Features of Shakespeares language

Shakespeares
language

The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity

unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.

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Features of Shakespeares language

William Shakespeare used language to:

create a sense of place

seize the audiences 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 Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares 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

Theres 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 Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares language

4. Imagery
d.

use of metaphors and similes

Theres daggers in mens 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.179181)

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 Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares 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 Thisbes promise is forgot!
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall.
(Bottom in A Midsummer Nights Dream)

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Features of Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares language

8. Irony

Verbal
irony

The audience knows

something that a character
on stage does not

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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 Duncans 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 Shakespeares language

9. Pronouns: you and thee

Send clear social signals

THEE

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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Used to address someone of higher

social rank
Can be aggressive or insulting
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