Shakespeare's English Is NOT That Complicated

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Professor David Crystal and his son Ben at Hay Festival 2015  

 

Photo: Jay Williams

By Hannah Furness, Arts Correspondent

7:00AM BST 31 May 2015

2 Comments

 

Studying Shakespeare for exams is made far more confusing than it ought to be for a generation which has unwittingly adopted the Bard's own language devices, one of the world's leading experts on linguistics has suggested. 

Professor David Crystal said only a tiny selection of the million words making up the canon of William Shakespeare were markedly different to the language of 2015, making it much easier to understand than many people think. 

Young people today, he said, had even adopted some of Shakespeare's own linguistic traits without realising, with the Facebook generation creating the word "unfriend" just as the playwright used "unsex, unsound or uncurse".

Prof Crystal, who has written a Shakespeare dictionary with his actor son Ben, added the huge number of notes accompanying plays on the exam syllabus gave the impression that the text was far more complicated than is necessary.

Speaking at Hay Festival, Ben Crystal added even he had disliked Shakespeare at school, pointing out the curriculum requirement to "study" it rather than learn to enjoy it gave children the wrong impression.

"You open one of the typical editions of Shakespeare at Act 1, Scene 1, Page 1, and there are just two lines of text and all of the rest of the page is notes," said Prof Crystal, who has written and edited more than 100 books on language.





 ^{A likeness of William Shakespeare (Alamy)}
 
"If you're looking at that, Shakespeare must be difficult then mustn't he? Otherwise what are all these notes doing?

"And so when you're looking at Shakespeare on the page, certainly you get the impression that Shakespeare is different. Almost a different language from the present day.

"But in actual fact it isn't as different as all that. It's early modern English, not late Middle English.

"When you actually go through all the words in Shakespeare - and there are nearly a million words in Shakespeare - there are only just around 20,000 different words altogether.

"And when you go through all of those and compare them with the modern day, for words in Shakespeare that are different in meaning from the words you and I speak today, the answer is surprisingly small.

"Only five per cent are really, really different."


 

^{Professor David Crystal, speaking at Hay Festival (Jay Williams)}

Of those, he said, around 1,000 are "false friends" such as the word naughty, which appear to be familiar but have a slightly different meaning.

He told an audience Shakespeare was particularly fond of using the prefix "un", such as "unshout", "uncurse" and Lady Macbeth requesting: "Unsex me".

"Leave it like that and it's a different language" said Prof Crystal. "But point out that 'friend' has now become 'unfriend' and the kids go 'oh yeah, that's right'.

He added he had recently heard other examples in modern life, including "unChinese-y", "unpoliceman-life" and "unyoung".

Ben, who has performed 'original pronunciation' versions of Shakespeare to show how the first audiences understood it, said students should be taught to love the plays, then introduced to the linguistic tools to get the most out of them.




^{Ben Crystal (Jay Williams)}
 
"I didn't like Shakespeare when I was in school and it didn't make sense to me until I started acting it," he said.

"I don't like the idea that the curriculum says that our younglings must have studied two Shakespeare plays by the age of 14.

"Shakespeare started not as a man of literature but as a man of the stage: he was a playwright rather than a novelist or author.

"Where in the curriculum or our school studies are we giving them a chance to play with Shakespeare? Or learn to love Shakespeare?"

The Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary is out now.

Rich Folks Seats at the Restored Globe in London.

Globe, London

Clarification of Yet More of Shakespeare Risque Humor

Bawdy Bard: Shakespeare Play's Lost Lines Reveal Sexual Mocking

by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   May 05, 2015 07:03am ET

In the Shakespeare play Don Armado, a bragging Spanish nobleman who is hopelessly in love, tells his page, a boy named Moth, to "Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing."	Moth's reply is one word "Concolinel," which makes no sense. Credit: Bodleian First Folio, CC Attrib 3.0 unported View full size image

A lost section of "Love's Labour's Lost," a comedy written by William Shakespeare, has been rediscovered, revealing a song mocking the sexual inadequacy of one of the play's male characters.

The rediscovery of this section did not come from a long-lost manuscript, but rather through the analysis of a mysterious one-word line in the play that has long mystified scholars.

