The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
Page 9
• words where the formal difference is too small to obscure the meaning, such as affright (‘frighten’), afeard (‘afraid’), scape (‘escape’), ope (‘open’), down-trod (‘down-trodden’), and dog-weary (‘dog-tired’);
• words whose elements are familiar but the combination is not, such as bedazzle, dismasked, unpeople, rareness, and smilingly, and such phrasal verbs as press down (‘overburden’), speak with (‘speak to’), and shove by (‘push aside’);
• idioms and compounds whose meaning is transparent, such as what cheer?, go your ways, high-minded, and folly-fallen.
We might also include in this category most of the cases of conversion - where a word belonging to one part of speech is used as a different part of speech. Most often, a common noun is used as a verb, as in ‘grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle’ (Richard II, 2.3.86), but there are several other possibilities, which Shakespeare exploits so much that lexical conversion has become one of the trademarks of his style: She Phoebes me
(As You Like It, 4.3.40)
Thou losest here, a better where to find
(The Tragedy of King Lear, 1.1.261)
they . . . from their own misdeeds askance their eyes
(Lucrece, 1. 636-7)
what man Thirds his own worth
(The Two Noble Kinsmen, 1.2.95-6)
In such cases, although the grammar is strikingly different, the lexical meaning is not.
At the other extreme, there are words where it is not possible to deduce from their form what they might mean - such as finical, fardel, grece, and incony. There are around a thousand such items in Shakespeare, and in these cases we have no alternative but to learn them as we would new words in a foreign language. An alphabetical glossary of synonyms is not the best way of carrying out this task, however, as that arrangement does not display the words in context, and its A-to-Z structure does not allow the reader to develop a sense of the semantic interrelationships involved. It is essential to see the words in their semantic context, for this can help comprehension in a number of ways. Shakespeare sometimes provides the help himself. In Othello, when the Duke says to Brabanzio (1.3.198-200):Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence
Which, as a grece or step, may help these lovers
Into your favour
we can guess what grece means (‘step, degree’) by relying on the following noun. And in Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby says to Maria: ‘Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip, and become thy bondslave?’ (2.5.183-4), we may have no idea what tray-trip is, but the linguistic association (or collocation) with play shows that it must be some kind of game. Collocations always provide major clues to meaning.
An A-to-Z approach provides no clues about the meaning relationships between words: aunt is at one end of the alphabet and uncle at the other. A more beneficial approach to Shakespearian vocabulary is to learn the new words in the way that young children do when they acquire a language. Words are never learned randomly, or alphabetically, but always in context and in pairs or small groups. In this way, meanings reinforce and illuminate each other, in such ways as the following:• words of opposite meaning (antonyms): best/meanest, mine/countermine, ayward/ nayward, curbed/uncurbed;
• words of included meaning (hyponyms), expressing the notion that ‘an X is a kind of Y’: bass viol—viol, boot-hose-hose; mortar-piece/murdering-pjece—piece; grave-/well-/ ill-beseeming—beseeming; half-blown/unblown—blown;
• words of the same or very similar meaning (synonyms): advantage/vantage, argal/argo, compter/counter, coz/cousin (these words sometimes convey a stylistic contrast, such as informal vs. formal);
• words of intensifying meaning: lusty/over-lusty, pleachedlthick-pleached, force/force perforce, rash/heady-rash, amazed/all-amazed.
In many cases, it is sensible to group words into semantic fields, such as ‘clothing’, ‘weapons’, or ‘money’, so that we can more clearly see the relationships between them. Under the last heading, for example, we can distinguish between domestic coins (such as pennies) and foreign coins (such as ducats), and within the former to relate items in terms of their increasing value: obolus, halfpence, three farthings, penny, twopence, threepence, groat, sixpence, tester/testril, shilling, noble, angel, royal, pound. That is how we learn a monetary system today, and it is how we can approach the one we find in Shakespeare.
In between the extremes of lexical familiarity and unfamiliarity, we find the majority of Shakespeare’s difficult words - difficult not because they are different in form from the vocabulary we know today but because they have changed their meaning. In many cases, the meaning change is very slight (intent ‘intention’; glass ‘looking-glass’) or has little consequence. When Jack Cade says ‘I have eat no meat these five days, yet come thou and thy five men, an if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail I pray God I may never eat grass more’ (Contention, 4.9.37-40), meat is here being used in the general sense of ‘food’ - but if we were to interpret it in the modern, restricted sense of ‘flesh meat’, the effect would not be greatly different. By contrast, there are several hundred cases where the meaning has changed so much that it would be highly misleading to read in the modern sense. These are the ‘false friends’ (faux amis) of comparative semantics - words in a language which seem familiar but are not (as between French and English, where demander means ‘ask’, and demand is translated by requérir). False friends in Shakespeare include naughty (‘wicked’), heavy (‘sorrowful’), humorous (‘moody’), sad (‘serious’), ecstasy (‘madness’), owe (‘own’), merely (‘totally’), and envious (‘malicious’). In such cases, we need to pay careful attention to the context, which we must always allow to overrule the intrusion of the irrelevant modern meaning. We can see this operating, for example, in The Tragedy of King Lear (5.1.5-7):REGAN
Our sister’s man is certainly miscarried.
