William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (10 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

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BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
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Despite their limitations, the reconstruction of the Early Modern English sound system indicates that pronunciation norms have changed greatly in the past four hundred years. Modern performances and readings, though, almost always introduce present-day sounds without comment, allowing only for cases where an earlier pronunciation is needed to satisfy the needs of the metre or to convey the effect of a pun. So the situation with speaking is very similar to that with writing: most modern readers and playgoers remain unaware of the extent of the difference. And this is why, when people discuss the distinctive language of Shakespeare, the main topics are usually restricted to the three areas of language that are present in both: grammar, vocabulary, and discourse conventions. In each case, the number of differences between Early Modern English and Modern English is relatively small, but several of the points of difference turn up very frequently - which is the chief reason that people think Shakespeare’s language is more different from Modern English than in fact it is.
Grammar
 
The grammatical rules of the language have little changed during the past four centuries: some 90 per cent of the word orders and word formations used by Shakespeare are still in use today. A grammatical parsing of the prose extract from
Julius
Caesar above would bring to light nearly two hundred points of sentence, clause, phrase, and word structure, but there is only one construction which is noticeably different from Modern English: ‘Had you rather Caesar were living’. Today we would have to say something like: ‘Would you rather have Caesar living’. A less significant difference, in that passage, is the use of the subjunctive (as in
If there
be
any in this assembly
), which is unusual in British (though not American) English today. But apart from this, and allowing for the rather formal rhetorical style, the other grammatical usages in the extract are the same as those we would use now.
There is nonetheless a widespread impression that Shakespeare’s grammar is very different from what we find today. The impression arises for two reasons: because of the way grammar operates within discourse, and because of the influence of metrical constraints.
GRAMMAR IN DISCOURSE
 
Grammar is different from vocabulary in the way it appears in connected speech or writing. An individual word may not be present in a particular speech - or even in a whole scene - but core grammatical features are repeatedly used. Each page of this essay will provide many examples of the definite article, forms of the verb
to be
, plural endings, conjunctions such as
and,
and other essential features of sentence construction. In the same way, Shakespearian grammar repeatedly uses several Early Modern English features, such as older pronouns (
thou, ye
), inflectional endings (
-est, -eth
), and contracted forms (
is’t, on’t
). It is the frequency of use of such forms which can give a grammatical colouring to a speech - often, out of all proportion to their linguistic significance, as in this extract from
Hamlet
(5.1.271-5):
HAMLET (
to Laertes
) Swounds, show me what
thou’lt do.
Woot weep, woot fight, woot fast, woot tear thyself,
Woot drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?
I’ll do’t. Dost thou come here to whine,
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
 
Woot,
often edited as woo’t, is a colloquial form of wilt or
wouldst thou
. It is a rare literary usage, but here its repetition, along with the other contracted forms and the use of
thou
, dominates the impression we have of the grammar, and gives an alien appearance to a speech which in all other respects is grammatically identical with Modern English:
Show me what you will do.
Will you weep, will you fight, will you fast, will you
tear yourself,
Will you drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?
I’ll do it. Do you come here to whine,
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
 
Several other distinctive features of Early Modern English grammar likewise present little difficulty to the modern reader. An example is the way in which a sequence of adjectives can appear both before and after the noun they modify, as in the Nurse’s description of Romeo (
Romeo and Juliet
, 2.4.55-6): ‘an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome’ [= an honest, courteous, kind, and handsome gentleman]. Other transparent word-order variations include the reversal of adjective and possessive pronoun in
good my lord
, or the use of the double comparative in such phrases as
more mightier
and
most poorest
. Many individual words also have a different grammatical usage, compared with today, such as like (‘likely’) and
something
(‘somewhat’):
Very like, very like.
(
Hamlet
, 1.2.325)
 
 
I prattle | Something too wildly.
 
(
Tempest
, 3.1.57-8)
 
But here too the meaning is sufficiently close to modern idiom that they do not present a difficulty.
There are just a few types of construction where the usage is so far removed from anything we have in Modern English that, without special study, we are likely to miss the meaning of the sentence altogether. An example is the so-called ‘ethical dative’. Early Modern English allowed a personal pronoun after a verb to express such notions as ‘to’, ‘for’, ‘by’, ‘with’ or ‘from’ (notions which traditional grammars would subsume under the headings of the
dative
and
ablative
cases). The usage can be seen in such sentences as:
But hear me this (
Twelfth Night
, 5.1.118) [= But hear this from me]
John lays you plots (
King John
, 3.4.146) [= John lays plots for you to fall into]
 
It is an unfamiliar construction, to modern eyes and ears, and it can confuse - as a Shakespearian character himself evidences. In
The Taming of the Shrew
, Petruccio and Grumio arrive at Hortensio’s house (1.2.8-10):
PETRUCCIO Villain, I say, knock me here soundly.
GRUMIO Knock you here, sir? Why, sir, what am I, sir, that I should knock you here, sir?
 
