Reading Shakespeare’s Language

For many people today, reading Shakespeare’s language can be a problem – but it’s a problem that can be solved. Those who have studied Latin (or even French or German or Spanish) and those who are used to reading poetry will have little difficulty understanding the language of Shakespeare’s poetic drama. Others, however, need to develop the skills of untangling unusual sentence structures and recognizing and understanding poetic compressions, omissions, and workplay. And even those skilled in reading unusual sentence structures may have occasional trouble with Shakespeare’s words. Four hundred years of “static”- caused by changes in language and in life – intervene between his speaking and our hearing. Most of his immense vocabulary is still in use, but a few words of his words are not, and, worse, some of his words now have meanings quite different from those they had in the sixteenth century.

In the theater, most of these difficulties are solved by us by actors who study the language and articulate it for us so that the essential meaning is heard- or, when combined with the stage action, is at least felt. When reading on one’ s own, one must do what each actor does: go over the lines(often with a dictionary close at hand) until the puzzles are solved and the lines yield up their poetry and the characters speak in words and phrases that are, suddenly , rewarding and wonderfully memorable.

Romeo And Juliet( Folger Shakespeare Library)- William Shakespeare
Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine.
Reading Shakespeare's Language
Pages XVI,XVII.