The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  But Bassanio then takes Graziano on one side and gives him some advice. The more intimate tone immediately motivates a pronoun switch: ‘But hear thee, Graziano, I Thou art too wild, too rude and bold of voice’. And he continues with thou-forms for the rest of his speech. When Graziano swears he will reform, the relationship returns to the normal public mode of address:BASSANIO Well, we shall see your bearing.

  And they you each other for the rest of the scene.

  THE CHOICE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE

  Shakespeare’s practice in using verse or prose varied greatly at different stages in his career. There are plays written almost entirely in verse (e.g. Richard II) and others almost entirely in prose (e.g. The Merry Wives of Windsor), but most plays display a mixture of the two modes, with certain types of situation or character prompting one or the other. Verse - whether rhymed or unrhymed (‘blank’ verse) - is typically associated with a ‘high style’ of language, prose with a ‘low style’. This is partly a matter of class distinction. High-status people, such as nobles and generals, tend to use the former; low-status people, such as clowns and tavern-frequenters, tend to use the latter (though in a ‘verse play’, such as Richard II, even the gardeners talk verse). Upper-class people also have an ability to accommodate to those of lower class, using prose, should occasion arise. ‘I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life’, says Prince Harry to Poins (I Henry IV, 2.5.18-19). And lower-class people who move in court circles, such as messengers and guards, are able to use a poetic style when talking to their betters. This lower-class ability to accommodate upwards can take listeners by surprise. The riotous citizens at the beginning of Coriolanus all use prose, but when Menenius reasons with them, in elegant verse, the spokesman gradually slips into verse too - much to Menenius’ amazement: ‘Fore me, this fellow speaks!’ (1.1.118).

  The distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ style is also associated with subject matter. For example, expressions of romantic love are made in verse, regardless of the speaker’s social class.

  If thou rememberest not the slightest folly

  That ever love did make thee run into,

  Thou hast not loved.

  Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,

  Wearing thy hearer in thy mistress’ praise,

  Thou hast not loved.

  This elegant plaint is from Silvius, a shepherd (As You Like It, 2.4.311-6), but it could have come from any princely lover. Conversely, ‘low’ subject matter, such as ribaldry, tends to motivate prose, even when spoken by upper-class people. When Hamlet meets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Hamlet, 2.2.226), they exchange a prose greeting, then the two visitors open the conversation at a formal, poetic level. But Hamlet brings them down to earth with a jocular comment, and the ribald follow-up confirms that the conversation is to stay in prose. (It is a widespread editorial practice to print prose lines immediately after the speaker’s name, and verse lines beneath it. However, discrepancies between different editions show that the distinction is not always easy to draw.)

  HAMLET My ex’llent good friends. How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz—good lads, how do ye both?

  ROSENCRANTZ

  As the indifferent children of the earth.

  GUILDENSTERN

  Happy in that we are not over-happy,

  On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

  HAMLET Nor the soles of her shoe?

  ROSENCRANTZ Neither, my lord.

  HAMLET Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favour?

  GUILDENSTERN Faith, her privates we.

  In a play where the upper-class protagonists tend to speak prose, it takes moments of special drama to motivate a switch to verse, as in the scene when Claudio accuses Hero of being unfaithful (Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1). Beatrice uses nothing but prose in the first half of this play, but, left alone after overhearing the news that Benedick loves her, she expresses her newly heightened sensibilities in ten lines of rhyming verse (3.1.107-16). In Othello (1.3), the Duke of Venice speaks only verse in debating the question of Othello’s love for Desdemona, but when he has to recount the affairs of state, he resorts to prose (1.3.220-7).

  These norms explain only a proportion of the ways that verse and prose are used in the plays. There are many instances where people switch between one and the other, and when they do we must assume it is for a reason. Sane adults do not change their style randomly. For example, in Much Ado About Nothing (2.3.235-41), Benedick is tricked into thinking that Beatrice loves him, so when he next meets her he uses verse as a sign of the new relationship. Beatrice, however, at this point unaware of any such thing, rejects the stylistic overture, and her rebuttal forces Benedick to retreat into prose:BEATRICE Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.

  BENEDICK

  Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.

  BEATRICE I took no more pains for those thanks than you would take pains to thank me. If it had been painful I would not have come.

  BENEDICK You take pleasure, then, in the message?

  This is prose as put-down. And we see it again in the opening scene of Timon of Athens (1.1.179-91), where Timon and his flatterers have been engaged in a genteel conversation in verse about social and artistic matters. The arrival of the cynical Apemantus lowers the tone, and - anticipating trouble - the speakers switch into prose:TIMON

  Look who comes here.

  Will you be chid?

  JEWELLER We will bear, with your lordship.

  MERCHANT He’ll spare none.

  Timon tries to maintain the high tone by addressing Apemantus in verse, and Apemantus shows he is capable of the high style by responding in kind; but his acerbic comments introduce a low tone which forces all to retreat into prose:TIMON

  Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus.

  APEMANTUS

  Till I be gentle, stay thou for thy good morrow—

  When thou art Timon’s dog, and these knaves

  honest.

  TIMON

  Why dost thou call them knaves? Thou know’st

  them not.

