Introduction to Shakespeare’s Language

Shakespeare’s Time

Elizabethan England was in cultural upheaval.

Monarchy ruled and the pastoral people were the majority.

Service industries popped more with the grown of the merchant class.

Divisions by class, faith, urban/rural, and the cultural unknown.

Background

Performed in 1603, Twelfth Night is a comedy.

Most famously, his plays were performed at The Globe Theater with an all male cast.

Set was very minimal.

Good seats were high and in the back and the common seats was the standing room only area right in front of the stage.

Based on the twelfth night after Christmas, a time for changing social order and drinking. Ties into the confusing and inverted norms in the plot.

Shakespearean Genres

What is the difference between a comedy and a tragedy?

The biggest difference is the ending. Comedies usually have resolutions and tragedies have devastation. Also, comedies usually end happily and usually a lot of people die in the tragedies.

What is a Shakesperian history?

Shakespearean Language

Look out for:

Inverted sentence order and periodic sentences.

Words that mean something different in Shakespeare’s time.

Appositives splitting up the main subject and verb.

Pronunciation!

How to read Shakespeare

Footnotes!

Give you better understanding of allusions.

Give word and phrase meanings.

Give definitions for words we know that had different meanings then.

How to read Shakespeare

If the sentence looks funny, it is!

Unusual word sequence is normal. Pick out the subject and verb and object and rearrange it. What is the emphasis placed on in this sequence and rhythm? Especially look for the verb being before the subject.

Look for appositives that are harder to catch when they separate a subject and verb.

Periodic sentences have the main information at the end.

Inverted Order

“That instant was I turned into a hart” (1.1.22)

Periodic Sentence

“If I do not usurp myself, I am.” (1.5.184)

Appositives

o “when liver, brain, and heart,/These sovereign thrones, are all supplied and filled/Her sweet perfections with one self king!” (1.2. 39-41)