRAMMAR: PRONOUNS
• The old grammatical distinction between ye (as subject)
and you (as object) had long gone by Shakespeare’s time:
the dominant form was you, yet sometimes they were
interchangeable.
If it might please you, to enforce no further
The griefes betweene ye: to forget them quite,
Were to remember: that the present neede,
Speakes to attone you. (Ant. 3.3.103)
• As you was definitely predominant, we could attribute the
use of ye not to metrical factors (they are both
monosyllabic), but to stylistic factors (ye was not a poetic
form) and grammatical factors (it is common in vocatives).
WORD ORDER
• Frequent reversal of order between subject and object:
Sometime she driueth ore a Souldiers necke,
& then dreames he of cutting Forraine throats (Rom.
1.4.70)
• More complex instances of change in word order:
He is our subiect so art thou,
Free speech, and fearelesse, I to thee allow. (RII. 1.1.123)
[I allow to thee free and fearless speech]: direct object
placed at the front, indirect object before the verb,
adjective coordinated after the noun (metrical
regularity at the expense of syntax).
VOCABULARY
• Cases of conversion or functional shift (a word
belonging to one part of speech is used as a different
part of speech), such as a common noun/adjective
used as a verb, a verb/noun used as an adjective:
Lord Angelo Dukes it well in his absence (MM. 3.2.90)
Yet what man / Thirds his owne worth (TNK. 1.2.96)
Nor dignifies an impaire thought with breath (Tro. 4.5.
103)
Kingdom’d Achilles in commotion rages (Tro. 2.3.173)
VOCABULARY
• Alteration of words (adding of syllables) due to
metrical constraints:
I can call Spirits from the vastie Deepe (1H IV.
3.1.50)
• Use of alternative forms for the same word, e.g.
vantage/advantage, scape/escape, oft/often:
So oft as that shall be,
So often shall the knot of vs be call’d,
The Men that gaue their Country liberty (JC.
3.1.115)
VOCABULARY
• False friends: heavy (“sorrowful”), humorous
(“moody”), sad (“serious”), ecstasy (“madness”),
owe (“own”), merely (“totally”), envious
(“malicious”).
• Coinages: unaneled (“without having received the
last sacraments”), disappointed (“unfurnished,
unprepared”),
accessible,
domineering,
indistinguishable, shudder (as a noun), angel (in
the sense of “lovely being”, “resembling an
angel”).
Vnhouzzled, disappointed, vnnaneld (Ham. 1.5.77)
VOCABULARY
• Attribution of a new meaning to words which already existed:
e.g. fledge was used as an adjective in the Middle Ages,
describing the state of birds whose feathers were fully
developed; in the second half of the sixteenth century it
began to be used as a verb meaning the acquiring of feathers.
Shakespeare first attributed it to men:
whose [Prince Hal’s] Chin is not yet fledg’d (2H IV. 1.2.20)
we poore vnfledg’d,
Haue neuer wing’d from view o’th’ nest (Cym. 3.3.27)
• Neologisms are frequently repeated or used in clusters.
• Multiple invention: Shakespeare created both new words and
new senses from existing words.
VOCABULARY
• “Creative” use of the prefix un- to produce
adjectives (e.g. uncomfortable, uncompassionate,
unearthly, uneducated), adverbs (e.g. unaware,
unheedfully), nouns (e.g. undeserver), or added
to already-existing verbs (e.g. unshout, unspeak,
uncurse, unswear, undeaf):
Againe vncurse their Soules (RII. 3.2.137)
My deaths sad tale, may yet vndeafe his eare (RII.
2.1.16)
SPELLING
Most common differences in spelling:
• V and U used as both a vowel (e.g. catalogve, volume)
and a consonant (e.g. volume, seuerall)
• Presence of a final e (e.g. againe, appeare, assaile)
• Use of an apostrophe to replace a letter e (e.g.
appear’d, arm’d)
• Use of ie instead of y at the end of a word (e.g.
fantasie, busie)
• Doubling of consonants, especially l (e.g. royall, sonne)