Think on my words (ch.1,7,8,9) David Crystal, Sintesi del corso di Lingua Inglese

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Think on my words, David Crystal (ch. 1,7,8,9)

6 Chapter 1: You speak a language that I understand not; myths and realities A crucial problem in approaching the language of Shakespeare is to face that spider’s web of myths that has grown up around it. Some of those are: ● The Quantity Myth : Many people believe that Shakespeare had the largest vocabulary of any English writer. That's not true though. On the basis of some researches it is shown that there were about 150,000 different words in English by the end of the sixteenth century, and that Shakespeare used 20,000 different words circa. Also, in these 20.000 we can find different variants of the same word (plurals, superlatives, progressive forms etc. as bear, bears, bearest, beareth, bearing etc) which we should consider as one and so not count them. If we don't count those variants, the number of words used by Shakespeare should be about 18.000. However, it’s not easy to count them:

1. We have to decide whether a word is a compound or not. When Edgar calls Oswald a ‘ base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three suited, hundred pound, filthy worsted stocking knave ’, do we

7 count this as 12 words, as 11 (if worsted-stocking is hyphenated) or as 10 (if it is filthy-worsted-stocking)?

2. Do we have to include all the changes the Folio went through through time? Like modernizations and variants (as it happened with poleaxe or Polacks , auncient or ancient )?
3. Do we have to count proper names too?
4. Do we include foreign words? Shakespeare uses 288 Latin wordforms, 310 French word-forms, and 36 Spanish or Italian wordforms.
5. Do we include onomatopeic words?
6. Do we include humorous forms, as when Mistress Quickly says allicholy as a variant of melancholy? For example, there are almost 880,000 words in the 1611 King James Bible. However, if we exclude all the proper names in the latter, we find that the Bible uses only some 6,000 different words. Shakespeare uses over three times as many words. The crucial point in Shakespeare is what he wrote about: the difference between people, situations, and subject-matter generates different kinds of vocabulary. Shakespeare didn’t focus on a single field of

9 the lines which disappears; the nuances of thought go also. Difficulty with grammar and vocabulary are the two factors that are most commonly cited when talking about texts needing translation. And the reason for this difficulty is that the English language has changed so much that it is no longer comprehensible. The point is Shakespeare’s style varies: sometimes it’s easy to understand, sometimes not. Even if the majority of the grammatical rules and vocabulary during Shakespeare's times are the same then as now, there are also words that are difficult to understand, and we have two types of candidate: the totally opaque (like fraughting = making up the cargo – fraught is related to freight), where neither the form of the word nor the context is of any help; and false friends (as merely meaning ‘ totally’ or ecstasy meaning ‘ madness’ ). The other words are of ‘ moderate difficulty ’ and the context is sufficiently clear to enable us to make a guess at the meaning. In fact, Rather than modernize Shakespeare, our effort should be devoted to making ourselves more fluent in ‘Shakespearean’.

10 ● The Style Myth: ‘Shakespeare’s style’ is a commonly used expression. The truth is there is no such style, for style always varies on two dimensions: diachronically, over time, and synchronically, at any one point in time. By style we mean the set of linguistic features that, taken together, uniquely identify a language user. For example, I have the option in English of putting an adverb earlier or later in a sentence: Quickly we ran down the road vs We ran down the road quickly. If I have a preference for one position rather than the other, that would be a feature of my style. The difference from style to style depends on many elements: vocabulary (as we have many options for every concept: car / auto / automobile / banger / jalop; fire vs flame vs conflagration, or kingly vs royal vs regal); grammar (adverbs, for example, are so mobile: we can say “quickly we ran down the road” vs “we ran down the road quickly ” or still “we quickly ran down the road” and ‘ we ran quickly down the road” ); sounds and phonological choices ; and pragmatics, that is, the way we interact (as the choice between thou and you ). Because all four of these types of variation enter into any characterization of a style, with hundreds of variables implicated, it is not easy to define the style of an author, his linguistic identity. What we can do is analyze it and recognize it, which is important for the works' fatherhood. But careful analysis can certainly