  APEMANTUS Are they not Athenians?

  TIMON Yes.

  APEMANTUS Then I repent not.

  JEWELLER You know me, Apemantus?

  APEMANTUS

  Thou know’st I do. I called thee by thy name.

  The one-line poetic riposte to the jeweller, under the circumstances, has to be seen as a mocking adoption of the high style.

  If verse is a sign of high style, then we will expect aspirants to power to use it to make their case, and disguised nobility to use it when their true character needs to appear. An example of the first is in Contention, where Jack Cade is claiming to be one of Mortimer’s two sons, and thus the heir to the throne. He and his fellow rebels speak to each other in prose. When Stafford and his brother arrive, they show their social distance by addressing the rebels in verse. But Cade is playing his part well, and responds in verse, as would befit someone with breeding. His rhetoric is so impressive, indeed, that it even influences the Butcher, who responds uncharacteristically with a line of verse of his own (4.2.140-5):The elder of them, being put to nurse,

  Was by a beggar-woman stol’n away,

  And, ignorant of his birth and parentage,

  Became a bricklayer when he came to age.

  His son am I—deny it an you can.

  BUTCHER

  Nay ‘tis too true—therefore he shall be king.

  An example of disguised nobility is in Pericles (19.25 ff.), when governor Lysimachus arrives at a brothel with the intent of seducing Marina, whom he thinks to be a prostitute. The conversation between him, Marina, and the brothel-keepers is entirely in prose. Left alone with her, however, Lysimachus begins courteously in verse, and is taken aback when Marina shows she can respond in the same way, and moreover use the mode to powerful rhetorical effect. ‘I did not think | Thou couldst have spoke so well’, he says, as he repents of his intention. Marina kno
ws the power of poetry, and uses it again later in the scene to persuade Boult to take her side.

  The switch from verse to prose, or vice versa, can also give us insight into the state of mind of a speaker. In the case of Pandarus (Troilus and Cressida, 4.2.51-6), the switch to prose signals confusion. Aeneas calls on Pandarus early one morning, urgently needing to talk to Troilus, who has secretly spent the night with Cressida. The formal encounter and serious subject matter motivate verse. But Aeneas’ directness catches Pandarus off-guard, who confusedly lapses into prose:AENEAS

  Is not Prince Troilus here?

  PANDARUS

  Here? What should he do here?

  AENEAS

  Come, he is here, my lord. Do not deny him.

  It doth import him much to speak with me.

  PANDARUS Is he here, say you? It’s more than I know,

  I’ll be sworn. For my part, I came in late. What

  should he do here?

  Something similar happens to Polonius, when he gets confused (Hamlet, 2.1.49-51). He has been giving Reynaldo a series of instructions in verse, but then he loses the track of what he is saying:And then, sir, does a this—a does—

  what was I about to say? By the mass, I was about to

  say something. Where did I leave?

  And Reynaldo reminds him, in verse.

  In the case of Benvolio and Mercutio, meeting in Romeo and Juliet (3.1.1-10), we have two very different states of mind signalled by the two modes. The temperate Benvolio begins in verse, but he cannot withstand the onslaught of Mercutio’s prose:BENVOLIO

  I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire.

  The day is hot, the Capels are abroad,

  And if we meet we shall not scape a brawl,

  For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.

  MERCUTIO Thou art like one of these fellows that, when he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table and says ‘God send me no need of thee’, and by the operation of the second cup, draws him on the drawer when indeed there is no need.

  BENVOLIO Am I like such a fellow?

  And they continue in prose.

  In another meeting, between Cassius and Brutus in Julius Caesar (4.2.80-8), the switching between verse and prose acts as a guide to the temperature of the interaction. They are accusing each other of various wrongs. For the most part they speak verse to each other; but when they are on the verge of losing their temper, they switch into prose:CASSIUS Brutus, bay not me.

  I’ll not endure it. You forget yourself

  To hedge me in. I am a soldier, I,

  Older in practice, abler than yourself

  To make conditions.

  BRUTUS Go to, you are not, Cassius.

  CASSIUS I am.

  BRUTUS I say you are not.

  CASSIUS

  Urge me no more, I shall forget myself.

  And Cassius resumes in verse, until once again, Brutus drives him to explode into prose (4.2.112-118):CASSIUS

  When Caesar lived he durst not thus have moved me.

  BRUTUS

  Peace, peace; you durst not so have tempted him.

  CASSIUS I durst not?

  BRUTUS No.

  CASSIUS What, durst not tempt him?

  BRUTUS For your life you durst not.

  CASSIUS

  Do not presume too much upon my love.

  People were evidently very sensitive to these modality changes, and sometimes the text explicitly recognizes the contrasts involved. In Antony and Cleopatra, the summit meeting between Caesar, Antony, and their advisors is carried on in formal verse. But when Enobarbus intervenes with a down-to-earth comment in prose, he receives a sharp rebuke from Antony: ‘Thou art a soldier only. Speak no more’ (2.2.112). And in As You Like It, Orlando arrives in the middle of a prose conversation in which Jaques is happily expounding his melancholy to Ganymede (aka Rosalind). Orlando addresses Ganymede with a line of verse, which immediately upsets Jaques: ‘Nay then, God b‘wi’you an you talk in blank verse’ (4.1.29-30). And Jaques promptly leaves.

