Shakespeare’s Dramatic Language

Rhetoric, Wordplay, Forms

Shakespeare’s Language

Source of pleasure

or

Obstacle to appreciation?

Qualities of Shakespeare’s verseDensity and richnessCharacters express thoughts through

abundant, powerful images and metaphorsFigurative language: pleases the mind and

senses - expresses one idea in terms of anotherConnotative imagery: highly suggestive

network of pictures and ideas resonating with other images, ideas, themes in play

Macbeth

There’s husbandry in heaven,

Their candles are all out. Take thee that too. [Gives him his belt and dagger.]

A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,

And yet I would not sleep. (2.1.4-7)

A readingBanquo speaks to his son FleanceHeaven = an economical household in which all

sources of light are extinguishedPowerful force (like lead) summons Banquo to

sleep - but he cannotLines have resonance: husbandry, candles,

summons, leadDagger appears in next few lines and later in the

play

Foreshadowing

Banquo foreshadows the hallucinated dagger that appears in Macbeth’s soliloquy

Also the actual dagger Macbeth carries away from the murder

End of scene - ringing bell summons Macbeth to commit the murder

Lead - heaviness, foreboding the shadows the early scenes

Lady Macbeth

Goes madFears the darkCarries a candleDarkness - moral darkness -evil - principal

theme of the plays

Early Modern English

Technical difficulties for modern readers verbs with inflected endings

hath, doth, goeth forms were in transition from medieval to

modern pronoun problem - thee, thou, thy, thine familiar vs.. formal - thou and you

• Katherine and Petruchio

Vocabulary

Another stumbling block for modern readersLinguistic exuberance of the age

Lyle’s Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit

Shakespeare’s vocabulary: 29,000 words (twice that of the average Am.college student)

Many of his words have since dropped/changed from common usage: bisson (blind), proper (handsome), cousin (kinsman), silly (innocent)

Sentences

Syntax - arrangement of words in sentenceInfluence of Latin grammarMove toward “simplicity” - Bacon > OrwellShakespeare created stage pictures out of

poetry - issues of verse and prosody iambic pentameter rhythm, emphasis characterization

Let’s look at Hamlet

The Ghost speaks:Sleeping within my orchard,

My custom always of the afternoon,

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,

With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,

And in the porches of my ears did pour

The leprous distillment. (1.5.59-64)

Dangling modifier - or suspension?

Grammatically, the subject should be “I” but is in fact “thy uncle”

Error embodies initial problem: Claudius replace Old Hamlet

Suspensions heighten suspense - remember, young Hamlet is listening intently

Virtually every scene is enriched by such manipulations of syntax

Rhetoric

Renaissance playwrights were committed to eloquence and grounded in study of rhetoric Richard Reynolds, humanist educator (1563)

But to whom nature hath given such an ability, and absolute excellency, as that they can both copiously dilate any matter or sentence, by pleasantness or sweetness of their witty and ingenious oration to draw unto them the hearts of a multitude, to pluck down and extirpate affections and perturbations of people, to move pity and compassion, to speak before princes and rulers and to persuade them in good causes and enterprise, to animate and incense them to Godly affairs and business, to alter the counsel of kings, by their wisdom and eloquence, to a better state, is a thing of all most noble and excellent.

Translating Latin passages

To English and back to Latin - had a profound impact on English versification

George Puttenham, The Art of English PoesyImitation led to creation in poetry of

Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, Ben Jonson - and of course, Shakespeare

Shakespearean examples Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew: Petruchio will

dazzle Katherina with his verbal skills Polonius, in Hamlet - vain about his rhetorical skills

- Queen asks him to speak with “More matter and less art”

Portia’s famous speech in The Merchant of Venice Mark Antony’s in Julius Caesar

C. S. LewisRhetoric is the greatest barrier between us and our

ancestors . . . . Nearly all our older poetry was written and read by men to whom the distinction between poetry and rhetoric, in its modern form, would have been meaningless. The “beauties” which they chiefly regarded in every composition were those which we either dislike or simply do not notice. This change of taste makes an invisible wall between us and them.

Wordplay

Tropes and figures - their names and functions - were known to the average Elizabethan playgoer

Renaissance delight in language taste for copiousness or elaboration pleasure in verbal games

Much Ado About Nothing

Beatrice enters seeking Benedick - who has just been tricked into believing she is in love with him Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to

dinner

Benedick returns to the audience Against my will I am sent to bid you to come in

to dinner--there’s a double-meaning in that.

