William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition by William Shakespeare Page B
Book: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition by William Shakespeare
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Authors: William Shakespeare
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seem familiar but are not (as between French and English, where demander means ‘ask’, and demand is translated by requérir ) . False friends in Shakespeare include naughty (‘wicked’), heavy (‘sorrowful’), humorous (‘moody’), sad (‘serious’), ecstasy (‘madness’), owe (‘own’), merely (‘totally’), and envious (‘malicious’). In such cases, we need to pay careful attention to the context, which we must always allow to overrule the intrusion of the irrelevant modern meaning. We can see this operating, for example, in The Tragedy of King Lear (5.1.5-7):
REGAN
Our sister’s man is certainly miscarried.
EDMOND
‘Tis to be doubted, madam.
REGAN
Now, sweet lord, You know the goodness I intend upon you.
If we were to read in the modern meaning of doubt , it would suggest that Edmond is disagreeing with Regan - but as the context suggests this is not the case, we need a different meaning of doubt - ‘fear’.
Finally, as with grammar, we must be prepared to see the demands of metre altering word forms. The choice between vantage and advantage, scape and escape , shrew and beshrew and many other such alternatives can be solely due to the location of the word in the line. Sometimes we can even see the alternative forms juxtaposed, as when both oft and often appear in Julius Caesar (3.1.115-19):
BRUTUS
How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport,
That now on Pompey’s basis lies along,
No worthier than the dust!
CASSIUS
So oft as that shall be,
So often shall the knot of us be called
The men that gave their country liberty.
Names can be altered too. At one point in Pericles, narrator Gower refers to Pericles’ counsellor with his full name:
In Helicanus may you well descry
A figure of truth.
(22.114-15)
At another, he shortens it:
Good Helicane that stayed at home,
Not to eat honey like a drone.
(5.17-18)
Such metrically induced alternations rarely have any semantic or pragmatic consequence.
The examples in this essay show that in order to develop our understanding of Shakespeare’s use of language we need to work through a three-stage process:
• we first notice a linguistic feature - something which strikes us as particularly interesting, effective, unusual, or problematic (often because it differs from what we would expect in Modern English);
• we then have to describe the feature, in order to talk about it and to classify it as a feature of a particular type; the more precisely we are able to do this, by developing an awarenesss of phonetic, grammatical, and other terminology, the more we will be able to reach clear and statable conclusions;
• we have to explain why the feature is there.
It is the last stage which is the most important, and which is still surprisingly neglected. It is never enough, as has often happened in approaches to Shakespeare’s language, simply to identify and describe an interesting feature - such as a particular metrical pattern, piece of alliteration, word order, or literary allusion - and proceed no further. We must also try to explain its role - its meaning and effect - in the context in which it appears, and that is why this essay has paid so much attention to seeing his language within a semantic and pragmatic perspective.
It is, of course, by no means the whole story. Language in turn must be placed within a wider literary, dramatic, historical, psychological, and social frame of reference. We must also expect there to be many occasions when meaning and effect cannot be precisely determined. There will always be a range of interpretive possibilities in the language that offer the individual reader, actor, director, or playgoer a personal choice. But the linguistic stage in our study of Shakespeare should never be minimized or neglected, for it is an essential step in increasing our insight into his dramatic and poetic artistry.
CONTEMPORARY ALLUSIONS TO SHAKESPEARE
MANY contemporary documents, some
REGAN
Our sister’s man is certainly miscarried.
EDMOND
‘Tis to be doubted, madam.
REGAN
Now, sweet lord, You know the goodness I intend upon you.
If we were to read in the modern meaning of doubt , it would suggest that Edmond is disagreeing with Regan - but as the context suggests this is not the case, we need a different meaning of doubt - ‘fear’.
Finally, as with grammar, we must be prepared to see the demands of metre altering word forms. The choice between vantage and advantage, scape and escape , shrew and beshrew and many other such alternatives can be solely due to the location of the word in the line. Sometimes we can even see the alternative forms juxtaposed, as when both oft and often appear in Julius Caesar (3.1.115-19):
BRUTUS
How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport,
That now on Pompey’s basis lies along,
No worthier than the dust!
CASSIUS
So oft as that shall be,
So often shall the knot of us be called
The men that gave their country liberty.
Names can be altered too. At one point in Pericles, narrator Gower refers to Pericles’ counsellor with his full name:
In Helicanus may you well descry
A figure of truth.
(22.114-15)
At another, he shortens it:
Good Helicane that stayed at home,
Not to eat honey like a drone.
(5.17-18)
Such metrically induced alternations rarely have any semantic or pragmatic consequence.
The examples in this essay show that in order to develop our understanding of Shakespeare’s use of language we need to work through a three-stage process:
• we first notice a linguistic feature - something which strikes us as particularly interesting, effective, unusual, or problematic (often because it differs from what we would expect in Modern English);
• we then have to describe the feature, in order to talk about it and to classify it as a feature of a particular type; the more precisely we are able to do this, by developing an awarenesss of phonetic, grammatical, and other terminology, the more we will be able to reach clear and statable conclusions;
• we have to explain why the feature is there.
It is the last stage which is the most important, and which is still surprisingly neglected. It is never enough, as has often happened in approaches to Shakespeare’s language, simply to identify and describe an interesting feature - such as a particular metrical pattern, piece of alliteration, word order, or literary allusion - and proceed no further. We must also try to explain its role - its meaning and effect - in the context in which it appears, and that is why this essay has paid so much attention to seeing his language within a semantic and pragmatic perspective.
It is, of course, by no means the whole story. Language in turn must be placed within a wider literary, dramatic, historical, psychological, and social frame of reference. We must also expect there to be many occasions when meaning and effect cannot be precisely determined. There will always be a range of interpretive possibilities in the language that offer the individual reader, actor, director, or playgoer a personal choice. But the linguistic stage in our study of Shakespeare should never be minimized or neglected, for it is an essential step in increasing our insight into his dramatic and poetic artistry.
CONTEMPORARY ALLUSIONS TO SHAKESPEARE
MANY contemporary documents, some
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