  Vocabulary

  Vocabulary is the area of language least subject to generalization. Unlike the grammar, prosody, and discourse patterns of a language, which are subject to general rules that can be learned thoroughly in a relatively short period of time, the learning of vocabulary is largely ad hoc and of indefinite duration. By contrast with the few hundred points of pronunciation, grammar, and discourse structure which we need to consider when dealing with Shakespeare’s language, the number of points of vocabulary run into several thousands. As a result, most books do little more than provide an alphabetical glossary of the items which pose a difficulty of comprehension.

  The question of the size of Shakespeare’s vocabulary, and its impact on the development of the English language, has always captured popular imagination, but at the cost of distracting readers from more important aspects of his lexical creativity. It is never the number of words that makes an author, but how those words are used. Because of Shakespeare’s literary and dramatic brilliance, it is usually assumed that his vocabulary must have been vast, and that his lexical innovations had a major and permanent effect on the language. In fact, it transpires that the number of words in his lexicon (ignoring variations of the kind described below) was somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000-quite small by present-day standards, though probably much larger than his contemporaries. And the number of his lexical innovations, insofar as these can be identified reliably, are probably no more than 1,700, less than half of which have remained in the language. No other author matches these impressive figures, but they nonetheless provide only a small element of the overall size of the English lexicon, which even in Early Modern English times was around 150,000.

  The uncertainty in the personal total arises because it is not easy to say what should be counted. Much depends on the selection of texts and the amount of text recognized (as the present edition illustrates with King Lear and Hamlet), as well as on editorial policy towards such matters as hyphenation. In Kent’s harangue of Oswald (The Tragedy of King Lear), for example, the number of words varies depending on which compounds the editors recognize. In this extract (2.2.13-17), The Complete Works identifies 20; by comparison, the First Folio shows 22:

  Complete Works: a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave . . .

  First Folio: a base, proud, shallow, beggerly, three-suited-hundred pound, filthy woosted stocking knaue, a Lilly-liuered, action-taking, whoreson, glasse-gazing super-seruiceable finicall Rogue, one Trunke-inheriting slaue ...

  Other editions reach different totals: one allows a three-element compound word (filthy-worsted-stocking, Penguin); another a four-element (three-suited-hundred-pound, Arden).

  The number of words in a person’s lexicon refers to the items which would appear as headwords in a dictionary, once grammatical, metrical, and orthographic variations are discounted. For example, in the First Folio we find the following forms: take, takes, taketh, taking, tak‘n, taken, tak’st, tak’t, took, took’st, tooke, tookst. It would be absurd to think of these as ‘twelve words’ showing us twelve aspects of Shakespeare’s lexical creativity. They are simply twelve forms of the same word, ‘take’. And there are several other types of word which we would want to exclude when deciding on the size of Shakespeare’s vocabulary. It is usual to exclude proper names from a count (Benvolio, Eastcheap), unless they have a more general significance (Ethiop). People usually exclude the foreign words (from Latin, French, etc.), though there are problems in deciding what to do with the franglais used in Henry V. Word counters wonder what to do, also, with onomatopoeic words (e.g. sa, sese) and humorous forms: should we count malapropisms separately or as variants of their supposed targets (e.g. allicholly as a variant of melancholy)? If we include everything, we shall approach 20,000; if we do not, we shall look for
the lower figure, around 17,000.

  How many of these words have gone out of use or changed their meaning between Early Modern English and today? A recent glossary which aims at comprehensiveness, Shakespeare’s Words (Crystal and Crystal, 2002), contains 13,626 headwords which fall into this category - roughly three-quarters of Shakespeare’s total word-stock. But this does not mean that three-quarters of the words in The Complete Works represent Early Modern English, for many of these older words are used only once or twice in the canon. If we perform an alternative calculation - not the number of different words (the word types), but the number of instances of each word (the word tokens), we end up with a rather different figure. According to Marvin Spevack’s concordance, there are nearly 885,000 word tokens in the canon - and this total would increase to over 900,000 with the addition of The Two Noble Kinsmen. The 13,626 word types in the glossary are actually represented by some 50,000 word tokens - and 50,000 is only 5 per cent of 900,000. This is why the likelihood of encountering an Early Modern English word in reading a play or a poem is actually quite small. Most of the words in use then are still in use today, with no change in meaning.

  The attention of glossary-writers and text editors has always focused on the ‘different words’, but it is important to note that they do not all pose the same kind of difficulty. At one extreme, there are many words which hardly need any gloss at all:• words such as oft, perchance, sup, morrow, visage, pate, knave, wench, and morn, which are still used today in special contexts, such as poetry or comic archaism, or which still have some regional use (e.g. aye ‘always’);

  • words where a difference has arisen solely because of the demands of the metre, such as vasty instead of vast (‘The vasty fields of France’, Henry V, Prologue 12), and other such uses of the -y suffix, such as steepy and plumpy;