12 isolation, such words might seem obscure, but the context can help us to make them clear: “ My teares will choake me, if I ope my mouth”. Part of this category are many words whose elements are well known today but their combination is not, such as dismasked (we say unmasked today, but because we know the prefix dis - in its sense of ‘reverse the action’ we can easily understand dismask ). Then we have most of the cases of conversion , where a word belonging to one part-ofspeech is used as a different part-of- speech, like a noun used as a verb, as in “ Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence”, or in “ I warrant him Petruchio is Kated .”, or here where the adjective third is used as a verb:” Yet what man / Thirds his owne worth”. ● Metrical Constraints: Some words are different solely because Shakespeare needed an extra syllable to meet the demands of the metre, but these do not usually cause any great difficulty of interpretation. “ I can call Spirits from the vastie Deepe.” is an example. Why did he have to invent a new word to fit the metre? He could have used large or huge , which had both been in English since the thirteenth century, or great ; but these were everyday words, which a creative writer might not think sufficiently expressive and creative. Anyway, with just one syllable, they had the wrong rhythm, just like immense and enormous. Vast was the

13 only word which had the right meaning and which was sufficiently attractive. And he uses the same - y device in other adjectival innovations, such as steepy, brisky, and plumpy. So words can be altered and names can be altered too (from Helycanus to Helicon , like the modern David and Dave ). ● Difficult Words: 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, grise, and incony. When words are unfamiliar, we need to study them. Every word usually belongs to a family of word. If an instance of beget ( generare ) turns up in a play, be sure that a cluster of derivatives exist: we can derive begotten , then discuss people who are first-begotten or true-begotten, and talk about children as yet unbegot , or about someone who begets that is a begetter. There are several other types of semantic relationship linking words, as the inclusion one ( X is a kind of Y = a bass viol is a kind of viol; a boot-hose is a kind of hose ); the similarity of meaning (synonymy - advantage and vantage, coz and cousin ); and intensity of meaning, (lusty and over-lusty , rash and heady-rash , amazed and allamazed ). ● False Friends: False friends are among the most difficult words, as they have changed their meaning overtime. In some cases, the meaning slightly changed; in others it has changed so much that it would be

Appendix 15 ● Catastrophe (noun) modern meaning: sudden disaster; in Shakespeare: ‘conclusion, endpoint’. ● Dainty (adjective) modern meanings: delicately pretty; attractively presented, fastidious; in Shakespeare: ‘excellent, splendid’, ‘refined, fastidious’, intense delight, rapture. ● Ecstasy: (noun) modern times: ecstasy; in Shakespeare: weakness, ‘emotion’ or ‘feeling’, madness. ● Fancy (noun) modern meaning: inclination, liking; in Shakespeare: love, like. ● Generous (adjective) modern meanings: free in giving; ample; magnanimous; in Shakespeare: ‘well-bred, mannerly, noble-minded’, fat. ● Honest (adjective) modern meaning: truthful, upright; in Shakespeare: ‘held in honour, honourable, respectable’, ‘genuine, real’, ‘innocent, well-intentioned’, chaste, pure’. ● Injury (noun) modern meaning: hurt, damage, especially to the body; in Shakespeare: any kind of wrongful act: ‘wrongs’

Appendix 16 or ‘grievances’, ‘insult’ or ‘slight’, ‘sore’ or ‘abscess’, injustice’. ● Jog (noun/verb) modern meanings: nudge; moderate run or ride; in Shakespeare: shog, ‘move along’, to go away. ● Keen (adjective) modern meaning: eager, ardent, intense (especially in UK); in Shakespeare: sharpness with reference to weapons, and also metaphorically to talk about winds, thoughts, words, and senses: sharp, cutting, severe. ● Lover (noun) modern meaning: someone with whom one has a sexual relationship; in Shakespeare: ‘companion, comrade, dear friend’. ● Merely (adverb) modern meaning: only; in Shakespeare: only, ‘utterly, entirely’. ● Naughty (adjective) modern meanings: badly behaved [of children], improper [playfully, of adults], sexually suggestive [of objects, words, etc]; in Shakespeare: ‘wicked, evil, vile’.

