Shakespeares Dramatic Language

Rhetoric, Wordplay, Forms

Shakespeares Language
Source of pleasure or Obstacle to appreciation?

Qualities of Shakespeares verse

Density and richness Characters express thoughts through abundant, powerful images and metaphors Figurative language: pleases the mind and senses - expresses one idea in terms of another Connotative imagery: highly suggestive network of pictures and ideas resonating with other images, ideas, themes in play

Macbeth
Theres 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 reading
Banquo speaks to his son Fleance Heaven = an economical household in which all sources of light are extinguished Powerful force (like lead) summons Banquo to sleep - but he cannot Lines have resonance: husbandry, candles, summons, lead Dagger appears in next few lines and later in the play

Foreshadowing
Banquo foreshadows the hallucinated dagger that appears in Macbeths 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 mad Fears the dark Carries a candle Darkness - 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 readers Linguistic exuberance of the age

Lyles Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit

Shakespeares 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 sentence Influence of Latin grammar Move toward simplicity - Bacon > Orwell Shakespeare created stage pictures out of poetry - issues of verse and prosody

iambic pentameter rhythm, emphasis characterization

Lets 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 Poesy Imitation 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 Portias famous speech in The Merchant of Venice Mark Antonys in Julius Caesar

C. S. Lewis
Rhetoric 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 Against my will I am sent to bid you to come in to dinner--theres a double-meaning in that.

Benedick returns to the audience

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

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

Macbeth

Forms of dramatic language

Two primary forms: prose and poetry Dominant form of verse: blank verse Example of Shakespearean prose

Hamlets What a piece of work is a man

rhythmic power from patterns of verbal repetition

Bottoms suggesting how to frighten the ladies in the audience with a lion on stage
Nay, you must not name his name. . . .

Shakespeares prose
Early in his career Shakespeare rarely wrote in prose

Richard III - 50 of 3500 lines are prose (2%) Hamlet - 900 lines of prose (30%)

Later, Shakespeare uses much more prose

What distinguishes poetry from prose?

Music and rhymed music Rhymed couplets often end scenes

the plays the thing,/Wherein Ill catch the conscience of the King -- Hamlet Helenas first soliloquy (1.1.226-33) Oberons chant as he applies magic lotion to Titanias eyes (2.2.27-34)

Rhyme fills A Midsummer Nights Dream

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 votress of my order, And in the spiced Indian air, by night, Full often hath she gosippd by my side, And sat with me on Neptunes yellow sands, Marking thembarked traders on the flood; When we have laughd 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 ear Smooth musicality of the meter Regular repetition of unstressed and stressed sounds Combines 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 / / v Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me v / your ears! [irregular]

Language as theme
Shakespeares early plays - candid look at how he uses language 1592 or 1593 - he discovers the power of language - an epiphany Loves Labors Lost and Richard III

sudden explosion of rhetorical ability sense of exuberance

Richard III - master of language

Usurper, hunchback, infanticidal psychopath He both attracts and repels us Words speak louder than his actions Richard 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

Richards opening soliloquy

Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York; And all the clouds that lowrd 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 changd to merry meetings,

Richards opening soliloquy

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visagd War hath smoothd his wrinkled front, And now, in stead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a ladys chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

Richards opening soliloquy

But I, that am not shapd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stampd, and want loves majesty To strut before a woman ambling nymph; I, that am curtaild of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformd, unfinishd, sent before my time

Richards 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.

Richards 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)

Richards opening soliloquy

Rhetorical fireworks - show Richards

self-conscious wit Pleasure in patterns taste for performance war > peace, Lancaster > York, winter > summer tells Queen Elizabeth he will marry his daughter, whose husband he has killed

Sweeping contrasts

Stichomythia - he brags to his adversaries

Richard
An actor Also a kind of artist/playwright who writes a script to win the crown

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous (1.1.33) his descendant - Iago in Othello

Creature of great yet perverted imagination

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 WSs thinking

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