Petruccio means ‘Knock on the door for me’, but Grumio interprets it to mean (as it would in Modern English) ‘hit me’. If we do not recognize the ethical dative in Petruccio’s sentence in the first place, we will miss the point of the joke entirely. But the fact that Grumio is confused suggests that the usage was probably already dying out in Shakespeare’s time.
GRAMMAR AND METRE
 
Most of the really unfamiliar deviations from Modern English grammatical norms which we encounter in Shakespeare arise in his verse, where he bends the construction to suit the demands of the metre. The approach to blank verse most favoured in Early Modern English took as its norm a line of five metrical units, or feet (a
pentameter
), with each foot in its most regular version represented by a two-syllable weak + strong (
iambic
) sequence, and the whole line ending in a natural pause and containing no internal break. Accordingly, the least amount of grammatical ‘bending’ takes place when a line coincides with the major unit of grammar, the sentence. This is a characteristic of much of Shakespeare’s early writing, as in this example from Queen Margaret:
Be woe for me, more wretched than he is.
What, dost thou turn away and hide thy face?
I am no loathsome leper - look on me!
What, art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?
Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn queen.
(
The First Part of the Contention
(
2 Henry VI
), 3.2.73)
 
 
‘Sentence per line’ is the simplest kind of relationship between metre and grammar - and ‘clause per line’ is not very different. Such grammatically regular lines are often seen in the Sonnets, where they convey a measured rhythmical pace:
Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
And my sick muse doth give another place.
(Sonnet 79)
 
 
The pace of reading increases when the line-breaks coincide with a major point of grammatical junction within a clause, such as between a subject and verb, verb and object, or noun and relative clause. In this next example (
Henry V
, 4.3.64-5), because the first line contains only the clause subject, there is a dynamic tension at the end which propels us onwards to reach the verb:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.
 
We can feel this tension if we stop our reading at the end of the first line. A subject alone is like an unresolved chord, calling out for the rest of the clause to provide semantic coherence.
Even when a sentence stretches over several lines, the relationship between metre and grammar can be regular, as we can see in this speech from the deposed king in
Richard II
(5.5.1-5):
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world;
And for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it.
 
The line-endings are all major points of grammatical junction, so that each line makes a separate semantic point. By keeping the lines coherent, in this way, the meaning proceeds in a series of smooth, regular steps - very appropriate for a speech whose unique properties have been repeatedly praised: ‘No other speech in Shakespeare much resembles this one’ for its ‘quietly meditative’ tone (Frank Kermode,
Shakespeare’s Language
, p. 45). The effect would be totally lost if the lines did not coincide with these major units of grammar, as in this rewriting:
Today I have been studying how I may
Compare this prison where I live unto
The world . . .
 
Such lines no longer have a semantic coherence. Grammatical structures are begun but left unfinished: the auxiliary verb
may
is split off from its main verb
compare
; the preposition
unto
is split off from its noun phrase the
world
. That is not the metrical syntax of quiet meditation. On the other hand, it is precisely this sort of disruption which is needed when portraying a confused mind - in this case, Cloten’s (
Cymbeline,
2.3.64-73):
I know her women are about her; what
If I do line one of their hands? ‘Tis gold
Which buys admittance—oft it doth—yea, and
makes
Diana’s rangers false themselves, yield up
Their deer to th’ stand o’th’ stealer; and ‘tis gold
Which makes the true man killed and saves the thief,
Nay, sometime hangs both thief and true man. What
Can it not do and undo? I will make
One of her women lawyer to me, for
I yet not understand the case myself.
 
Here several lines break in unexpected places (an effect partly captured by the traditional notion of caesura) - in the middle of a two-part conjunction (
what
|
If
), after an interrogative word (
what
), and between a conjunction and its clause (
for
|
I
) - and clauses begin at the end of lines instead of at the beginning. Cloten comments: ‘I yet not understand the case myself.’ The disruption between metre and grammar suggests as much.
The more the metre forces grammatical deviations within a line, the more difficult the line will be to understand. In this next example (
Richard II,
1.1.123), three unexpected things happen at once: the direct object is placed at the front, the indirect object comes before the verb, and an adjective is coordinated after the noun. The glossed version is much clearer, but it is unmetrical: ‘Free speech and fearless I to thee allow’ [= I allow to thee free and fearless speech]. Sometimes the change in word order can catch us off-guard, as in this example from
Contention
(5.3.52-55), spoken by Young Clifford after seeing his dead father, and vowing revenge. Nothing, he says, will escape his wrath:
Tears virginal
Shall be to me even as the dew to fire,
And beauty that the tyrant oft reclaims
Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.
 
A casual reading of the third line would suggest that ‘a tyrant often reclaims [i.e. tames, subdues] beauty’ - but this makes no sense. Rather, the meaning is ‘beauty, that often tames the tyrant, will act as fuel to my wrath’.
Tyrant
is not the grammatical subject of reclaims, but its object. Only by paying careful attention to the meaning can we work this out, and for this we need to think of the speech as a whole, and see it in its discourse context. Metre is often thought of simply as a phonetic phenomenon - an aesthetic sound effect, either heard directly or imagined when reading. In fact it is much more. Metrical choices always have grammatical, semantic, or pragmatic - as well as dramatic - consequences.

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