SHAKESPEARE’S
LANGUAGE
Romeo & Juliet
Shakespeare’s English
Shakespeare did not write in Old English or
Middle English.
 Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English.
 Early Modern English is only one generation of
language from the English you speak today!
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Shakespeare’s Contributions
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Shakespeare only had an 8th grade education.
There were no dictionaries.
Shakespeare is credited by the Oxford English
Dictionary with the introduction of nearly 3,000
words into the language.
His vocabulary numbers upward of 17,000 words
(quadruple that of an average, well-educated
conversationalist in the language)
A Few Words By Shakespeare
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Accused
Addiction
Admirable
Assassination
Bloodstained
Cold-blooded
Coldhearted
Deafening
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Disgraceful
To drug
Excitement
Fashionable
Fortune-teller
Gloomy
Mimic
Obscene
Phrases Coined by Shakespeare
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As good luck would
have it
Be-all and the end-all
Break the ice
Eaten me out of
house and home
Elbow room
Fool's paradise
For goodness' sake
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Full circle
Good riddance
It was Greek to me
Heart of gold
In a pickle
Kill with kindness
Lie low
Love is blind
Not slept one wink
Shakespeare’s English
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In the England of Shakespeare's time, English was a
lot more flexible as a language.
The most common simple sentence in modern English
follows a familiar pattern: Subject (S), Verb (V),
Object (O). (Will caught the ball).
However, Shakespeare was much more at liberty to
switch these three basic components
Shakespeare used a great deal of SOV inversion
(Will the ball caught).
Shakespeare’s English
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Switching the S-V-O order to S-O-V made it easier
for Shakespeare to rhyme and to manipulate his
words to flow easily in poems and plays.
Shakespeare could effectively place the metrical
stress wherever he needed it most by switching
word order
Shakespeare also used an O-S-V construction (The
ball Will caught) for the same reasons.
Inverted Word Order
Lady Montague:
 O where is Romeo, saw you him today?
 Right glad I am he was not at this fray.
 Translation:
 O where is Romeo; did you see him today?
 I am very glad he was not in this fight.
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Inverted Word Order
“Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung.”
 Translation:
 You have sung at her window in the moonlight.
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From A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare’s Language in Plays
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The language used by Shakespeare
in his plays is in one of three forms
Prose
Rhymed Verse
Blank Verse
Prose
Prose is writing which resembles everyday
speech
 Prose is often used by Shakespeare for lowerclass characters in his plays
 Prose lacks meter and rhyme and is informal
 Shakespeare blends prose with poetry in his
plays
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Rhymed Verse
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The majority of Shakespeare’s plays contain
rhymed verse which looks like poetry
Characters– especially of the higher classes--speak
in poetic form
Their words have form, meter, and rhyme
Rhymed verse in Shakespeare's plays is usually in
rhymed couplets, i.e. two successive lines of verse
of which the final words rhyme with another.
Iambic Pentameter
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Iambic pentameter is meter that Shakespeare
nearly always when writing in verse. Most of his
plays were written in iambic pentameter.
Iambic Pentameter has:
Ten syllables in each line
Five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed
syllables
The rhythm in each line sounds like:
ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM
Iambic Pentameter Example
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Examples of Iambic Pentameter:
If mu- / -sic be / the food / of love, / play on
Is this / a dag- / -ger I / see be- / fore me?
Each pair of syllables is called an iamb. You’ll
notice that each iamb is made up of one unstressed
and one stressed beat (ba-BUM).
Blank Verse
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Blank verse refers to unrhymed iambic pentameter.
resembles prose in that the final words of the lines
do not rhyme in any regular pattern
There is meter: a recognizable rhythm in a line of
verse consisting of a pattern of regularly recurring
stressed and unstressed syllables.
Most lines are in iambic pentameter.
Blank Verse Example
ROMEO: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
from Romeo and Juliet
Prose, Rhymed Verse or Blank Verse?
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Juliet: Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
Blank Verse
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Prose, Rhymed Verse or Blank Verse?
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Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sampson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir,
but I bite my thumb, sir.
Gregory: Do you quarrel, sir?
Abraham: Quarrel, sir? No, sir.
Prose
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Prose, Rhymed Verse or Blank Verse?
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Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Rhymed Verse
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