A Grammar of Shakespeare’s Language

422 Pages·2002·7.052 MB·

by  N. F. Blake (auth.)

A GRAMMAR OF SHAKESPEARE’S LANGUAGE
Also by N. F. Blake and published by Palgrave
A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE
(with Jean Moorhead)
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LANGUAGE OF LITERATURE
THE LANGUAGE OF SHAKESPEARE
A Grammar of
Shakespeare’s
Language
N. F. BLAKE
© N.F.Blake 2002
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of
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Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2002 by
PALGRAVE
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Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVEis the new global academic imprint of
St.Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and
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ISBN 978-0-333-72590-0 hardback
ISBN 978-0-333-72591-7 ISBN 978-1-4039-1915-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4039-1915-1
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A catalogue record for this book is available
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blake,N.F.(Norman Francis)
A grammar of Shakespeare’s language / N.F.Blake.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and indexes.
ISBN 978-0-333-72590-0
1.Shakespeare,William,1564–1616—Language.2.English
language—Early modern,1500–1700—Grammar.I.Title.
PR3075 .B54 2001
822.3’3—dc21
2001036531
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
For Carol
Contents
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiv
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The texts and their background 1
1.2 Studies of Shakespeare’s language 7
1.3 This grammar 14
2 The Linguistic Background 15
2.1 The general background 15
2.2 Punctuation 22
2.3 Spelling 30
3 The Noun Group 34
3.1 The noun group and its parts 34
3.2 Morphology 35
3.3 Structure and use 48
4 The Verb Group 87
4.1 The verb group and its parts 87
4.2 Morphology 88
4.3 Function and use 103
4.4 Verb types 139
5 Adverbials, Interjections, Conjunctions and Prepositions 148
5.1 Adverbials 149
5.2 Interjections 163
5.3 Conjunctions 165
5.4 Prepositions 177
6 Concord, Negation, Ellipsis and Repetition 201
6.1 Concord 201
6.2 Negation 206
6.3 Ellipsis 216
6.4 Repetition 229
vii
viii Contents
7 Clause Organisation and Sentence Structure 233
7.1 Declarative 233
7.2 Imperative 247
7.3 Interrogative 252
7.4 Exclamatory 255
7.5 Sentence structure 256
7.6 Unusual structures 267
8 Discourse and Register 271
8.1 Forms of address 271
8.2 Conversational strategies 283
8.3 Discourse markers 290
8.4 Ideolects and registers 300
9 Pragmatics 304
9.1 The co-operative principle 304
9.2 Discourse and class 317
9.3 Politeness theory 320
10 Conclusion 326
10.1 Shakespeare’s language 326
10.2 Editing 331
10.3 Conclusion 344
Bibliography 345
Index 362
General 362
Words 387
Preface
Grammar can mean many different things to different people
(Greenbaum 1988) and so it is best that I indicate what is in-
cluded in this grammar. Although sometimes included in books
on Shakespeare’s language, I do not, except incidentally, deal
with such topics as phonology, lexicography, word-formation,
dialects and variation in usage since these are topics which do
not fall within the domain of grammar. This book is principally
concerned with morphology and syntax. However, modern gram-
matical studies have enlarged the scope of grammar beyond the
clause to include what is often described as text grammar, and I
have followed this example. So this book tackles not only the
organisation of the various elements within clauses, but also the
way clauses are organised to create larger patterns in the lan-
guage. These patterns fall partly in the domains of stylistics and
rhetoric, but I do not focus directly on either of these in this
book. Although some have complained that historians of the lan-
guage have shown ‘indifference to stylistic values’ (Houston 1988:
92), it would take too much space to go deeply into this subject,
though I have learned much from Houston’s books. One of the
justifications for compiling a grammar of Shakespeare’s language
is that Shakespeare exploited the resources of his language, which
naturally reflects his command of style and rhetoric. In addi-
tion, this book does not concern itself with metre or rhyme,
although it could reasonably be claimed that each may have some
impact on the way Shakespeare organises his language. These
two do not fall within the domain of grammar and would also
take too long to deal with adequately in this kind of book. Some
examples are noted as occurring in rhyme where this seems helpful
to the reader.
Dr Johnson complained that ‘The style of Shakespeare was in
itself ungrammatical, perplexed, and obscure;’ (Smallwood 1985:
41), but in more recent times scholars have tended to believe that
Shakespeare could do no wrong. Spevack asserted that ‘the fun-
damental premise in dealing with Shakespeare’s language is that
whatever is, is right.’ (Spevack 1985: 344). Kermode has in his lat-
ix
x Preface
est book adopted a more sensible attitude towards Shakespeare’s
language (Kermode 2000). Unfortunately, it is difficult to know how
much of what survives in the quartos and First Folio represents
Shakespeare’s own work. That he worked with other playwrights
on many of his plays is beyond dispute. That the plays may have
been altered during the production is almost certain. That scribes
and compositors made adjustments to the text or failed to copy
what was in front of them is inevitable. Nevertheless, a book deal-
ing with Shakespeare’s grammar cannot go into the details of what
precisely may or may not have been written by Shakespeare him-
self, even if others claim that they can tell what is and what is not
his. Hence a book like this is really dealing with the language of
the plays and poems attributed to the Shakespeare canon without
dealing with the vexed question of which parts may actually be
his. In essence this book deals with a restricted area of the lan-
guage at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth
century. It attempts to be descriptive within those limits. There
are inconsistencies in usage and failures of expression in the canon,
whether they are attributable to Shakespeare or not. There is no
assumption here that whatever is found in the canon is ‘right’,
but mostly the usage is described without reference to whether it
is good or bad grammar – concepts which Shakespeare would not
have found easy to understand.
The language of Shakespeare is a topic to which literary scholars
pay lip-service, though they rarely pay as much attention to it
as it deserves. It is naturally easy for language scholars to as-
sume that the subject is more important than anything else since
it forms the foundation of Shakespeare’s meaning. Perhaps in-
evitably both sides adopt rather opposed positions in any such
debate, as van Peer has stated:
Linguistic analysis has an in-built tendency to overestimate the
importance of linguistic form, and to underestimate the influence
of context (except in some areas, such as pragmatics and dis-
course analysis). Literary studies, on the other hand, tend to
the opposite, i.e. to underestimate the importance of form and
to overestimate the contribution of contextual information (except
in some areas, such as stylistics and poetics). It is not difficult
to see how an overemphasis on either of the necessary ingre-
dients may easily lead to one-sided or ill-founded interpretations.
(van Peer 1988: 8)