Shakespeare's Language

 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLISH: AN EVER CONFUSING TALE

Hello!! Welcome to yet another Shakespeare Blog. It has been over 400 years since Shakespeare, the legendary playwright who shaped literature into what it is today existed. Over the years English has changed. The way it is written, the way it is spoken. The way ideas are communicated as well. Now we hear hundreds of children complaining about not understanding a word when they read Shakespeare's plays. I mean it's not really their fault either because we have come a long way from using Thou, Thee and Thine so here i will be explaining what his English sounded like and why he chose to write in Iambic pentameter, a form of writing he is widely known for.

First, let's talk about what Shakespeare sounded like. He definitely didn't sound like a wise old man neither did he sound like a British speaker. So what did he really sound like?

William Shakespeare played a major role in the transformation of the English language today. Many words and phrases were first written down in his plays. 

Some examples could include 'heart of gold' from Henry V, 'Wild-Goose chase' from Romeo and Juliet, 'As good luck would have it' from the Merry Wives of Windsor. These are just a handful of the many phrases that the old bard once coined and are still used in our day-to-day english. The early modern English language was less than 100 years old in 1590 when Shakespeare was writing. He contributed 1,700 words to the English language because he was the first author to write them down. What i think happened was that he thought "oh well, i cant find the perfect word to describe this emotion so i am just going to invent them" and so he did. 

As well as inventing completely new words, he used existing words in inventive ways, for example he was the first person to use 'friend' as a verb and from 'gloom' he invented the word 'gloomy' (Titus Andronicus). Yes, we still use the word gloomy. Of course, since there was no recording technology in Shakespeare’s time, we can never really know what the bard and his contemporaries sounded like, but historians have made assumptions. Out of what is known, he very likely sounded somewhat more like a speaker of mid-Atlantic American English, particularly in areas where Irish settlement was prominent at the time. So, how do we find out what Shakespeare’s players might have sounded on the stage of the Globe Theatre? One clue is the words that he rhymed, as in these lines from one of his sonnets:

If this be error and upon me proved
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Here, it can easily be assumed that "proved" and "loved" are meant to rhyme. Shakespeare lived at the time when what linguists call the Great Vowel Shift, an aspect of the transition from Middle English to Modern English, was still under way, so that the length of the vowels in his words was distinctly different from our own. It is also believed that the English of the time was rhotic—that is, that the “r” sound was prominent. Once we get to Shakespeare and his “Original Pronunciation,” we can see how rhymes that don’t scan for us sounded just right to Elizabethan ears. These lost rhymes provide a significant clue for linguists who reconstruct the original pronunciation as does meter and the survival of older pronunciations in certain dialects.

Moving on to the next question. Shakespeare is incredibly famous for writing a lot in iambic pentameter. But why did he choose to write in this specific style of having ten beats and 5 stressed syllables per line?

First of all, what is the Iambic Pentameter? From the Oxford Dictionary definition, it is a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable, for example "Two households, both alike in dignity." from Romeo and Juliet. Iambic pentameter is a verse rhythm often used in Shakespeare's writing. It has 10 syllables per line. Syllables alternate between unstressed and stressed beats, creating this pattern: “de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM.” This definition itself sounds pretty confusing, doesn't it? Then why did the bard choose to write in Iambic Pentameter. Maybe he just liked challenged, i mean you never know. 

Iambic pentameter seems to fit a sweet spot in English of having enough structure to be memorable and enjoyable, without feeling sing-songy. Different languages settled on different forms to meet the common sounds available in those languages.

Now, It is said by scholars that Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter so that it would be easier for the actors to memorize, since it has a sing-songy tone to it. He also believed it would be easier for the audience to understand during this time, since he often used more intellectual language and some who attended the plays were not familiar with many words. Iambic pentameter was well established in poetry before Shakespeare, and he mostly enjoyed writing poetry, so to use iambic pentameter came a bit more naturally as well.

As stated before, there is no proof to any of the above, but when you look at his writing, you can easily spot the rhyme- schemes. We can say that one of the things Shakespeare is known for is his language and his choice of words and the phrases that he coined and now we know why.

Thankyou for reading. Feel free to drop any questions or views down below or just send me a mail :)

-Misri

Contact: shahmisri10@gmail.com