8 - ‘Talk of a noun and a verb’: Shakespearean grammar

Summary

Grammar makes sense of language. That is what it is for. Words by themselves do not make sense. Individual words are too ambiguous, because their multiple meanings compete for our attention. Table, for example, has half a dozen meanings in Early Modern English, and the only way we can determine which is which is by observing how the word is used in context – which means, in a sentence:

My Tables, my Tables; meet it is I set it downe, (Ham. 1.5.107) – ‘writing tablets’

you are well vnderstood to bee a perfecter gyber for the Table, then a necessary Bencher in the Capitoll. (Cor. 2.1.77; gyber= ‘joker’) – ‘dinner table’

when he plaies at Tables, chides the Dice

In honorable tearmes (LLL. 5.2.326) – ‘backgammon’

If we want to ‘make sense’ of Shakespeare, we have to look to his grammar.

As with vocabulary (see Chapter 7), the grammatical rules of English have changed very little over the past 400 years: some 90 per cent of the word-orders andword formations used by Shakespeare are still in use today, as can be seen in this speech of Benedick's from Much Ado About Nothing (3.1.209), here shown in modern orthography:

This can be no trick. The conference was sadly borne. They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady. It seems her affections have their full bent. Love me! Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry. I must not seem proud.