EDMOND
‘Tis to be doubted, madam.
REGAN
Now, sweet lord, You know the goodness I intend upon you.
If we were to read in the modern meaning of doubt, it would suggest that Edmond is disagreeing with Regan - but as the context suggests this is not the case, we need a different meaning of doubt - ‘fear’.
Finally, as with grammar, we must be prepared to see the demands of metre altering word forms. The choice between vantage and advantage, scape and escape, shrew and beshrew and many other such alternatives can be solely due to the location of the word in the line. Sometimes we can even see the alternative forms juxtaposed, as when both oft and often appear in Julius Caesar (3.1.115-19): BRUTUS
How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport,
That now on Pompey’s basis lies along,
No worthier than the dust!
CASSIUS
So oft as that shall be,
So often shall the knot of us be called
The men that gave their country liberty.
Names can be altered too. At one point in Pericles, narrator Gower refers to Pericles’ counsellor with his full name:In Helicanus may you well descry
A figure of truth.
(22.114-15)
At another, he shortens it:Good Helicane that stayed at home,
Not to eat honey like a drone.
(5.17-18)
Such metrically induced alternations rarely have any semantic or pragmatic consequence.
The examples in this essay show that in order to develop our understanding of Shakespeare’s use of language we need to work through a three-stage process:• we first notice a linguistic feature - something which strikes us as particularly interesting, effective, unusual, or problematic (often because it differs from what we would expect in Modern English);
• we then have to describe the feature, in order to talk about it and to classify it as a feature of a particular type; the more precisely we are able to do this, by developing an awarenesss of phonetic, grammatical, and other terminology, the more we will be able to reach clear and statable conclusions;
It is the last stage which is the most important, and which is still surprisingly neglected. It is never enough, as has often happened in approaches to Shakespeare’s language, simply to identify and describe an interesting feature - such as a particular metrical pattern, piece of alliteration, word order, or literary allusion - and proceed no further. We must also try to explain its role - its meaning and effect - in the context in which it appears, and that is why this essay has paid so much attention to seeing his language within a semantic and pragmatic perspective.
It is, of course, by no means the whole story. Language in turn must be placed within a wider literary, dramatic, historical, psychological, and social frame of reference. We must also expect there to be many occasions when meaning and effect cannot be precisely determined. There will always be a range of interpretive possibilities in the language that offer the individual reader, actor, director, or playgoer a personal choice. But the linguistic stage in our study of Shakespeare should never be minimized or neglected, for it is an essential step in increasing our insight into his dramatic and poetic artistry.
CONTEMPORARY ALLUSIONS TO SHAKESPEARE
MANY contemporary documents, some manuscript, some printed, refer directly to Shakespeare and to members of his family. The following list (which is not exhaustive) briefly indicates the nature of the principal allusions to him and to his closest relatives. It does not include publication records of his plays (given in the Textual Companion), the appearances of his name on title-pages, unascribed allusions to his works, commendatory poems, epistles, and dedications printed elsewhere in the edition, or records of performances except for that of 1604-5, in which Shakespeare is named. The principal documents are discussed, and most of them reproduced, in S. Schoenbaum’s William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (1975).
COMMENDATORY POEMS AND PREFACES (1599-1640)
Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare
Honey-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue
I swore Apollo got them, and none other,
Their rosy-tainted features clothed in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother.
Rose-cheeked Adonis with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia virgin-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquin seeking still to prove her,
Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not—
Their sugared tongues and power-attractive beauty
Say they are saints although that saints they show not,
For thousands vows to them subjective duty.
They burn in love, thy children; Shakespeare het them;
Go, woo thy muse more nymphish brood beget them.
John Weever, Epigrams (1599)
A never writer to an ever reader: news
Eternal reader, you have here a new play never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the palm comical, for it is a birth of that brain that never undertook anything comical vainly; and were but the vain names of comedies changed for the titles of commodities, or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors that now style them such vanities flock to them for the main grace of their gravities, especially this author’s comedies, that are so framed to the life that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity and power of wit that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his comedies, and all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings as were never capable of the wit of a comedy, coming by report of them to his representations, have found that wit there that they never found in themselves, and have parted better witted than they came, feeling an edge of wit set upon them more than ever they dreamed they had brain to grind it on. So much and such savoured salt of wit is in his comedies that they seem, for their height of pleasure, to be born in that sea that brought forth Venus. Amongst all there is none more witty than this, and had I time I would comment upon it, though I know it needs not for so much as will make you think your testern well bestowed, but for so much worth as even poor I know to be stuffed in it. It deserves such a labour as well as the best comedy in Terence or Plautus. And believe this, that when he is gone and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition. Take this for a warning, and at the peril of your pleasure’s loss and judgement’s, refuse not, nor like this the less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude; but thank fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you, since by the grand possessors’ wills I believe you should have prayed for them rather than been prayed. And so I leave all such to be prayed for, for the states of their wits’ healths, that will not praise it.