Appendix 18 ● Umpire (noun) modern meaning: arbitrator in certain games and contests; in Shakespeare: ‘arbitrator, mediator’. ● Vicious (adjective) modern meanings: unpleasantly fierce, nasty; dangerous; malicious; in Shakespeare: ‘immoral, depraved’, ‘defective, bad, wrong’, ‘vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind’. ● Want (verb) modern meanings: desire, wish, need, require; in Shakespeare: in the positive sense of ‘ desire’ – in the negative sense, of ‘ lack ,be without’ ● Young (adjective) modern meaning: early aged; in Shakespeare: things and abstract notions could be described as young, with a range of senses such as ‘ recent’ and ‘ vigorous’ , ‘immature’,‘strong, in good condition’. ● Zany (adjective) modern meaning: absurdly ludicrous; in Shakespeare: Shakespeare is the first recorded user of this word. The origin is Italian, where zani were the servants who acted as clowns in the Commedia dell’ arte – ultimately a derivative from Gianni. ‘stooge, clown’s assistant’.

● Old and new words: During this period there were old and new words, and people referred to old words with ‘ archaisms’ and to new usages with ‘ coinages’ or ‘ neologisms’. Early Modern English was a period of extraordinarily dynamic change: there was a great deal of self-consciousness about usage, and the period is remarkable for its lexical inventiveness and experimentation. Some archaisms of the past were iwis (‘indeed’) and hight (‘called’), as well as such older verb forms as speken (‘speak’) and y-clad (‘clothed’). Other examples include eyne (‘eyes’), shoon (‘shoes’), wight (‘person’), and eke (‘also’ ). For neologisms, we are helped by the fact that some of Shakespeare’s characters actually tell us that they are dealing with new words and usages: Armado says ‘the posteriors of the day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon’ ; Mercutio thinks of Tybalt in the same way: “ The Pox of such antique lisping affecting phantacies, these new tuners of accent: Iesu a very good blade, a very tall man, a very good whore.”( he is irritated by the use of very as an intensifying word with a positive adjective, a linguistic trend which was emerging at the end of the sixteenth century). ● Coinages: One of the most important features of Shakespeare’s wordcreation is its exploratory character: he invents the same word twice over, and at roughly the same time. For example, he

21 Why thy Canoniz’d bones Hearsed in death, Haue burst their cerments , why the Sepulcher Wherein we saw thee quietly enurn’d , Hath op’d his ponderous and Marble iawes, To cast thee vp againe? It is this tendency for coinages to cluster that is part of the reason why comprehension varies so dramatically: we suddenly encounter islands of difficulty; many coinages all together. Also in Shakespeare established words are being used in new senses: he uses proposition , (‘proposal for discussion’) as ‘offer’; design (at the time: ‘plan’, ‘scheme’, ‘project’) as ‘aim’ or‘intention’; disaster as ‘inauspicious sight, calamity’. ● Repetitions: Shakespeare often use a coinage twice in fairly quick succession, and then never again. Here are three examples: In Cymbeline, outsell , meaning ‘ exceed in value, surpass’ : Her pretty Action, did out-sell her guift […] Then Lady, Ladies, Woman, from euery one The best she hath, and she of all compounded Out-selles them all.

22 Shakespeare doesn’t use the word anywhere else. Incony is another example, meaning ‘ fine, darling, rare’ ; it probably relates to cony , ‘ rabbit’ , which developed as a term of male-to-female endearment. In Love's Labours Lost: My sweete ounce of mans flesh, my in-conie Iew: O my troth most sweete iests, most inconie vulgar wit, ● Signposts, trend: When Shakespeare’s coinages are examined together, interesting patterns emerge. When he uses the prefix - un , is mostly to create adjectives (e.g. uncomfortable, uncompassionate, unearthly, uneducated) , and there are a few adverbs (e.g. unaware, unheedfully ) and nouns (e.g. an undeserver ), but there are no less than 62 instances where the prefix has been added to an already existing verb, such as unshout, unspeak, uncurse, unswear, and undeaf: “Againe vncurse their Soules”; “ Vn-sweare faith sworne”; “My deaths sad tale, may yet vndeafe his eare”. There are other dramatic images: Lady Macbeth calls on the spirits to ‘ vnsex’ her. However, the tone is not always high drama. There is surely sarcasm in Agamemnon’s question to Ulysses about “Why, will he not vpon our faire request, Vntent his person, and share the ayre with vs?” and there