Much Ado About Nothing

Benedick is mistaken - Beatrice means what she says and no more

But in a larger sense he is right - Beatrice has yet to acknowledge her attraction to Benedick - and that she has been sent by the same pranksters who fooled him

Double meanings - pranks and wordplay - are common in Shakespeare

Other examples of wordplay

Romeo and Juliet Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ay,

And that bare vowel I shall poison no more

Henry IV, Part 1 Falstaff’s incessant punning

Macbeth gild/guilt, surcease/success, done/Duncan None of woman born/Shall harm Macbeth

Forms of dramatic language

Two primary forms: prose and poetryDominant form of verse: blank verseExample of Shakespearean prose

Hamlet’s “What a piece of work is a man”• rhythmic power from patterns of verbal repetition

Bottom’s suggesting how to frighten the ladies in the audience with a lion on stage

• Nay, you must not name his name. . . .

Shakespeare’s prose

Early in his career Shakespeare rarely wrote in prose Richard III - 50 of 3500 lines are prose (2%)

Later, Shakespeare uses much more prose Hamlet - 900 lines of prose (30%)

What distinguishes poetry from prose?

Music and rhymed musicRhymed couplets often end scenes

the play’s the thing,/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King” -- Hamlet

Rhyme fills A Midsummer Night’s Dream Helena’s first soliloquy (1.1.226-33) Oberon’s chant as he applies magic lotion to

Titania’s eyes (2.2.27-34)

Blank verse

Sir Philip Sidney thought it especially suited to rhythms of English speech

Titania, speaking in blank verse, refuses to surrender the Indian boy to Oberon

The fairy land buys not the child of me.

His mother was a vot’ress of my order,

And in the spiced Indian air, by night,

Full often hath she gosipp’d by my side,

And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,

Marking th’embarked traders on the flood;

When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive

And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;

Which she, with pretty and swimming gait,

Following (her womb then rich with my young squire)

Would imitate, and sail upon the land

To fetch me trifles, and return again,

As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.

But she, being mortal, of that boy did die,

And for her sake do I rear up her boy;

And for her sake I will not part with him.

(2.1.122-37)

Effect of these lines

Five-beat structure works on the earSmooth musicality of the meterRegular repetition of unstressed and

stressed soundsCombines with other repetition (words,

phrases, consonants, vowels) to create a mood of intense emotion - even awe

Bending of the iambic pattern

v / v / v / v /Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me

v /

your ears! [regular]

/ / v / v / / vFriends, Romans, countrymen, lend me

v /

your ears! [irregular]

Language as theme

Shakespeare’s early plays - candid look at how he uses language

1592 or 1593 - he discovers the power of language - an epiphany

Love’s Labor’s Lost and Richard III sudden explosion of rhetorical ability sense of exuberance

Richard III - master of languageUsurper, hunchback, infanticidal psychopathHe both attracts and repels usWords speak louder than his actionsRichard gets what he wants with words

gets others to do his killing for him heroic villain with an unparalleled gift for language

Richard is unforgettable because his words are unforgettable

Richard’s opening soliloquy

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York;

And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,

Richard’s opening soliloquy

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visag’d War hath smooth’d his wrinkled front,

And now, in stead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Richard’s opening soliloquy

But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty

To strut before a woman ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time

Richard’s opening soliloquy

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt be them--

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to see my shadow in the sun

And descant on my own deformity.

Richard’s opening soliloquy

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

(1.1.1-31)

Richard’s opening soliloquyRhetorical fireworks - show Richard’s

self-conscious wit Pleasure in patterns taste for performance

Sweeping contrasts war > peace, Lancaster > York, winter > summer

Stichomythia - he brags to his adversaries tells Queen Elizabeth he will marry his daughter, whose

husband he has killed

Richard

An actorAlso a kind of artist/playwright who writes a

script to win the crown Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous (1.1.33)

Creature of great yet perverted imagination his descendant - Iago in Othello

We admire his wicked creativity and use of words - yet condemn his evil deeds

A lesson in Richard

Rhetoric, wordplay - power used for dangerous ends

Theatre creates the opposite - the positive and living power of language

Richard is an illusion, created out of historical material to please and frighten the audience

Language - beauties, power, weaknesses, dangers, pleasures - paradox of WS’s thinking

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