Think On My Words: Exploring Shakespeare's Language

by David Crystal

‘You speak a language that I understand not.’ Hermione’s words to Leontes in The Winter’s Tale are likely to ring true with many people reading or watching Shakespeare’s plays today. For decades, people have been studying Shakespeare’s life and times, and in recent years there has been a renewed surge of interest into aspects of his language. So how can we better understand Shakespeare? How did he manipulate language to produce such an unrivaled body of work, which has enthralled generations both as theater and as literature? David Crystal addresses these and many other questions in this lively and original introduction to Shakespeare’s language. Covering in turn the five main dimensions of language structure - writing system, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and conversational style - the book shows how examining these linguistic ‘nuts and bolts’ can help us achieve a greater appreciation of Shakespeare’s linguistic creativity.

Genres: Shakespeare, Language, Linguistics, Nonfiction, History, Literary Criticism, Drama

266 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 2008

About the author

David Crystal works from his home in Holyhead, North Wales, as a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster. Born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland in 1941, he spent his early years in Holyhead. His family moved to Liverpool in 1951, and he received his secondary schooling at St Mary's College. He read English at University College London (1959-62), specialised in English language studies, did some research there at the Survey of English Usage under Randolph Quirk (1962-3), then joined academic life as a lecturer in linguistics, first at Bangor, then at Reading. He published the first of his 100 or so books in 1964, and became known chiefly for his research work in English language studies, in such fields as intonation and stylistics, and in the application of linguistics to religious, educational and clinical contexts, notably in the development of a range of linguistic profiling techniques for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. He held a chair at the University of Reading for 10 years, and is now Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. These days he divides his time between work on language and work on internet applications.

source: http://www.davidcrystal.com/

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Crystal is a modern-day alchemist when it comes to understanding how the English language was and how it continues to change, and I especially appreciate his work on semantic web technology, helping the Internet to understand us humans better. Of course, that both he and his son are fascinated by Shakespeare's rich language is the main reason why reading his catalogue of words, phrases and punctuation felt like a breeze when in any other textbook I'd still be struggling to find enlightenment. Crystal begins with dispelling a hew myth's about Shakespeare's language, the biggest and most daunting for teachers is that it is too hard to teach. Not so much in this book as in Ben's Shakespeare on Toast is their idea of an Original Pronunciation (OP) worked out, in contrast to the affected Received Pronunciation (RP) that makes it next to impossible for students to understand actors on the stage. Not that I needed such a cheat-sheet, I'd like to think that I have developed an ear for the iambic pentameter over the past twenty years of reading and watching the play (poems are still a bit wordy, I find) but I really appreciate being able to read Think on My Words before my first ever visit to the Globe Theatre, the authentic centre of world in London. There was even a point, when I was enjoying a Hereford beef burger upstairs in the Swan that I thought I saw David Crystal dining with some philologist colleagues before the press viewing of Taming of the Shrew (on July 4th, 2012) - there it has been marked down, and when the Semantic Web kicks in, I suspect that I'll be hearing from Mr. Crystal himself on whether it be yea or nay :-D

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this book as well as I had hoped to as much of it is a rather dry analysis of Shakespeare's use of syntax, meter and other grammar. However, as with several recent books, the last chapter lifted it from the 2-2.5 region to a 3-star rating.

(As an aside, the author has elected to represent quotes in their orignal Elizabethan spelling and orthography. Thus, one must struggle through By vs perform'd before. Most dearly welcome, / And your faire Princesse oh: alas, / I los a couple, that 'twixt Heauen and Earth / might thus haue stood..., and so on. I understand Crystal's purpose -- he's trying to show that the original language is not that far from modern English -- but it is hard to read for the unpracticed eye and it unnecessarily (I think) slows the reader down.

In terms of "translating" Shakespeare into English, I'm more sympathetic to John McWhorter's view (cf., The Power of Babel that we shouldn't be afraid to modernize at least those problematic passages that only an EngLit scholar could interpret. As he points out, when Shakespeare is translated into French or Japanese, the translator doesn't use the Parisian dialect of the Sun King's Court or the Japanese of the Tokugawa Shogunate, they use the modern form.)

For me, the most interesting parts of the book were the first chapters, where Crystal discusses Shakespeare's influence on English and the textual history of the plays. In regards to influence, Shakespeare is not the "inventor" of modern English, though he's often the first citation in the OED for a lot of coinages. The Bard's genius lay in how he used the language both stylistically and to expose the human "soul."

