The Shakespeare Miscellany

DAVID CRYSTAL
&
BEN CRYSTAL

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2005

6

Copyright © David Crystal and Ben Crystal,2005

All rights reserved

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192811-1

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

THE MISCELLANY

Timeline

Sources and Further Reading

Index

Acknowledgements

The authors and publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce illustrations on the pages shown:

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust: pp. 2, 91, 189

The College of Arms: p. 10

Public Record Office: (a), (d), (e), (f), p. 131

Guildhall Library, Corporation of London: (b), p. 131

British Library: (c), p. 131

Reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Bath, Longleat House, Warminster, Wiltshire, Great Britain: p. 164

PREFACE

In 1565 the Bishop of Exeter, William Alley, published The poore man's Librarie. On his title page, we read: ‘Here are adioyned at the ende of euery special treatise, certain fruitful annotacions called miscellanea, because they do entreate of diverse and sundry matters.’

This is the first recorded use of miscellanea in English. Exactly fifty years later, the year before Shakespeare died, a Puritan devotional book was published: The Miscellanie, or Regestrie and Methodicall Directorie of Orizons. This is the first use we know of miscellany.

Since then miscellanies have appeared on every conceivable topic, with entries ranging in length from several pages to the isolated quotation. The Victorian era was especially fond of them, and they are having a resurgence of interest today – hardly surprising, in an age which thrives on sound-bites, short encyclopedia entries and the thirty-word summary paragraphs that frequent the online news pages of the Internet.

The term has had a chequered history. Some have scorned the miscellany genre for the way it tempts authors to randomness and superficiality, and it is true that many have been written for no other purpose than – as John Norris, a seventeenth-century compiler, put it to a patron – ‘for the entertainment of your leisure hours’. On the other hand, serious journals have used the term in their titles, as have major historical compilations. The Bible, indeed, has been called the greatest miscellany.

We believe a miscellany should, like the BBC, ‘inform, educate and entertain’, and in this compilation we have tried to combine these different goals. In the case of Shakespeare, we would have to add ‘remind’ to the list, for the essential biographical facts (and fictions) have been part of Shakespeariana for centuries. But we have aimed to include a great deal that will be unfamiliar to most general readers in relation to our chosen themes, and in some entries we have found ourselves exploring entirely new ground. We have been fortunate to have available, since May 2004, the advanced concordance search facility of our Shakespeare's Words website (www.shakespeareswords.com), and this has helped us provide a sharpness of focus where previously there was only general impression. The database we compiled for the book Shakespeare's Words (Penguin, 2002) includes the text of all the plays in the Penguin Shakespeare series, with the addition of King Edward III, and all the poems. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics in this book derive from that database.

We have respected the tradition of including basic biographical information about Shakespeare, but we have not tried to be comprehensive about the great debates about his private life and social milieu that have preoccupied scholars and writers over the years. Because of our joint linguistic and theatrical interests, we have throughout kept our attention firmly on the texts of the plays and poems, and on the ways in which these would have been read or presented to an Elizabethan audience. Many of our entries, accordingly, are about the meaning and effect of Shakespeare's language and the methods and conventions of his stagecraft.

We are hugely grateful to Hilary Crystal for her help at all stages of this project, and especially for her work compiling the Timeline. Thanks are due too to Stanley Wells, Paul Edmondson, Will Sutton and Tim Klotz for their editorial comments, to Richard Marston for his design brilliance, and to Martin Toseland and Nigel Wilcockson of Penguin UK for their production advice during the period of the book's preparation.

David Crystal and Ben Crystal

MISCELLANY

Understanding Shakespeare

He who desires to understand Shakespeare truly must understand the relations in which Shakespeare stood to the Renaissance and the Reformation, to the age of Elizabeth and the age of James; he must be familiar with the history of the struggle for supremacy between the old classical forms and the new spirit of romance, between the school of Sidney, and Daniel, and Johnson, and the school of Marlowe and Marlowe's greater son; he must know the materials that were at Shakespeare's disposal, and the method in which he used them, and the conditions of theatric presentation in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, their limitations and their opportunities for freedom, and the literary criticism of Shakespeare's day, its aims and modes and canons; he must study the English language in its progress, and blank or rhymed verse in its various developments; he must study the Greek drama, and the connection between the art of the creator of the Agamemnon and the art of the creator of Macbeth; in a word, he must be able to bind Elizabethan London to the Athens of Pericles, and to learn Shakespeare's true position in the history of European drama and the drama of the world.

(Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891)

Career prospects

(New York Times headline, 23 April 2000)

Birth day

The register of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford records the baptism of William, the first son of John Shakespeare, ‘Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere’ (see below). The date given is 26 April 1564. William's birthday is customarily celebrated on 23 April, but this is a tradition which began in the eighteenth century, not fact, fostered probably by a natural desire to see England's greatest dramatic poet associated with the feast-day of St George, England's patron saint. The baptismal practice of the time, as specified in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer, was this:

In 1564, the 23rd was a Sunday, and the main holy day in April, St Mark's Day, followed soon after, on the 25th. If the parents were following the usual practice, a child born on the 23rd would be baptized, at the latest, by that day. So why the 26th in the register? Maybe there was a ‘great and reasonable cause’ to delay things. Maybe the Shakespeares were influenced by the widespread superstition that St Mark's Day was unlucky. Or perhaps the baby was born on one of the adjacent days. Without any evidence, the tradition stands.

Ten days later?

April 23 in 1564 was not the same as April 23 today. By the mid-sixteenth century, the Julian calendar – so-called because it was devised by Julius Caesar – had fallen ten days behind the solar year, so in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new system, the ‘Gregorian calendar’, which we follow today. Most European countries immediately made the change, but anti-papal England rejected the idea (and did not catch up until 1752, when 2 September was immediately followed by 14 September). This means that, in 1564, the date referred to then as 23 April corresponds to what we would today call 3 May.

Shakespeare's handwriting

Six definite examples survive: his signatures (p. 131), and the words ‘by me’ written before the signature at the end of his will. Three pages of the play Sir Thomas More are also thought to be in his hand.

And she as much in love?

The word love is used 154 times in Romeo and Juliet – over half the time (87 instances) by the two lovers. Which of them uses the word more? Juliet says it 35 times and Romeo 52 – but 16 of his usages have Rosaline, his first infatuation, in mind. When Juliet and Romeo actually meet, their opening scene together is appropriately balanced – each uses the word 11 times.

Even so suspicious

(W. H. Auden, Essay on Hamlet)

Good evening

Greetings in the sixteenth century sometimes differed from Modern English in their range of application. Good even, for example, might be said to someone any time after noon.

Anne Hathaway

It is not known when Anne Hathaway was born or baptized; but on her tombstone in Holy Trinity Church it is recorded that she was sixty-seven years old when she died on 6 August 1623. That would have put her birth in 1556 – seven or eight years older than William.

The changing canon

In 1955, the works thought to be wholly or largely by Shakespeare numbered thirty-seven, and the Royal Shakespeare Company had performed them all with the production of Titus Andronicus that year. Since then, support has grown for two further plays to be included in the canon: The Two Noble Kinsmen and King Edward III. These received productions at the RSC in 1986 and 2002, respectively.

Petty schools

Children in Elizabethan England would usually start attending school in their fifth year. They would go to a ‘petty school’ (from French petit, ‘small’) attached to a town's grammar school, and be taught there by a tutor known as an abecedarius, whose role, as the name suggests, was primarily to teach the boys to read. They would move on to the grammar school after two years, and stay there until age fourteen. It was a long day, beginning at six in the morning (in summer, seven in winter) and continuing until five in the afternoon, with breaks for meals and recreation. Sunday was the only day off.

School-teachers

Who were Shakespeare's teachers at Stratford grammar school? They were university graduates, some of whom went on to gain scholarly reputations in their own right. Students would receive a good education at their hands.

Shakespeare was only seven in 1571, so Walter Roche had probably left by the time he moved up from petty school into Stratford grammar school. Nor is it likely that he received tuition from John Cottom. We do not know when Shakespeare left school, but after 1576 his father was in severe financial straits, so he may have had to leave early to help in the family business, as some scholars have suggested. Simon Hunt and Thomas Jenkins must have been his two teachers.

Studying Latin plays

Among the Latin texts Shakespeare would have studied in grammar school were those by the comic dramatists Terence and Plautus. In some schools, it is known that the students practised their Latin by acting scenes from their plays. Whether this happened in Stratford is a matter of conjecture, but there is no doubt that these authors would have provided Shakespeare with his first sense of a five-act play.