Lovesick Nobleman
 

Written in the 1590s, the play was performed before Queen Elizabeth I. In the play, a man named Ferdinand, the King of Navarre (in northern Spain), establishes a law banning men in his court from having sex, or even meeting with a woman, for three years while he and his retainers undertake scholarly studies. Ferdinand believes the studies will be more successful if the people around him abstain from sex.

Not long after the law is in place, Costard, one of Ferdinand's subjects, gets caught with a woman named Jaquenetta. Spanish nobleman Don Adriano de Armado — who has a high opinion of himself and his sexual abilities — imprisons Costard. Armado himself falls hopelessly in love with Jaquenetta, freeing Costard on condition that he set Armado up with Jaquenetta. [The 6 Most Tragic Love Stories in History]

At the beginning of Act III, the lovesick Armado asks his servant, a page named Moth, to "Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing."

This is where the mystery begins. When Shakespeare's play was published, the only line that follows is Moth saying the word "Concolinel."

What Shakespeare meant by "Concolinel" has been a long-standing mystery. The word "song" is written at the start of the third act suggesting Moth is supposed to sing a song related to "Concolinel."
"Moth's solitary word has generally been taken as representing a song, now lost, for which the lyrics are not given in the play," wrote Ross Duffin, a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, in an article recently published in the journal Shakespeare Quarterly.

Now, after 400 years, a researcher has found that "Concolinel" is a corrupted version of the French song "Qvand Colinet." Shown, part of the song when it was reprinted in 1887.
Credit: public domain, digitized by Google

View full size image

Duffin found that "Concolinel" is actually a misspelling of a French song called Qvand Colinet, which was popular around the time Shakespeare lived. The song refers to a penis that is "too soft and too small," and would have been sung by Moth to mock Armado's sexual inadequacy. Armado, who doesn'tunderstand the song, doesn't realize that his own servant is making fun of him.

"Don Armado was being mocked by the use of this song. He thinks of himself as being so gallant," Duffin told Live Science in an interview. "Don Armado doesn't realize that he's being pilloried, and so that would have been the joke."

The entire song may not have been sung when the play was performed.

Rediscovery

Duffin, a music professor, has written extensively about the songs from Shakespeare's plays, publishing a book about his research in 2004 called "Shakespeare's Songbook."

In his plays, Shakespeare refers to many popular songs in his time, Duffin told Live Science. Some of these songs were so popular their lyrics didn't have to be published.

Part of the problem with the song in "Love's Labour's Lost" is that Shakespeare gave only its name, and those charged with publishing Shakespeare's plays appear to have mangled its French spelling.
Duffin's research revealed several lines of evidence that indicate that this is Shakespeare's lost song. Aside from the similarities in spelling, the song fits in well with the dialogue. Moth is a young servant who regularly finds ways to make fun of his inept master Armado, and this song plays into this tone.

Also, after Moth sings this song, and Armado asks him to perform a task, Moth asks Armado whether he will win over Jaquenetta with a "French Braule" (braule being a type of song), indicating the song was French.

Additionally, the song lyrics also appear to include the word Jaquenetta. "Without much of a stretch, the repeated line 'Et sa belle iaquette' could be construed as 'And his pretty Jaquenetta,'" wrote Duffin in the article.

Duffin's research indicates this song was popular in Shakespeare's time, and English performers were making their way back and forth from England to the European continent bringing songs back with them.

This song "seems to have been something that was popular probably in the late 16th and in the early 17th century," Duffin said. It was first published as part of an anthology of popular songs in 1602 but would have been known before then.

Duffin found that the song may have been sung to the tune of Sellenger's Round (examplesof this tune can be heard on YouTube), but this is uncertain.

Reaction to the discovery

Chantal Schütz, a professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, who has published articles on this play, believes the song is likely correct.

"I find the arguments very convincing as concerns the text of the song, and there is ample evidence that songs traveled back and forth between France and England just like other commodities, material or immaterial," she wrote in an email, adding that it may not have been sung to the tune of Sellenger's Round (music for a dance).

It's possible that the newly rediscovered section of the play could be performed as early as this summer at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, although this has yet to be confirmed.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Homeschooling Mom: Why Shakespeare is Great

                   What's So Great About Shakespeare?

"His grasp of the human condition is perhaps unmatched in literature."

