A toast to the Bard
Shakespeare! We know him well, Reader, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. On world Book Day today, we note the 400th anniversary of his death with all manner of things Shakespearian.
YOU can’t speak English without speaking Shakespeare. Not only did he introduce several hundred words still used today ( assassination, beguiling, contaminated, domineering, excitement, fixture, go- between, hostile...), he gave us dozens of idioms.
If you stand with bated breath, say that love is blind, worry about greeneyed jealousy, think that truth will out, or admit you’re a blinking idiot, you’re speaking lines from The Merchant Of Venice. If you feel you are to the manner born, notice some foul play, act in sorrow more than anger, and are cruel only to be kind, you are recalling Hamlet.
But Shakespeare has done more than this. In the creative way that he used language, he shows each of us how to be creative ourselves.
A big feature of English is the way a word can have different grammatical uses. Round can be a noun ( It’s my round), verb ( We rounded the corner), adverb ( I turned round), adjective ( a round shape), or preposition ( round the corner). Shakespeare shows how we can take this principle and use it to make new words and add dramatic effects. He especially likes to use nouns as verbs: Hamlet advises the travelling players not “to mouth” their lines, and tells Claudius that he will “nose” Polonius’s dead body if it isn’t soon discovered. We do the same sort of thing today. I can eye you warily. You can leg it. I can text you.
Another big feature of English is its use of prefixes and suffixes. There are over 300 cases where Shakespeare is the first recorded user of a word beginning with un-. Some are everyday, such as uncomfortable and unaware; but some are unexpected and vivid. Lady Macbeth calls on the spirits to “unsex” her – make her more like a man. Elsewhere he has characters tell others to “unshout”, “unspeak”, “uncurse”, and “unswear”. Once again, we do the same sort of thing today: uncool, ungimmicky, untouristy, unfunny, unpolicemanlike, unsorry. Virtually any word can be un’d – if we dare. That’s what Shakespeare does: he teaches us how to dare in using language.
We see this daring in newspapers too. Journalists play with a single famous quotation all the time to make an attention- grabbing headline. “To be or not to be – that is the question”: An article about whether people should pay for a particular service was head- ed “To pay or not to pay”; one about eating habits, “To diet or not to diet”; one about going to war: “To fight or not to fight”. Shakespeare gives us all permission to play with language in this way.
Anyone will learn a great deal from exploring how Shakespeare uses the English language. A study of his techniques can develop our awareness of the language’s expressive potential and boost our confidence as users. At the same time, of course, the more we study his language, the more we will increase our understanding and enjoyment of his plays as literature and theatre.