The language of Shakespeare
Divisions
Pronunciation
Colloquial language
Compounds
Grammar
Language change
Images
The following section is intended as an overview of some of the features of Shakespeare’s language as it is manifested in his plays. Care should be exercised when looking at these features not to automatically assume that they applied in all instances to English during the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare is a great manipulator of language, and in the sphere of vocabulary, he is quite innovative and idiosyncratic. In the realm of grammar his language is probably more indicative of contemporary usage.
Divisions of plays
From the late 1580s to 1594, Shakespeare experimented with different kinds of comedy in Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Taming of the Shrew. He began to explore English history in his first ‘tetralogy’ (a linked sequence of four plays) comprising Henry VI (in 3 parts) with Richard III. Titus Andronicus was his first tragedy.
From 1594 to 1599 Shakespeare continued to concentrate on comedies and histories. The comedies of this period — A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Much Ado About Nothing — are mainly in his best-loved ‘romantic’ vein, while his fuller command of histories appears in the second tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV (2 parts), and Henry V. This second period also includes the historical King John and a sentimental tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.
In the third period, from 1599 to 1608, Shakespeare abandoned romantic comedy (except for Twelfth Night) and English history, working instead on tragedies and on the disturbing ‘dark’ comedies or ‘problem plays’ Measure for Measure, All's Well that Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida. The tragedies usually regarded as the four greatest are King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Othello, although a second group of tragic ‘Roman plays’ includes the equally powerful Antony and Cleopatra, along with Julius Caesar and Coriolanus. To this period also belongs the tragedy Timon of Athens, possibly written with Middleton.
Shakespeare’s final phase, from 1608 to 1613, is dominated by a new style of comedy on themes of loss and reconciliation: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest are known as his late ‘romances’. Shakespeare seems to have interrupted his retirement in 1613 to collaborate with John Fletcher in Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Most of the fictional stories in Shakespeare’s plays were adapted from earlier plays and romances, while his historical dramas are derived from Plutarch’s biographies of Roman statesmen and from Holinshed’s rather slanted account of English history, the Chronicles (1577).
1) /r/ was pronounced post-vocalically (car, card)
2) wh was pronounced [ʍ] (which, witch)
3) /ʊ/ was not lowered (but, pull)
4) /a/ before /f, s, θ/ was still short (staff, pass, bath)
5) /a/ after /w/ was not retracted (swan, war)
6) mid-vowels were not diphthongised (play, boat)
7) diphthongs /ai, au/ still centralised (time [təɪm], house [həʊs])
8) /ɛ:, e:/ had not yet been raised to /i:/ (eat rhymes with great)
9) fewer instances of short /u:/ (book, cook, room)
Colloquial language in Shakespeare
Greeting formulae
How now, mine host!
How now, Pistol
Well met, Corporal Nym
Well met, Master Ford
Good morrow, good cousin Shallow
Blessings
God save, your grace!
God save you, Sir John!
Bless you, sir!
Bless thee, bully doctor!
Formulae following greeting
And how doth my good cousin Silence?
And hos doth my cousin, your bedfellow?
Parting fomulae
Will you go, Mistress Page?
Will you go, gentles?
Here, boys, here, here! Shall we wag?
Farewell, good wenches...
Have a care of thyself
Fare thee well: commend me to them both.
Summoning
What ho! gossip Ford! what ho!
Who’s within there, ho!
What! Davy, I say
Telling time
What’s o’clock?
... since the first cock (midnight)
An’t be not four by the day (in the morning)
Compounds in Shakespeare’s plays
These are very common and contribute considerably to the lexical flavour of Shakespeare’s language, both conforming to poetic usage of the time and at the same time indicating specifically his special kind of English. (note: PrP = present participle, PtP = past participle)
Noun + PrP + Noun = Object + Verb + Subject
heaven-kissing hill
temple-haunting martlet
oak-cleaving thunderbolts
summer-seeming lust
little-seeming substance
beauty-waning widow
sky-aspiring thoughts
summer-swelling flower
night-tripping fairy
lazy-pacing clouds
highest-peering hill
fearful-hanging rock
star-crossed lovers
cloud-capped towers
tempest-tossed body
high-grown field
big-swoln face
down-fallen birthdom
fen-sucked fogs
Grammar
Multiple negation in Shakespeare
thou hast spoken no word / all this while / ... Nor understood non neither (LLL, 1880-2)
love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport neyther (AYLI, 196-7)
I am not valiant neither (O, 3541)
Is’t not enough, young man, / That I did never, no nor never can (MND, 780-1)
Use of old nasal plural with ‘eye'
Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne! (A&C, 1466-7)
That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears (T&C, 3116)
Use of old genitive as possessive pronoun, i.e. ‘mine'
But no more deep will I endart mine eye (R&J, 444)
Use of ‘be’, and not ‘have’, as an auxiliary verb
When we born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools (Lear, 3010)
It is common to divide Shakespeare’s plays into two groups: the earlier plays 1591-1599 (20) and the later plays 1600-1613 (16); this refers to the 36 in the First Folio (1623). The following comments refer to changes in Shakespeare’s use of morphology between the early and the late plays.
1) Third person present singular endings:
(a) Earlier plays
239 eth endings
(b) Later plays
29 eth endings
2) to do and to have:
(a) Earlier plays
es endings with to have occur in 10 plays (30 occurrences)
(b) Later plays:
es endings with to have occur in all plays (319 occurrences)
Images of Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre•
Model of the Globe Theatre
Interior of present-day Globe Theatre
Drawings of the Globe Theatre
68 es endings
185 es endings
es endings with to do occur in 11 plays (23 occurrences)
es endings with to do occur in all plays (258 occurrences)