Terry W. Glaspey

As a young mother, I wasn't convinced that Shakespeare was worth studying-at least, not by children. After all, his plays had bawdy jokes, frequent love-making and his personal life had some serious flaws. However, over time, as I studied Shakespeare's plays and researched his influence upon the English-speaking world, I began to feel that my children would have quite a gap in their understanding of our world if I neglected Shakespeare. I would have to be careful how I approached it, guarding their little hearts while introducing them to yet another medium that revealed the nature of mankind. Here are...

Some reasons why we study Shakespeare

He is responsible for adding some 2000 words and phrases to the English language-examples include: gloomy, lonely, majestic, reliance, hurry, leapfrog, excellent. Tongue-tied, budge an inch, seen better days, fair play, lord and master, foul play, dead as a doornail, my own flesh and blood, set your teeth on edge, without rhyme or reason, laughing stock, didn't sleep a wink and if the truth were known. (more here)

His plays provide a comprehensive and thoughtful look at the human condition, dealing with the virtues of men as well as their vices- love, faithfulness, greed, honesty, selfishness, mercy, lust, power and justice are just a few. As we study his plays we understand ourselves better.

His inspiration comes from historical events, mythological tales, and Biblical passages. He often refers to Christ, his teachings and other Biblical characters and morals. All of these sources are a vital part of our history.

His plays deal with the consequences of sin and yet Shakespeare is very liberal in showing mercy. I believe this is a VERY important theme in his works. Macbeth, although one of his darkest plays, reveals the power of unconfessed sin and it's ability to destroy not just one, but many lives. It also exposes the dangers of witchcraft.

His plays provide rich fodder for meaningful discussions.

His poetry is profound. Shakespeare and the sonnet go hand in hand.

His plays have intricate plots with many twists and turns, providing an excellent exercise in logic.

They are thoroughly entertaining and stimulate the imagination.

Merchant of Venice The Tempest King Lear

(Click to enlarge)

Caveats

Shakespeare does misbehave at times, but fortunately, the Elizabethan English veils such innuendos quite well and they go by unnoticed by the children. For this reason, it is better if you do not use modern versions of the plays.

I have been told that not all of his plays are suitable for young people so you will have to be careful and do a little research. If you look at AO's suggestions, you should be safe.

The words 'lovers' and 'love-making' are frequently used but this did not have the same meaning back then as it does today. It referred to the attraction and not the act between two people. I do not let my children read books about boys and girls 'in love' with each other. Shakespeare, however, does not fall in this category because the characters are adults and the stories are often unrealistic and very silly. They cause my children to scoff at the nonsense rather than produce an attraction for the opposite sex.

Shakespeare's plays were obviously not written for young children. However, we all know that most high school-aged students today do not enjoy studying Shakespeare. I believe this is partly due to the difficult language. Teachers immediately expect understanding, enjoyment and analysis to occur in a single lesson. The student did not have enough time to develop an appreciation for the stories. I feel it is a good idea to introduce children to the general stories using expurgated versions adapted especially for the child mind. In this way, the children will have developed an understanding of the stories and an appreciation for them by the time they are old enough to explore the important themes within them in greater detail. If you read early classic children's literature, you will notice that children were introduced to Shakespeare while young using Nesbit's and Lamb's stories. It was common to name a pet after Greek or Shakespearean heroes. Elizabeth Enright's books are a good example of this. Educators and parents evidently recognized the value of introducing the Bard to children. They followed these preparatory steps not only with Shakespeare, but other classic authors as well.

Taming of the Shrew

In our Home
When my children reach 7 or 8 yrs of age, I read aloud  Nesbit's  Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare once a week, taking two weeks per tale. I divide a dry erase board into about 9 large grid squares and draw stick figures of each main character as they are introduced. I write the name of the play in the first box. My children do the same on their clipboards by dividing a piece of paper into squares and copying me. I write the name of each character above each stick figure. My young writers only write the first letter of each person's name in each of their boxes.

Often, for a creative narration, the children retell the story (just part of it) using paper dolls or popsicle sticks with the figures puttied onto them. Here is another idea.

We also read Shakespeare, Bard of Avon together. This is a wonderful, simple, yet thorough introduction to his life and works.

