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AcTIvITy 4.6
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Shakespeare’s Words
2 Some words are strange not because of the changes in language over the past centuries but because these are words that Shakespeare is using to build a dramatic world that has its own space and time. In the opening scenes of the main body of the play, the setting in Italy and the story’s focus on wooing are created through repeated [local references and phrases].
3 The most problematic words are those that we still use but that we use with a different meaning. The word heavy has the meaning of “distressing,” brave where we would say “splendid,” idle where we would say “silly,” and curst where we would say “bad-tempered.” Such words will be explained in the notes to the text, but they, too, will become familiar as you continue to read Shakespeare’s language.
Shakespearean Wordplay
4 Shakespeare plays with language so often and so variously that entire books are written on the topic. Here we will mention only two kinds of wordplay, puns and metaphors. A pun is a play on words that sound the same but that have different meanings. The first scene between Kate and Petruchio (2.1.190–293) is built
around a whole series of puns, beginning with puns on the name Kate. In all of Shakespeare’s plays, one must stay alert to the sounds of words and to the possibility of double meanings. In The Taming of the Shrew, many scenes are funny only if we hear the puns.
5 A metaphor is a play on words in which one object or idea is expressed as if it were something else, something with which it shares common features. The Taming of the Shrew is not rich in metaphoric language, but metaphor is used in a powerful and significant way.
Shakespeare’s Sentences and Syntax
6 In an English sentence, meaning is quite dependent on the place given each word. “The dog bit the boy” and “The boy bit the dog” mean very different things, even though the individual words are the same. [Therefore,] unusual arrangements of words can puzzle a reader. Shakespeare frequently shifts his sentences away from “normal” English arrangements–often to create the rhythm he seeks, sometimes
to use a line’s poetic rhythm to emphasize a particular word, sometimes to give
a character his or her own speech patterns or to allow the character to speak in a special way.
7 In reading for yourself, do as the actor does. That is, when you become puzzled by a character’s speech, check to see if words are being presented in an unusual sequence. Look first for the placement of the subject and the verb. Shakespeare often places the verb before the subject (e.g., instead of “He goes,” we find “Goes he”). More problematic is Shakespeare’s frequent placing of the object before
the subject and verb. “For how I firmly am resolved you know” (1.1.49), where
the normal sentence order would be: “For you know how I am firmly resolved.”) Inversions (words in reversed order) serve primarily to create the poetic rhythm of the lines, called iambic pentameter.
8 Often in his sentences words that would normally appear together are separated from each other. (Again, this is often done to create a particular rhythm or to stress a particular word.)
Word coNNecTIoNS
Cognates
The Spanish cognate for rhythm is ritmo.
Unit 4 • The Final Act 265
wooing: seeking affection
Literary Terms
Rhythm is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in spoken
or written language, especially in poetry.
Literary Terms
Iambic pentameter is
the most common meter (rhythm) in English verse (poetry). It consists of a line ten syllables long that is accented (stressed) on every second beat.
An iamb consists of two syllables (an unstressed followed by a stressed). Think of an iamb as a heartbeat: ker-THUMP. Each line written in iambic pentameter contains five heartbeats.
emphasize: to stress
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