Reading the score

(Peter Hall, Shakespeare's Advice to the Players, 2004, p. 18)

Hornbooks

Children would come to petty school with their hornbook – a wood-framed page covered with a transparent sheet made from a piece of cow's horn. They were of many different kinds, but typically at the top of the page would be the letters of the alphabet, large and small, and underneath would be listed some basic syllables (ab, eb, ib, ba, be, bi, etc.), often some numerals, and the Lord's Prayer. Hornbooks are referred to twice in the plays. In Love's Labour's Lost, Mote tells Don Armado that Holofernes ‘teaches boys the horn-book’ (V.1.45). And in The Two Noble Kinsmen one of the countrymen tells the others that the school-master will ‘eat a hornbook ere he fail’ (11.2.42).

The cross-row

In a hornbook, a cross was usually placed at the beginning of the top row of the alphabet, which accordingly came to be known as the ‘cross-row’. In Richard III (I.1.55), George, Duke of Clarence, irritably comments on the way King Edward is ruled by superstition:

Only very young children – or people acting like them – would be using a cross-row.

ABC books

After children had mastered their hornbook, they graduated to alphabetic readers (‘ABC books’) and the question-and-answer dialogues introducing them to formal Christianity (the Catechism) – the latter, along with some other prayers, taken from the 1559 Book of Common Prayer. We need to appreciate this context if we are to follow the allusion in King John (I.1.194), when Philip the Bastard, newly made a knight, imagines himself catechizing (asking questions of) the people he meets:

Why an ‘ABC book’ should be part of a question-and-answer dialogue becomes clear when we see that it was originally linked with the Catechism.

Chronology of works

The earliest play?

Is Titus Andronicus Shakespeare's earliest play? A quarto edition is known only from 1594, but the date of composition might be up to a decade earlier, if we take a comment of Ben Jonson literally. In his Induction to Bartholomew Fair (1614), he talks of those who think that ‘Andronicus’ is one of the ‘best playes’ – a judgement, he says, which ‘hath stood still, these five and twentie, or thirtie yeeres’. That would place it between 1584 and 1589. Most scholars, however, doubt that Jonson had a precise date in mind. On 11 April 1592 Philip Henslowe records a performance by Strange's Men of a play called ‘tittus & vespa-cia’. If this is Shakespeare's, it suggests a composition date of 1591–2.

Love's Labour's Won

Francis Mere, in his book Palladis Tamia (see p. 143), refers to twelve Shakespeare plays, one of which is Love's Labour's Won. This play is either lost or, as some scholars have suggested, it is an alternative name for a different play (possibly The Taming of the Shrew).

Elizabeth's last play?

The Chamberlain's Men played before Queen Elizabeth on 2 February 1603 – probably A Midsummer Nights Dream. The Queen fell ill later that month and died on 24 March.

Cardenio

In 1653 the Stationer's Register records a play, ‘The History of Cardenio, by Mr Fletcher and Shakespeare’. The name is known from Cervantes' Don Quixote (beginning in Part 1, Chapter 27), which recounts the love-story of Lucinda and Cardenio, ‘The Ragged Knight of the Sorry Countenance’. Don Quixote was published in Madrid in 1605 and in London in 1612.* It was performed by the King's Men in 1613, but no copy has come down to us. Interestingly, 1612 is the only year missing a play in the chronology on p.6.

To the point

(Anthony Burgess, on Hamlet, Shakespeare, 1970, p. 175)

Family tree

Shakespeare's daughter Susanna had one child, Elizabeth, who had no children. His son, Hamnet, died in 1596 at the age of eleven. Judith, the youngest, married Thomas Quiney in 1616, two months before Shakespeare's death, but her three children all died young. His granddaughter, Elizabeth, died in 1670, his last direct descendant.

The missing play

Troilus and Cressida is included in the First Folio but it isn't mentioned in the Catalogue, or table of contents. Why?

It will be found between the Histories and Tragedies sections. The first page is the Prologue, set in a larger type than the other play texts, and this is followed by the opening of Act I Scene 1. The next two pages are numbered 79 and 80; and the remaining twenty-six pages of the text carry no numbers at all. What accounts for this curious pagination?