As we continue the book in third grade, they make a drawn narration of the tale and label it. We watch Shakespeare's Animated Tales too, but only AFTER we have finished the story.

We usually act out a Shakespeare play once a year as well and invite our close friends and family to watch the production. Our family has made some beautiful memories this way.

Approximately ten or eleven years of age, my children watch the play online. With their own personal copies of the play in book form open in front them, they follow along. I try to make sure that at least two children are doing this together to make it more fun. My daughters love to watch these plays (if link doesn't work try here) and laugh over the numerous jokes housed in archaic language. This takes twelve weeks to finish as I only allow about 15 minutes per week for this. We don't analyze, just enjoy and of course, spontaneous natural discussions occur too. They usually narrate to me afterwards.

By high school, my children are thoroughly acquainted with several Shakespearean plays and enjoy reading and talking about them. They are now ready for the next step, which involves analysis. Each student on her own reads and studies the plays in Brightest Heaven of Invention and then watches some of the movies that the author recommends. This is done slowly over several years.

Notice that I am not the main teacher for most of this. After careful research and listening to the advice of people I respect, I find sources I feel that I can trust and am allowing them to do the bulk of the teaching. I simply provide the resources and gently guide occasional discussions. My children are mostly self taught.

Hamlet.................. Cymbeline .................. As You Like It ............... Richard III

Recommended Resources
http://www.berith.org/hsres/shak/shak01.html Why study Shakespeare?
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/510F99/510Cal.html A Biblical online Shakespeare Course
http://absoluteshakespeare.com/index.htm Absolute Shakespeare- Summaries, quotes, biography, plays and more.
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/ Spark notes- good summaries
http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/shake.htm Complete plays, free
http://karenswhimsy.com/shakespearesplays.shtm Colorful Illustrations

"Shakespeare was as great a philosopher as he was a poet. That's what he set out to teach us in every line. His characters 'Leontes,' 'Othello,' 'Lear,' 'Prospero,' 'Brutus,' demonstrate the same thing: that a man's reason will try to bring infallible proofs to any notion that a person decides to take up. There's no shortcut and no way around it, the art of life takes a long time to learn."

Charlotte Mason

*article edited Feb 2010

Why is Shakspeare So Enduringly Popular?

Why Study Shakespeare?

The Reasons Behind Shakespeare's Influence and Popularity

Ben Jonson anticipated Shakespeare’s dazzling future when he declared, "He was not of an age, but for all time!" in the preface to the First Folio. While most people know that Shakespeare is, in fact, the most popular dramatist and poet the Western world has ever produced, students new to his work often wonder why this is so. The following are the top four reasons why Shakespeare has stood the test of time.

1) Illumination of the Human Experience

Shakespeare’s ability to summarize the range of human emotions in simple yet profoundly eloquent verse is perhaps the greatest reason for his enduring popularity. If you cannot find words to express how you feel about love or music or growing older, Shakespeare can speak for you. No author in the Western world has penned more beloved passages. Shakespeare's work is the reason John Bartlett compiled the first major book of familiar quotations. Here are some examples of Shakespeare's most popular passages:

• The seven ages of man
• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
• We band of brothers
• The green-eyed monster
• What's in a name?
• Now is the winter of our discontent
• If music be the food of love
• Beware the ides of March
• We are such stuff as dreams are made on
• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
• To be, or not to be: that is the question


2) Great Stories

Marchette Chute, in the Introduction to her famous retelling of Shakespeare’s stories, summarizes one of the reasons for Shakespeare’s immeasurable fame:

William Shakespeare was the most remarkable storyteller that the world has ever known. Homer told of adventure and men at war, Sophocles and Tolstoy told of tragedies and of people in trouble. Terence and Mark Twain told comedic stories, Dickens told melodramatic ones, Plutarch told histories and Hand Christian Andersen told fairy tales. But Shakespeare told every kind of story – comedy, tragedy, history, melodrama, adventure, love stories and fairy tales – and each of them so well that they have become immortal. In all the world of storytelling he has become the greatest name. (Stories from Shakespeare, 11)

Shakespeare's stories transcend time and culture. Modern storytellers continue to adapt Shakespeare’s tales to suit our modern world, whether it be the tale of Lear on a farm in Iowa, Romeo and Juliet on the mean streets of New York City, or Macbeth in feudal Japan.