The textual tradition is also fascinating. The "definitive" First Folio was only published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death. Before then, quartos of various quality were published from 1594-1622. Ultimately, it's impossible to know exactly what was said on the Globe's stage. In illustration, Crystal reprints three versions of Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy:

First Folio:
To be, or not to be, that is the Question: / Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer / The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune, / Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe / No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end / The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes / That Flesh is heyre too? / 'Tis a consummation

"Good" quarto version (1604):
To be, or not to be, that is the question, / Whether tis nobler in the minde to suffer / The slings and arrowes of outragious fortune, / Or to take Armes against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing, end them, to die to sleepe / No more, and by a sleepe, to say we end / The hart-ake, and the thousand naturall shocks / That flesh is heire to; tis a consummation

"Bad" quarto version (1603):
To be, or not to be, I there's the point, / To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all: / No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes, / For in that dreame of death, when wee awake, / And borne before an euerlasting Iudge, / From whence no passenger euer retur'nd, / The vndiscouered country, at whose sight / The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd. (pp. 24-5)

The rest of the book, as I wrote above, is taken up with a rather dry dissection of the plays but Crystal's concluding paragraph perfectly spells out why Shakespeare continues as the nearly undisputed masterof the English language and its use: In his (Shakespeare's) best writing, we see how to make a language work to that it conveys the effects we want it to. Above all, Shakespeare shows us how to dare to do things with language. Dare we invent words to express the inexpressible? We dare.... Dare we manipulate parts-of-speech as if they were pieces of plasticine? We dare.... Dare we take the norms of (meter) or word-order and make them do our bidding? We dare.... In a Shakespearean master-class, we would receive an object-lesson in the effective bending and breaking of rules. (p. 233)

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good source book if you are teaching Shakespeare, but not one I'd recommend taking on a trip. I bounced around in it, finding interesting places and skipping others, and believe it would be better if I used it to prepare to teach students about Shakespeare. Still, since language interests me, I found parts interesting, especially where the author debunks myths about Shakespeare and language, including the fact that there is some place in the U.S. where an isolated group of people still speak a version of English like Shakespeare's.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, though weighted toward the lingual technician. I confess to skimming some chapters that I would have read were I more in a historical-lexigraphical mode. But such is not the case at this point in time.

[Amanda McGarvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thorough and well-researched, but not what I expected and a little to textbook-like for me. It's worth reading if you're interested in the syntax and style of Shakespeare or if you're teaching Shakespeare.

[maia · Rating 2 out of 5]

David Crystal is kind of a hack to be honest. pretty surface level + easy to find flaws in if you know where to look. if you need guidance on Shakespeare's language you're much better off just doing some quick searches on folger.edu. not terrible though, definitely has its uses

[Jenna Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful companion to the plays I read for my undergraduate Shakespeare class!

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book not about acting that all actors should read.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Normally, I love a book about the craft of poetry -- a focused, exploration of what makes the language of a poet work (or not work). So I picked up this book with some enthusiasm. But I was disappointed.

The theme of this book is that Shakespeare is not hard, but its exasperated tone and flippant disregard for the difficulties and challenges of Shakespeare undermined the book.

So, is Shakespeare “hard”? Yes and no.

If you define “hard” as not immediately accessible, unfamiliar and unconventional (by today’s standards), then yes, Shakespeare is hard. But I prefer to call him playful. No rule of grammar, poetry, language, spelling or punctuation is unbreakable. Everything is in play.

But is he understandable? Yes. A relatively well-read person can understand what he is saying. You won’t understand every word or every passage (I don't), but you’ll know what’s going on.

This book, though, tells people that Shakespeare is easy and makes perfect sense. It creates a false sense that the problem is solely with the reader and not the text. Dear reader, let me assure you that it’s not you. Shakespeare has (many) lines that have baffled literary geniuses for centuries. We simply don’t know what he was trying to say. This might be because the text was corrupted, or Shakespeare was so busy that a number of his tens of thousands of lines were not completely thought through.

There are many other reasons for the challenges Shakespeare presents -- his complicated, metaphorical language, his rich and varied use of rhetoric, his playfulness (as noted above) and the basic changes in our language over the past 400 years.

So, is Shakespeare hard to read? Yes. But he didn’t write to be read. He wrote to be spoken “tripplingly” upon the stage, and it doesn’t matter if you hear every word or understand every utterance -- the emotional impact is clear and unambiguous.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the course of my recent informal Shakespeare studies I wanted to read about his language so I could access his plays without depending so much on footnotes. I am currently reading Frank Kermode´s Shakespeare Language, and I am enjoying it a lot, but the volume turned out to be focused on literary criticism instead of linguistics. That´s why coming across Crystal´s book has been very useful.
This is a linguistic guide that tackles Shakespeare´s language bit by bit: orthography, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntaxis and so on... It is aimed at the general public, so there are explanations, for instance, about what the different parts of speech are, but if you have a good knowledge of English grammar you can easily skip those paragraphs.
I took lots of notes and the book is quite informative, for instance, about vocabulary and false friends. Just what I had been looking for.

