The

Shakespearian
linguistic legacy
If we want to understand Shakespeare's words, we need to consider his
pronunciation and grammar:

There are 2 ways of doing so :

The traditional way – using an editor’s notes to identify the language problems
(several limitations - no addition has space to explain all the linguistic points, some
can be limited).

The second way offers alternative deriving as it does from the way we learn a foreign
language. We should focus on EM English and on the norms of Shakespearean usage.
 Levels of
familiarity
From the Romeo and Juliet section, we can see that there're words which are
not widely used today, but we can understand them - Thee/thou/thy.

Shakespeare also used words that are difficult for us to understand but after
reading the entire passage, we usually know what is written in the given part
of the text.

Some of Shakespeare's texts require knowledge of French, such as in Henry V.

Language variety in
Early Modern
English Shakespeare gives us a picture of the range of social situations in Elizabethan
England which were linguistically distinctive. There was legal, religious and
courtly English.

There was also speech representing different degrees of formality, intimacy,

social class or regional origins – those language varieties can be seen in the
plays of EM English.
 Vocabulary

Many of Shakespeare’s words reflect the culture of the time, for

instance vocabulary of clothing – doublet, hose, casque, pike,
maintop.

But there are some new words which he created. For instance -
vasty meaning vast. Vasty is a new word which he created to make
the word suit the rhytm of the poetic line.
 Pronounciation

Metrical demands were a major influence on vocabulary formation, they

also affected choices in grammar.

Typical was usage of ending -th and -s in the present tense (doth, hath).
For Shakespeare, -s seemed to have conveyed more colloquial tone, -th
was more formal. Despite that in the poetry we find both endings. So, it
depends on the presence or the absence of the extra syllable.
Thank you
for your
attention