3) Compelling Characters

Shakespeare invented his share of stock characters, but his truly great characters – particularly his tragic heroes – are unequalled in literature, dwarfing even the sublime creations of the Greek tragedians. Shakespeare’s great characters have remained popular because of their complexity; for example, we can see ourselves as gentle Hamlet, forced against his better nature to seek murderous revenge. For this reason Shakespeare is deeply admired by actors, and many consider playing a Shakespearean character to be the most difficult and most rewarding role possible.

4) Ability to Turn a Phrase

Many of the common expressions now thought to be clichés were Shakespeare's creations. Chances are you use Shakespeare's expressions all the time even though you may not know it is the Bard you are quoting. You may think that fact is "neither here nor there", but that's "the short and the long of it." Bernard Levin said it best in the following quote about Shakespeare's impact on our language:

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise - why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I were dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut, tut! for goodness' sake! what the dickens! but me no buts - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare. (The Story of English, 145)

For a list of authors who have named their books after lines from Shakespeare, see Shakespeare's Impact on Other Writers.

References

Chute, Marchette. Stories from Shakespeare. New York: World Publishing Company, 1956.
Levin, Bernard. Quoted in The Story of English. Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. Viking: 1986).

How to cite this article:
Mabillard, Amanda. Why Study Shakespeare? Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/whystudyshakespeare.html >.

Few College Require Shakespeare for English Majors

Report finds few colleges have a Shakespeare requirement

Photo by: 

The Associated Press

This image released by Boneau/Bryan Brown shows Brian D'Arcy James, left, and Christian Borle during a performance of "Something Rotten," in New York. (Joan Marcus/Boneau/Bryan Brown via AP)

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Associated Press

NEW YORK — As Shakespeare would say, "We have seen better days."

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has found that less than 8 percent of the nation's top universities require English majors to take a course focused on Shakespeare.

The study, "The Unkindest Cut: Shakespeare in Exile 2015," found that only four of the nation's 52 highest-ranked universities and colleges by U.S. News & World Report have a Shakespeare requirement.

Michael Poliakoff, vice president of policy for the Washington, D.C.-based council and lead author of the study, called the findings "a terrible tragedy."

"It is with sadness that we view this phenomenon," he said by phone. "It really does make us grieve for the loss to a whole generation of young people who would look to a college or university for guidance about what is great and what is of the highest priority."

The report was released Thursday on what is believed to be Shakespeare's birthday in 1564. It comes a day after the new musical "Something Rotten!" opened on Broadway that mocks The Bard as a rump-shaking word thief.

The schools that still ask English majors to study the Bard are Harvard University, the University of California-Berkeley, Wellesley College and the U.S. Naval Academy.

The report notes that English majors are often future English teachers and many will graduate without studying in depth the language's greatest writer.

"The Bard, who is the birthright of the English speaking world, has no seat of honor," the report says. "A degree in English without serious study of Shakespeare is like a major in Greek literature without the serious study of Homer."

But William Gleason, the chair of the Department of English at Princeton University, said it's impossible for students in his department to ignore The Bard. Learning about Shakespeare is a requirement in an introductory course that all English majors take and all theater majors must take a Shakespeare class to graduate. Plus, any examination of social issues inevitably leads back to Shakespeare. "He was usually there first," he said.

"He is such a vital presence in everything we teach, even if he's not the sole focus of a course," said Gleason, who specializes in American literature and culture. "Shakespeare exerts such an influence that it would be a mistake to think we could ever dismiss him."

The report argues that many colleges are downplaying the classics in favor of survey courses that introduce various styles of thought, such as Duke University's "Creatures, Aliens and Cyborgs."
"Rather than studying major literary works in depth, students are taught the rationale for and applications of critical approaches that are heavily influenced by theories of race, class, gender, and sexuality," it said.

The report urges trustees, alumni, donors and administrators to stop "a vicious circle of cultural illiteracy" by reviewing curriculums and re-evaluating what students need to learn.

"There is more common sense outside the academy and it's important for these voices to pull us back to the things that are right in front of us for us to cherish and to grow from," Poliakoff said.
The council calls itself is "an independent nonprofit committed to academic freedom, excellence and accountability at America's colleges and universities."
___
Online: http://www.goacta.org