5. Shakespeare's Language

Slide

Features of Shakespeare’s language

Shakespeare’slanguageThe Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity

unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Slide

Features of Shakespeare’s languageWilliam Shakespeare used language to: create a sense of place seize the audience’s interest and attention explore the widest range of human experience

He was a genius for

dramatic language

“”

Only Connect ... New Directions

Slide


1. Blank verseunrhymed lines with an arrangement of unstressed and stressed syllables known as

“ In sooth / I know / not why / I am / so sad / ”(from The Merchant of Venice)

iambic pentameter


Slide


2. Variations on metreto make his verse less monotonous, Shakespeare:

“that this too too sullied flesh would melt”(from Hamlet)

altered the pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables

“There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple”(from The Tempest)

altered the expected number of syllables

Emilia: Why, would not you?

divided a single line between two or more speakers

Desdemona: No, by this heavenly light!(from Othello)

A shot from Hamlet by Franco Zeffirelli (1990).


Slide


3. Use of verse and prose

VERSE

generally used by aristocratic characters in serious or dramatic scenes

PROSE

generally used by lower-class characters in comic scenes in informal conversations


Slide


4. Imageryclusters of repeated images build up asense of the themes of the play, like a.

imagery from natureb.

imagery from Elizabethan daily life, like:c.

light and darkness in Romeo and Juliet

A shot from Romeo+Juliet by Baz Luhrmann (1996).

sports and hunting; shipping and the law; jewels; medicine


Slide


4. Imageryuse of metaphors and similesd.

use of personificatione.“Come, civil Night;Thou sober-suited matron all in black.”(from Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene II)

“There’s daggers in men’s smiles”(from Macbeth)

“The quality of mercy is not strained.It droppeth as the gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath ”(from The Merchant of Venice, IV.i.179–181)

A shot from The Merchant of Venice by Michael Radford (2004).


Slide


5. AntithesisThe 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)

Frank DickseeRomeo and Juliet (1884).


Slide


6. RepetitionRepeated words or phrases add to:

“Oh horrible, oh horrible, most horrible!” (The Ghost in Hamlet)

the emotional intensity of a scene

“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)

its comic effect


Slide


7. HyperboleExtravagant and obvious exaggeration

“Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur!

Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!”

(from Othello)

Othello is haunted by the knowledge that

he has wrongly killed Desdemona )(Only Connect ... New Directions

Slide


8. IronyVerbal irony

Saying one thing but meaning another

Dramaticirony

It is structural: one line or scene contrasts sharply with another

The audience knows something that a character

on stage does not

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”


Slide


9. Pronouns: you and thee

YOU

Implies either closeness or contempt Friendship towards an equal Superiority over someone considered

a social inferior Used to address someone of higher

social rank Can be aggressive or insulting

THEE

More formal and distant form Suggests respect for a superior Courtesy to a social equal

Send clear social signals


Documents

5. Shakespeare's Language