Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion

by David Crystal, Ben Crystal, Stanley Wells (Preface)

A vital resource for scholars, students and actors, this book contains glosses and quotes for over 14,000 words that could be misunderstood by or are unknown to a modern audience. Displayed panels look at such areas of Shakespeare's language as greetings, swear-words and terms of address. Plot summaries are included for all Shakespeare's plays and on the facing page is a unique diagramatic representation of the relationships within each play.

Genres: Shakespeare, Reference, Nonfiction, Language, Literary Criticism, Literature, Linguistics

676 pages, Paperback

First published June 6, 2002

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

[Manybooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

REVIEW OF THE KINDLE FORMAT

Just to be perfectly clear, I have not actually read David Crystal’s Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion with any kind of thoroughness (but yes, I have indeed done a very cursory skim). Because while I do in fact own the Kindle edition of Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion and was also very much looking forward to perusing it in depth (and the various introductions do most definitely seem interesting and academically sound), after realising that in particular the massive well over five hundred pages long glossary section of Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion is in my humble opinion totally useless for reference work and as a language companion, since you cannot easily flip back and forth, as the Kindle format really does tend to make thumbing through and researching specific Shakespearean words pretty much impossible (or at least really really difficult), I am going to not bother continuing reading and will instead wait with regard to posting a content and thematics based review until I manage to actually obtain a traditional, dead tree, in other words a paper copy of Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion (where making use of David Crystal’s text with regard to reference and research will or at least should be much more reader friendly, where I will be able to leaf through the glossary section with considerably more reading ease and less frustration).

So my one star musings are in fact ONLY MEANT for the supremely unsuitable and research unfriendly Kindle format and I do certainly very much expect to be able to post a much more positive and laudatory content and theme based review when I finally do get to read Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion as a paper, as a traditional book (and indeed, I am also growing increasingly leery of and annoyed with downloading academically based books on my Kindle, for they far too often seem rather too expensive and with problematic and user unfriendly formats and set-ups).

[Lennart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ich wünschte, dass ich mir dieses Wörterbuch früher zugelegt hätte. Es hätte mir sehr viel Zeit erspart.
Uneingeschränkte Empfehlung und sollte man immer bei sich haben, sofern man ein Deepdive in Shakespeare unternimmt.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning book for the word lover who also happens to dote on Shakespeare. That would be me, and this book therefore brings me absurd amounts of browsing joy. I ran across it, in all places, in Elsinore, in Denmark, in the public library there which has a whole section devoted to Shakespeare. Reading a Shakespeare play is a tricky journey across shoals of words that appear familiar but actually mean something entirely different. Take, for example, the word "policy," which means one thing to us today, and quite another to Shakespeare, for whom it had a connotation of "intrigue" and "cunning." And then there are words that are simply unfamiliar to the modern reader, like "unhouseled" which means "without Communion," a much more severe problem then, if you were about to die, than it is for most today. And finally, there are words that you think you can guess at, like "cowl-staff" but which leave you a little uncertain. A must-have book for those moments when the Internet isn't close at hand, or you don't want to wade through lots of other meanings to find the Shakespearean one.

[Rowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top-notch reference resource for the Shakespeare nut, reader, scholar, dramaturg or actor. Whilst you will find all manners of annotations in any amount of well-collated 'Complete Shakespeare's' you won't find anything quite complete as this. It's a mammoth tome, but if you have the funds, the inclination or the space on your shelf (make sure their sturdy) I'd definitely recommend this. No amount of internet searching/bookmarks is quite like having a reference like this.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shitting Shakespeare! Could there possibly be a more amazing thing than this, unless the Bard himself arose from the dead to pen another play?
Admittedly I have not read this in total, but would also be hard-pressed to say one would aspire to finishing such a book anyway.
This will be my reading companion for as long as I live to read Shakespeare. So as long as I live and my eyes do function, assuredly.
Essential.

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

An invaluable tool for any student or actor with an interest in Shakespeare. Not only does it fulfil it's use as a glossary, but it also has incredibly detailed information on each play in Shakespeare's canon, well referenced appendices and many definitions to each word and there possible pronunciations in a variety of dialects.

