Features of Shakespeare’s language
Shakespeare’s
language
The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity
unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.
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Features of Shakespeare’s language
William Shakespeare used language to:

create a sense of place

seize the audience’s interest and attention

explore the widest range of human experience
“
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He was a genius for
dramatic language
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”
Features of Shakespeare’s language
1. Blank verse
unrhymed lines with an arrangement of unstressed
and stressed syllables known as
iambic pentameter
“ In sooth / I know / not why / I am / so sad / ”
(from The Merchant of Venice)
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Features of Shakespeare’s language
2. Variations on metre
to make his verse less monotonous, Shakespeare:

altered the pattern of unstressed
and stressed syllables
“that this too too sullied flesh would melt”
(from Hamlet)

altered the expected number of syllables
“There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple”
(from The Tempest)

divided a single line between two or more speakers
Emilia: Why, would not you?
Desdemona: No, by this heavenly light!
(from Othello)
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A shot from Hamlet
by Franco Zeffirelli (1990).
Features of Shakespeare’s language
3. Use of verse and prose
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VERSE
PROSE
generally used
generally used

by aristocratic characters

by lower-class characters

in serious or dramatic scenes

in comic scenes

in informal conversations
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Features of Shakespeare’s language
4. Imagery
a.
clusters of repeated images build up a
sense of the themes of the play, like
light and darkness in Romeo and Juliet
A shot from Romeo+Juliet
by Baz Luhrmann (1996).
b.
imagery from nature
c.
imagery from Elizabethan daily life, like:
sports and hunting; shipping and the law; jewels; medicine
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Features of Shakespeare’s language
4. Imagery
d.
use of metaphors and similes
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles”
(from Macbeth)
“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath ”
(from The Merchant of Venice, IV.i.179–181)
e.
use of personification
“Come, civil Night;
Thou sober-suited matron all in black.”
(from Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene II)
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A shot from The Merchant of Venice
by Michael Radford (2004).
Features of Shakespeare’s language
5. Antithesis
The contrast of direct opposites.
“Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O any thing, of nothing first created:
O heavy lightness, serious vanity”
(from Romeo and Juliet)
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Frank Dicksee
Romeo and Juliet (1884).
Features of Shakespeare’s language
6. Repetition
Repeated words or phrases add to:

the emotional intensity of a scene
“Oh horrible, oh horrible, most horrible!”
(The Ghost in Hamlet)

its comic effect
“O night, O night, alack, alack, alack,
I fear my Thisbe’s promise is forgot!
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall.”
(Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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Features of Shakespeare’s language
7. Hyperbole
Extravagant and obvious exaggeration
“Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!”
(from Othello)
(
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Othello is haunted by the knowledge that
he has wrongly killed Desdemona
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)
Features of Shakespeare’s language
8. Irony
Verbal
irony
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The audience knows
something that a character
on stage does not
Dramatic
irony
Saying one thing
It is structural: one line or scene
but meaning another
contrasts sharply with another
In Julius Caesar, Mark Antony calls
Brutus “an honourable man” but
means the opposite
In Macbeth Duncan’s line
“He was a gentleman on whom
I built an absolute trust”
is followed by the stage
direction “Enter Macbeth”
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Features of Shakespeare’s language
9. Pronouns: you and thee
Send clear social signals
YOU

Implies either closeness or contempt

More formal and distant form

Friendship towards an equal

Suggests respect for a superior
Superiority over someone considered
a social inferior

Courtesy to a social equal



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THEE
Used to address someone of higher
social rank
Can be aggressive or insulting
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