The evidence suggests that Troilus was originally placed at p. 80 in the Tragedies section, and four pages had already been printed before it was decided to withdraw it – perhaps because it was felt to be in the wrong place, or perhaps there were problems over permission to use the text. It was then replaced there by Timon of Athens. At a later stage, when the problems were resolved, a place had to be found for Troilus. Evidently the most convenient solution was to put the play between two of the major sections, but without revising the page numbers. By then, however, the Catalogue had been printed. As a result, the name of the play does not appear in the front of the book.

Mob control

A story is told of the Irish comic actor Henry Woodward, in c.1760, who was living opposite Parliament house in Dublin. One morning, an angry mob formed to protest against the passing of an unpopular bill, and Woodward ‘s house was surrounded. They called for a bible to be thrown down to them, but Woodward ‘s wife was unable to find one in the house. With great presence of mind, Woodward defused the situation by finding a different book to throw to the crowd, which was received with loud cheers. It was a volume of Shakespeare's plays.

The Shakespeare monument

The memorial sculpture in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, is located in the north wall of the chancel, above Shakespeare's grave. It was carved, mainly in white marble, by a London stonemason of Dutch background, Gheerart Janssen, also known as Gerard Johnson. It must have been erected before 1623, as its existence is referred to in Leonard Digges' memorial poem at the front of the First Folio. Shakespeare is portrayed with his hands resting on a cushion, a quill (originally a lead pen) in his right hand and a sheet of paper in his left. His lips are parted, as if in speech. The Shakespeare arms, helm and crest are carved above him, with a cherub on either side – one portraying work, holding a spade, the other portraying rest, holding a skull and inverted torch. A skull surmounts the whole. Underneath is a Latin motto (p. 163) and a six-line verse, ending with Shakespeare's death-date, 23 April 1616, and age.

The abbreviated words in lines 4 and 5 are ‘this’ and ‘that’, respectively. The stonemason has made an error in line 5: ‘SIEH’ should have been ‘SITH’ (‘since’). The authorship is unknown.

Story-telling

(Mark Rylance, Sunday Mail, 25 July 1999)

The Shakespeare coat of arms

Shakespeare's father, John, had tried to obtain a coat of arms when bailiff at Stratford in the 1570s, but the downturn in his fortunes made him unable to proceed with his application. He (or William) renewed it in 1596, and this time it was granted by the College of Arms. Rough drafts survive of the heraldic document granting the application, and they include a description of the proposed shield and a rough sketch:

The motto at the top of the page reads: ‘NON SANZ DROICT’ – ‘Not without right’ – but there is no record of this ever being used.

gould: gold

bend: diagonal band

sables: black

steeled: of the point of a spear

argent: silver

cognizance: heraldic crest

wrethe: wreath

coullors: colours (of the Shakespeare family)

margent: margin

Insight

No commentary on Hamlet… would be a more useful aid to a larger understanding of his character than a detailed record of the readings, gestures, the business employed in the successive performances of the part by Burbage, by Betterton, by Garrick, by Kemble, by Macready, by Forrest, by Booth and by Irving. They have been compelled by their professional training to acquire an insight into this character – an insight to be obtained only in the theatre itself and hopelessly unattainable in the library even by the most scholarly.

(Brander Matthews, quoted in Simon Callow, Orson Welles, The Road to Xanadu, 1995, p. 178)

A handful of earlier Hamlets

Calling names

Shakespeare never lets the audience or the other characters forget the Jewish thing. You only have to look at the trial scene where he's called ‘Shylock’ only six times, but ‘Jew’ twenty-two.

(David Suchet on The Merchant of Venice, in John Barton, Playing Shakespeare, 1984, p. 171)

Acoustic headaches

The position, so close to the river and with St Paul's Cathedral in the background, is very striking. I just hope the poor actors, sweating it out under a summer sky, aren't deafened by megaphones on the tourist boats informing the world, ‘That's Shakespeare's Globe, his “Wooden O”, burned down during a performance of Henry VIII on 29 June 1613.’ By the time the guide gets that out his boat will have chugged under the bridge and another will have taken its place with the same information. Overhead aircraft will be droning their way to Heathrow.* Oh, I wish the actors good fortune but I wouldn't wish to be wearing their buskins or chopins and having to face such competition. It is the acoustics that will cause the headaches. I can't see any line being able to be said ‘trippingly on the tongue' as Shakespeare requested.

(Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me, 1996, p. 52, on visiting the building site of the reconstructed Globe)

Where did Shakespeare first live in London?