Vale.
Anonymous, in Troilus and Cressida (1609)
To our English Terence, Master Will Shakespeare
Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,
Hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport
Thou hadst been a companion for a king,
And been a king among the meaner sort.
Some others rail; but rail as they think fit,
Thou hast no railing but a reigning wit,
And honesty thou sow’st, which they do reap
So to increase their stock which they do keep.
John Davies, The Scourge of Folly (1610)
To Master William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, that nimble Mercury, thy brain,
Lulls many hundred Argus-eyes asleep,
So fit for all thou fashionest thy vein;
At th‘horse-foot fountain thou hast drunk full deep.
Virtue’s or vice’s theme to thee all one is.
Who loves chaste life, there’s Lucrece for a teacher;
Who list read lust, there’s Venus and Adonis,
True model of a most lascivious lecher.
Besides, in plays thy wit winds like Meander,
Whence needy new composers borrow more
Than Terence doth from Plautus or Menander.
But to praise thee aright, I want thy store.
Then let thine own works thine own worth upraise,
And help t’adorn thee with deserved bays.
Thomas Freeman, Run and a Great Cast (1614)
Inscriptions upon the Shakespeare monument, Stratford-upon-Avon
Iudicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet.
Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath placed
Within this monument: Shakespeare, with whom
Quick nature died; whose name doth deck this tomb
Far more than cost, sith all that he hath writ
Leaves living art but page to serve his wit.
Obiit anno domini 1616,
aetatis 53, die 23 Aprilis
On the death of William Shakespeare
Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh
To learned Chaucer; and rare Beaumont, lie
A little nearer Spenser, to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb.
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until doomsday, for hardly will a fifth
Betwixt this day and that by fate be slain
For whom your curtains need be drawn again.
But if precedency in death doth bar
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this carved marble of thine own,
Sleep, rare tragedian Shakespeare, sleep alone.
Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave,
Possess as lord, not tenant, of thy grave,
That unto us or others it may be
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee.
William Basse (c.1616-22), in Shakespeare’s
Poems (1640)
The Stationer to the Reader (in The Tragedy of Othe
llo, 1622)
To set forth a book without an epistle were like to the
old English proverb, ‘A blue coat without a badge’, and
the author being dead, I thought good to take that piece
of work upon me. To commend it I will not, for that
which is good, I hope every man will commend without
entreaty; and I am the bolder because the author’s name
is sufficient to vent his work. Thus, leaving everyone to
the liberty of judgement, I have ventured to print this
play, and leave it to the general censure.
Yours,
Thomas Walkley.
The Epistle Dedicatory (in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, 1623)
TO THE MOST NOBLE
AND
INCOMPARABLE PAIR
OF BRETHREN
WILLIAM
Earl of Pembroke, &c., Lord Chamberlain to the
King’s most excellent majesty,
AND
PHILIP
Earl of Montgomery, &c., gentleman of his majesty’s
bedchamber; both Knights of the most noble Order
of the Garter, and our singular good
LORDS.
Right Honourable,
Whilst we study to be thankful in our particular for the many favours we have received from your lordships, we are fallen upon the ill fortune to mingle two the most diverse things that can be: fear and rashness; rashness in the enterprise, and fear of the success. For when we value the places your highnesses sustain, we cannot but know their dignity greater than to descend to the reading of these trifles; and while we name them trifles we have deprived ourselves of the defence of our dedication. But since your lordships have been pleased to think these trifles something heretofore, and have prosecuted both them and their author, living, with so much favour, we hope that, they outliving him, and he not having the fate, common with some, to be executor to his own writings, you will use the like indulgence toward them you have done unto their parent. There is a great difference whether any book choose his patrons, or find them. This hath done both; for so much were your lordships’ likings of the several parts when they were acted as, before they were published, the volume asked to be yours. We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead to procure his orphans guardians, without ambition either of self-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare, by humble offer of his plays to your most noble patronage. Wherein, as we have justly observed no man to come near your lordships but with a kind of religious address, it hath been the height of our care, who are the presenters, to make the present worthy of your highnesses by the perfection. But there we must also crave our abilities to be considered, my lords. We cannot go beyond our own powers. Country hands reach forth milk, cream, fruits, or what they have; and many nations, we have heard, that had not gums and incense, obtained their requests with a leavened cake. It was no fault to approach their gods by what means they could, and the most, though meanest, of things are made more precious when they are dedicated to temples. In that name, therefore, we most humbly consecrate to your highnesses these remains of your servant Shakespeare, that what delight is in them may be ever your lordships’, the reputation his, and the faults ours, if any be committed by a pair so careful to show their gratitude both to the living and the dead as is