Well worth reading, keeping and using.

[Jill]

I'm marking this as "read," but this is an ongoing read that will always be ongoing. I will never read Shakespeare again without this in hand. It is a prized possession.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A particular portion from the Introduction to this book caught my instant attention:

‘It is perfectly possible to go to a Shakespeare play, with little or no awareness of Early Modern English vocabulary, and have a great time.

There are many stretches of text where the vocabulary is virtually identical with that used today, and many more where the presence of the occasional 'difficult word' is not noticed because the context makes the meaning of the utterance perfectly clear.

Even when the distinctive vocabulary begins to pile up, as in some of the more complex poetic passages, the quality of the acting can transcend the limitations of lexical obscurity. We are reminded of our experience of operas sung in a foreign language (in the days before surtitles) where we have been profoundly moved despite the unintelligibility.

There are actually very few passages in Shakespeare where the combination of alien grammar and vocabulary makes the text comparable to it being in a foreign language. Some of the insult sequences are perhaps the nearest (such as Doll's 'basket-hilt stale juggler'), but such utterances never leave the audience in any doubt as to their pragmatic force…’

Shakespeare has been credited with the invention of thousands of new words in English. In practice many of these new words are actually new grammatical uses for existing words—nouns made into verbs and verbs made into nouns.

And of course the survival of the plays, and the celebrity of their author, made Shakespeare the apparent inventor, whether or not he was the real one.

When in the late 19th century the editors of the new Oxford English Dictionary put out a call for “men of letters” to assist them in their task of finding the histories of words, volunteers combed the books on their shelves and in their local libraries, often identifying Shakespeare as the point of origin.

Since the dictionary, which was to be organized “on historical principles,” was intended to “make a dictionary worthy of the English language,” the historical trail often led back to Shakespeare, even in those cases when the scholars privately acknowledged that a less well known author had in fact used a given word first.

This book is not a guide to Shakespeare's language as a whole. In particular, it contains little information about pronunciation and grammar. Its focus is exclusively on vocabulary, and on those aspects of usage which influence its choice and form (such as the topics covered in the panels).

It is moreover a book written for a particular purpose, to aid those who want to explore the richness of meaning found in the texts. It contains a great deal of detail. But we would not want the presence of English glossary to be interpreted as support for the view that Shakespeare's language is essentially difficult or impermeable, as we see stated in the media from time to time.

Give it a go. It’s delightful.

[Matea · Rating 3 out of 5]

educational but boring

[Sam Sutter · Rating 5 out of 5]

obviously i did not read the whole thing it's an over 600-page glossary but it has so much info and i have been able to find everything i need

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a referential book, so I haven't technically read it.

Doesn't have every single word, but has so many ununderstandables that it's a worthwhile companion to reading Shakespeare. There are a ton of extra notes too on the etymology of words.

For a book that is meant to be flicked through like a dictionary, they have put a lot of effort in. There is even a map of all the characters for each play, which is helpful because I am awful at remembering character names and affiliations.

[♡ Lisa - Can't talk, reading... ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't hesitate to get your hands on a copy of this book if you like Shakespeare. And if you don't like Shakespeare, well, maybe this book will encourage you to. This is a great companion to reading Shakespeare and it has really helped me to not just get the gist of what he is saying, but to really understand. Thanks David and Ben Crystal!

[Alexandra Dickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, though sometimes will have very obvious words defined/put into context and then the ones I'm looking for are nowhere to be found!

[Pasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource. I'll add more later.

[Jake Maguire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great resource. I highly recommend it.

[Cait · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource when reading Shakespeare!

[K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My go to dictionary for Shakespeare. Excellent Venn diagrams and summaries.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adding this to my library "want" list. Many years of potential value.

notes:
focused on the early section, FEW: Frequently Encountered Words.

[Eleni · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not just a glossary but also has interesting inserts on categories such as weapons, greetings, curses, familiarity, etc.

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable for anyone with even a passing interest in Shakespeare's works. It's really so great to see the meanings of words that you might have skipped over in your first reading of a play.

[Merideth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book not to be read more explored over time and given a handy accessible. place in the bookshelf