A William Shackspere, from the parish of St Helens in Bishopsgate, is recorded in 1597 as not having paid a local tax the previous year. In 1598 a further failure to pay a tax is ascribed to a William Shakespeare, the entry identifying him with reference to the adjacent counties of Surrey and Sussex. A further tax bill in 1600 also refers to a William Shakespeare living in an area south of the Thames (the Clink) belonging to the Bishop of Winchester. Evidently Shakespeare crossed to the South Bank around 1597 in order to stay close to the theatre where he worked.

The voice test

(Peter Hall, Theatre Royal Haymarket Masterclass, September 2002)

Cue scripts

An actor's part would be written you out on a long roll of parchment (a scroll) wrapped round a piece of wood. One line ran after the other, with around three cue words preceding each speech, so he would know when to enter or speak. For that reason, these rolls have become known as ‘cue-scripts’. No actor would ever see the whole play.

Thou or you: the general situation

In Old English, thou was singular and you was plural; but during the thirteenth century, you started to be used as a polite form of the singular – probably because people copied the French way of talking, where vous was used in that way. English then became like French, which has tu and vous both possible for singulars. So in Early Modern English, when Shakespeare was writing, there was a choice:

So, in a scene, when someone deviates from this normal pattern, it always means something – usually a change of attitude, or a new emotion or mood. It could be anything – for example, a sign of extra affection or of anger; an insult or a compliment; a piece of playfulness or an indication that the speaker is adopting a more business-like or professional attitude.

There are several examples in this book (see Index). The thou-forms are thou, thee, thy, thine and thyself. You-forms are you, your, yours and yourself/yourselves.

Everyone loves the Macbeths

Seeking an insight into his own character, Ian McKellen asked Trevor Nunn, ‘He's Nixon isn't he, Macbeth?’

‘No, no, he's not Nixon, he's Kennedy. It's the golden couple; everyone loves the Macbeths.’

(Judi Dench, With a Crack in her Voice, p. 145, on the 1976 production of Macbeth at the Other Place)

Welsh English

Welsh pronunciation is the best represented of all the Celtic dialects in the plays. It is illustrated by some seventy-five words in the characters of Fluellen in Henry V and Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

There are also a number of distinctive grammatical features – irregular plurals such as disparagements and peradventures – and words being assigned to the wrong part of speech, as in ‘how melancholies I am’ (The Merry Wives of Windsor, III.1.13). Fluellen also says look you, as Welshmen are imagined to do.

Irish English

There are just six words in the plays which represent an Irish way of speaking – all used by Captain McMorris in Henry V, 111.2.85–109:

Scottish English

These are the words in the plays which represent a Scottish way of speaking – all used by Captain Jamy in Henry V, III.2.80–115, and mainly affecting the vowels:

Film versions of Shakespeare's plays

There have been 479 films based on, adapted (closely or loosely) from, or vaguely about Shakespeare's plays, according to Eddie Salmon's Shakespeare: A Hundred Years on Film, in the period up to 2000.

Plague

One of the consequences of the periodic epidemics of plague in London was the closure of the theatres. This is an extract from the order issued by the Privy Council on 28 January 1593:

The plague raged from June 1592 to May 1594. The disease varied in its ferocity, so the theatres were allowed to open for some short periods, but for much of two years London saw no theatrical activity (see also p. 27).

Dramatis personae

In just seven cases, the First Folio gives a list of ‘The Names of all the Actors’ – really the characters in a play (the ‘dramatis personae’): The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, The Winters Tale, Henry IV Part II, Othello, Timon of Athens. They are usually crammed into a small space on the page, at the very end of the play, but in the case of Henry IV Part II and Timon they are displayed in large type, taking up the whole of a folio page.

A nearly happy ending

In David Garrick's 1748 rewrite of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet are allowed to talk together in the tomb after V.3.114 – at ‘righteous kiss’. (In the orthodox version, Romeo dies six lines later, before Juliet wakes up.)

[Juliet wakes.

Jul. Where am I? defend me!

Rom. She speaks, she lives! and we shall still be bless'd!

[ Takes her hand.

Jul. Bless me! how cold it is! whose ‘s there!

Rom. Thy husband,

[Brings her from the tomb.

Jul. Why do you force me so? I'll ne'er consent—

Rom. Her senses are unsettl'd—Heav‘n restore ‘em!

Jul. I know that voice—Its magic sweetness wakes

[Going to embrace him.

Rom. Oh I cannot,

Jul. Poison! what means my lord; thy trembling voice!