N.B. It seems that David Crystal´s son is an actor and there is a useful video in OpenLearn (The Open University´s sample resources) where they demonstrate OP, Original Pronunciation. It is a good auditory complement to the explanations in the book.

[Jess Neuner · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a common misconception that Shakespearean English is Old English. And to any secondary school student who's had to struggle through trying to read Romeo and Juliet aloud in class, I can understand how it would certainly seem that way. But both Shakespeare's English and the English that we speak today are considered Modern English and Crystal takes the time to discuss this, debunking some of the more common misconceptions about how different Shakespeare's English is from ours.

I really enjoyed this book. I especially enjoyed the section about the Original Pronunciation. This book is how I found out about the OP performances at the Globe in London (although I wasn't able to actually attend one - though I did ask the guide about them when I was there). Some of the sections may be less interesting to those who aren't as interested in linguistics as I am, and this book is not a Shakespearean English dictionary, so those who are looking to understand the meaning of Shakespearean words and phrases may be disappointed, although there is a list of words whose meanings have changed between when the plays were written and now at the end of the book.

[Zachary Waltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A helpful reference for Shakespeare. Crystal begins by dispelling a few myths about Shakespeare and then focusing on linguistic features of Shakespeare. The latter can be summarized by the following: at the time of the printing of the quartos and folios, there was no standardization of spelling or punctuation such as commas, apostrophes, exclamation points, capitalization (other than at the start of a sentence). Furthermore, the printing procedure was prone to error and the editors did not have the training they are expected to have to today. Finally, Shakespeare didn’t oversee the printing of any of his plays. So, there is much of the original that does need to be edited when presented it to the modern reader.

Trivia: "The concept of 'correct spelling', with its associated social sanctions, did not clearly emerge until the eighteenth century. Before that, people unselfconsciously spelled their names in different ways."

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read but I too was a little disappointed by this book. However, this might be because I didn't heed the title: 'think on my words' does not have to mean 'understand my words', which was what I was expecting. In my opinion, this is more of an assessment of his language or a description of his linguistic style, and in so many cases I was left wondering, so what does it all mean? I wish Crystal had given his opinion as to what Shakespeare might have been saying. Nonetheless, it's both an interesting and enjoyable read (written in Crystal's well organised and easy to understand English), and I did learn a great deal about the nuts and bolts of Shakespearean language, but I just felt the same ground could have been covered with less linguistic details/examples and a few less pages.

[Karalee Nice · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is something that I really like about David Crystal and the way he makes linguistics fun, and this book was no exception. I suppose I was expecting something different from this book, but the depth and intricate way he examined Shakespeare was a tad nuanced. As a future educator in Language Arts, I might have been looking for a magic key that I could use to unlock the mystery of Shakespeare for all students. Though this book did not offer me this (and not entirely a bad thing), it does share a few nuggets that can be used; i.e. Shakespeare's vocabulary was nearly a 1/3 of our Modern English, but it was his choice of words that he had that becomes the collection we marvel at today. I will continue to read Crystal's books - thanks Kerry for introducing him to me, because I do enjoy his approach to language and how I can use his nuggets of genius in the future.

[Stephen Hull · Rating 3 out of 5]

As long as David Crystal wants to crank them out I'll be happy to read them. This is a thorough explanation of everything you wanted to know about the English used by old Will by the man who, amongst other things, consulted on the Globe's OP (original pronunciation) version of Romeo and Juliet. While it feels a little bit like an elementary stats textbook at times, it's full of fascinating and at times surprising nuggets of information. Anyone who loves English and/or Shakespeare will get a kick out of this one. It's a great (and I mean this in the most complimentary way) top-of-the-toilet book.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not into Shakespeare, but I am into linguistics, so this book provides a great opportunity to familiarize myself with his work in a way that relates to the things that I know and study.
It's almost like a textbook, but Crystal's accessible style and evident passion for the subject makes this book a fascinating and enjoyable read.

[Philjones62 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable little book. Measured analysis across what this layman found interesting with early modern english and Shakespeare's place in it.

He did enjoy dispelling some myths, which is always useful.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not the interesting narrative I thought it might be, this is pretty much a single step up from a textbook, full of dry recitations and facts and figures.

[Helen Mears · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just loved this book. I learnt lots of interesting things about Shakespeare's language which is all I wanted to do!

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found notes to chuckle about even in this pretty academic book of David Crystal (for ex. hour/whore OP pronunciation). Thou/you thing is pretty clear to me now (i was wondering why Russian language kept the pair and English did not). Ordered a couple of more Crystal's books from my local library.