Language and Literature

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The Literary Language of Shakespeare

N. F. Blake
Language and Literature 1993 2: 137
DOI: 10.1177/096394709300200206

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 BOOK REVIEWS I37

The literary Language of Shakespeare

by SS. Hussey, 2nd edn, 1992, Longman, London, pp. x + 254, ISBN 0 582 08770 8 (pb)
This is the second edition of a book first published in 1982. It is essentially the same
book, though some changes have been made. Section headings which were found only in
some chapters in the first edition have been extended through each chapter. Additions to
take note of some recent scholarship have been introduced, though these are few. Mostly
they are of a single sentence or paragnph. The majority are fitted in quite neatly, but the
addition of a sentence after the first quotation on page 34 makes the referent of ‘Another
possibility’, which opens the next sentence, ambiguous. The two major additions are a
section on ‘Sonnets and Soliloquies’ in Chapter 8 and the discussion of the style of four
plays (Heirry V , As You Like It, blacbetk and The Wiuter’sTale) which forms Chapter 9
and replaces the original final chapter. Even in this chapter the discussion of T/JCWirrter’s
Tale had occurred in the first edition much earlier in the book, from where it has been
removed and rewritten to be included in the last chapter.
There are some changes which one might have expected, but which have not been
introduced. Although Hussey claims (p. 241) that ‘The standard edition must now be’ the
W’elIs/Taylor Oxford edition, he has not changed the quotations to match this edition since
he continues to quote from the New Penguin editions. It is true that he says that he has
checked ‘difficult readings’ against the Oxford text (p. 9). This hardly seems satisfactory
for a book on style since difficult readings are not necessarily the most important; and
there is no discussion of any difficulties in the footnotes. One might in any case question
whether any modem edition is appropriate for a book on language since one will have to
approach the language through a modem editor’s eyes instead of through contemporary
ones. There has been some enlarging and updating of the bibliography, but many works
that might have been included are not there. Although Abbott’s Slzakespcarean Granrnzar
is described as ‘still useful’ (p. 1 IS), it is not in the bibliography; although there is a
section on puns, Rubinstein’s dictionary of sexual puns (1984) is not found there either. A
useful discussion of the discourse in Othello is found in hl. Coulthard’s An Introdrrctioii
fo Discoirrse Analysis (2nd edn 1985) and \V. Nash comments on the opening of Hamlet
in an article in Carter and Simpson’s Langirage, Discorrrse arid Literatiire (1989); neither
is in the bibliography. Books and articles about language are not well represented in the
bibliography.
The reason for the absence of works like those noted in the previous paragraph may
lie in the book’s approach. Although I am not clear in my own mind what ‘literary’ means
in the title The Literary Langzrage of S/zakespeare (for it seems to suggest that
non-literary language is not included) it is apparent that Hussey aims to stress the literary
rather than the larrgirage in his account of Shakespeare. His book is about Shakespeare’s
style without getting too involved in the minutiae of Shakespeare’s language. This can
lead to a lack of focus in the book, because one is not clear precisely what aspect of
Shakespeare’s language is being examined. Indeed, Shakespeare is not always the major
focus of some parts of the book which concentrates as much on his contemporaries as on
Shakespeare himself. There are chapters called ‘The new syntax’ and ‘Some uses of
grammar’, which suggest a more linguistic approach. One might have anticipated an
exposition on how this new syntax differed from that of the preceding age and how it
could be developed for stylistic purposes. Instead it turns out to be very much concerned
with rhetoric, which can hardly be said to be new for this age or even essentially
syntactic. And the chapter on some uses of grammar turns out to be more about how a

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I38 BOOK REVIEWS

few parts of the grammatical system undergoing diachronic change are open for
exploitation by authors at this time. Those developments in stylistics which have taken
place recently such as the appropriation of discourse analysis, politeness theory and other
aspects of pragmatics have had little impact on this book, although they could readily be
subsumed under the heading ‘literary language’.
Since it is largely new, it might be appropriate to concentrate on the last chapter which
‘offers a reading of some very different Shakespearean plays’ (p. 196). The readings are
not comprehensive, but illustrate how some points discussed earlier in the book may be
studied. The four plays are taken chronologically, Henry V (1599), As Yoii Like I t (1600),
Mucbrth (1606) and The Winter’s Tale (1611). Each play is treated separately in its own
section and no comparison among them is made. Equally no reason for their choice is
offered, apart from the fact that they are very different. It may be said that the section on
Henry V has very little detailed discussion of the play’s language and style. Most of it is
devoted either to the Chorus or to the development of Henry’s character. There is no
sense of how the various points discussed earlier in the book should or could be- applied,
for we are simply presented with certain aspects of the play’s style and development.
Each Chorus is commented on in turn. We are shown certain words in the opening one
and told that we ‘have begun at the highest level’ (p. 197). Chorus 2 is dismissed as ‘a
report rather than a visual representation’ (p. 198), and in Chorus 3 every line is said to
have its descriptive adjective. The emphasis is on the vocabulary rather than on other
aspects of language and there is a tendency to focus on the high style. But the
composition of the lexis is not tackled. Shakespeare is thought to have been strongly
influenced by Spenser in these choruses, for instance, and this might have been reflected
in the comments. Equally the nature of the various styles, high, middle and low, needs
more elucidation than it gets in this book (cf. pp. 70-71) if it is to form a central plank of
the discussion of lexis. This point emerges in the discussion of Henry, for the play is said
to exhibit all aspects of war, the heroism and the cowardice, and these call forth the high
and low styles. But this emphasis is rather distorting for the play as a whole, for it is in
danger of reducing the language to examples of one of the three styles. The variety of
dialects and registers is not given any attention and there is no discussion of the many
features of discourse in the text.
Within its own terms this book is successful, but one could suggest that those terms
are restrictive and hardly do justice to the breadth and variety of Shakespeare’s style. For
those who are mainly literary specialists it may be sufficient; readers of a journal like this
may well feel that this book does not go far enough.
N.F. Blake
University of Sheffield, UK

Competing Discourses: Perspective and Ideology in language

by David Lee, 1992, Longman, London, pp. xii + 210, ISBN 0 582 0780 4
David Lee has provided a textbook for undergraduates which focuses primarily on the
‘world-view’ of texts. There are still comparatively few coherent introductions to the
‘new’ stylistics - that is, discourse stylistics, and Lee’s book aims to fill a gap. Both
spoken and written texts are seen as sites where the tensions between ‘competing
discourses’ are realised. The emphasis is therefore on language as social process above all
else; or at least that is what Lee suggests.

Language and Liferatrim 1993 2 (2)

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