Rom. It is indeed—I struggle with him now—

Jul. Die? was the Friar false!

Rom. I know not that—

Jul. And did I wake for this!

Rom. My powers are blasted,

Jul. Thou rav'st – lean on my breast—

Rom. Fathers have flinty hearts, no tears can melt ‘em,

Jul. Oh my breaking heart—

Rom. She is my wife—our hearts are twin'd together—

[Dies.

Jul. Stay, stay, for me, Romeo—

[Faints on Romeo's body.

Heartbreaking

The main purpose of his verse is to represent ordinary speech and tell a story lucidly… That is why Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameters; he didn't want to be ‘poetic’, he wanted to be understood. He earns his poetry and his metaphors when the emotions become intense. He can then move from plain speech to intricate images with ease. And he is able to use the most banal things – Lear's button, or Cleopatra's corset – to break our hearts.

(Peter Hall, Shakespeare's Advice to the Players, 2004, p. 12)

The upstart crow

The first known public reference to Shakespeare is not a complimentary one. It occurs in 1592 in a pamphlet written by scholar-dramatist Robert Greene, called Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. Near death, and in a state of poverty, he reflects on his past life and bids a farewell to three of his fellow writers, warning them about an actor – an ‘upstart crow’ – who has achieved fame by playing parts from their works:

Who is this man with a ‘tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide’? The phrase is a parody of a line in a speech from Henry VI Part III(1590–92), when the Duke of York accuses Queen Margaret of having a ‘tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide’ (I.4.138). The contemptuous ‘Shake-scene’ seems to confirm it. Why Greene was so antipathetic towards Shakespeare is another story…

Why ‘upstart crow’?

Why was the Elizabethan writer Robert Greene so upset at Shakespeare? Various theories have been suggested. Greene, Marlowe and the other leading playwrights were all university men; Shakespeare was not. That the son of a rural glover, and a mere actor, might be setting his sights on becoming a member of the circle of well-educated authors would justify the description of an ‘upstart crow’. But the reference to a ‘tiger's heart’ is quite fierce, especially remembering its origin in Henry VI, where the original speaker of the line, Queen Margaret, is being accused of extreme cruelty. Was Greene recalling some personal feud? Was he accusing Shakespeare of plagiarizing their work? We do not know. Perhaps he was simply bitterly envious of Shakespeare's growing success as a playwright.

Pragmatist

However great Shakespeare's genius is, it doesn't help to treat him as a sort of holy fool or a Messianic seer. He was a playwright, and an actor, and a theatre manager. He was utterly pragmatic; his plays wouldn't and couldn't have worked if they had been shrouded in obscurity and abstract conceits.

(Richard Eyre, National Service, 2004, p. 381)

A character-note

Henry Chettle published Robert Greene's pamphlet (p. 18) ‘at his dying request’, following his death in September 1592. Chettle seems to have been so embarrassed by the sneering reference to Shakespeare that in December of that year, in a preface to Kind-Harts Dream, he actually apologizes for not ‘moderating’ it, and adds a unique character-note:

Early Modern English

The period in which Shakespeare wrote falls between two major linguistic stages in the history of English. The language spoken and written during the Middle Ages, most famously by Chaucer, is known as Middle English. Today we speak and write Modern English. By the end of the sixteenth century, the language had changed significantly from Middle English, and was in most respects very close to what we speak today. For that reason, the language of Shakespeare and his contemporaries is usually given the technical linguistic designation of Early Modern English, with Elizabethan English (but not Jacobean English) and Shakespearian English everyday alternatives.

Archaisms

Shakespeare's language often seems archaic to modern readers and playgoers, but he used archaisms too, usually taken from Chaucer and his contemporaries, or popularized by later writers with a historical consciousness, such as Spenser. The instances – such words as clepe ‘call’, eke ‘also’ and wight ‘person’ – occur in a variety of contexts:

• when characters are reading texts where an older style of language has been contrived, such as a love-letter, scroll or play script
• in certain types of character (such as school-masters) and in the speech of such bombastic personalities as Pistol (in Henry V) and Don Armado (in Love's Labours Lost)
• in the poems, notably Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece
• in the Chorus monologues of the medieval poet Gower in Pericles.

Theatres of Stratford

In Stratford-upon-Avon, the options available to the theatre-going public have varied greatly during the past 125 years.