by Ben Crystal
It’s the same with Shakespeare. We have to work to under stand the way he swears, the way he makes promises, the way he uses our language (and it is, essentially, still our language). There’s a good example about halfway through Hamlet’s ‘To be, or not to be’ speech:
For who would bear the Whips and Scornes of time …
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin?
(Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, lines 70–6)
There are probably two words there that you’d miss the meaning of, if you were just reading it by yourself. There’s a good chance you’d understand it fine if you saw it being acted. But even then, seeing it acted, knowing that Quietus means release and a Bodkin is a dagger helps enormously (in this instance, a bare bodkin means an unadorned, plain dagger). Who would live through the harshness of life, he says, when you could end it all with a simple tool like a dagger?
I have a confession to make. I just looked those words up. I used to know what they meant, but I’d forgotten. No one knows what all the words in Shakespeare mean, and everyone needs to look words up – especially words like bare that are still in our vocabulary today but which had a variety of different meanings 400 years ago.
Exactly because of that need, I co-wrote a dictionary of all of Shakespeare’s difficult words a couple of years ago. It’s quite a hefty tome, as we made sure every word we defined included as many of the different meanings we could think of that Shakespeare might have meant – and I particularly made sure we thought of nuances from a theatrical point of view. In Shakespeare’s time, bare also meant unsheathed. It also meant wretched. Which sense of the word Hamlet means is up to the actor and the director working on the production, or you, the reader.
Of course, when you’re watching Shakespeare being acted, a lot of these problems won’t be a factor. The meaning of a difficult word gets buoyed up by the rest of the sentence when spoken out loud, and acting Shakespeare always helps define meaning much more than silent reading ever could.
Many of the words you’ll find in a Shakespeare play might look similar or be identical to words you use every day. If it looks even slightly like a word you know, the chances are it’ll mean what you think it means.
However. There are some words, known as false friends, that will mislead you. Doubt, in Shakespeare’s time, meant fear. When Regan, in King Lear, says to Edmund, ‘Our sister’s man is certainly miscarried’ (my sister’s servant has definitely failed), Edmund’s response is: ‘’Tis to be doubted, madam.’ But he isn’t questioning her, he’s agreeing with her. ‘It is something to be feared’, he’s saying.
All this can take a little getting used to, but considering that (linguistically speaking) we’re travelling hundreds of years back in time, we could be worse off than 5 per cent.
Here are twenty false friends you might come across …
Scene 3
13th-century England. A field
Ask someone to ‘speak Shakespearian’ and they’ll probably throw in a couple of phrases like thou art a blaggard or thou art an arse, without knowing why they’re saying thou instead of you. An awful lot of people coming to Shakespeare don’t know why both these second-person pronouns (to give them their official title) are there, and often want to change all the thous to yous to make everything look neat and tidy.
Why can’t we – or shouldn’t we – ignore them?
Ever learnt French? If you have, you’ll know that there are two ways of saying you. A polite and formal way (vous), which can be used to address one person or a group of people; and a more sociable and informal way (tu), which is used only when speaking to one person.
There used to be a similar option in the English language: in Old English, thou was used to address one person and you was used to address more than one. But from the 13th century onwards, in Middle English, you started to develop an added connotation of politeness, probably because people wanted to copy the respected French way of speaking; and they began to use you in one-on-one conversations. The assumption was that if you spoke French, you must therefore be rich and intelligent; and those who couldn’t afford to learn French simply changed their own language to sound more learned.
So by the time Shakespeare was writing – when our language was known as Early Modern English – there was When going through a play, you’ll find thou and you in various different forms, depending on how they’re being used:
When going through a play, you’ll find thou and you in various different forms, depending on how they’re being used:
The thou-forms are thou, thee, thy, thine, and thyself.
You-forms are you, your, yours, and yourself/yourselves.
In a scene, when someone changes from using thou to using you, or the other way round, it always means something – Shakespeare consciously chose when to switch between them – and it usually implies a change of attitude, or a new emotion or mood.
It could be anything: 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 businesslike or professional attitude, distancing themselves socially or physically; or trying to become more formal or informal.
A modern-day equivalent might be how you choose to address your boss, when you’re already on first-name terms. If I walk into work and say Hi John to my boss and he replies Hello Mr Crystal, I sure as hell will address him more formally next time we encounter each other. I’d have to be either very confident in myself or very foolhardy to keep calling him John once he’s established that formality between us. Likewise, if the next day my boss calls me Ben, then I’ve got a pretty good chance of calling him by his first name again, and it wouldn’t be considered too informal.
That said, if the Queen were to call me Ben I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t be very happy if I called her Liz. The rules of formality and social hierarchy that we follow today apply in a very similar way to how thou and you is used in Shakespeare.
As well as the sociological aspect, the intimacy that is implied when saying thou to someone is a good indicator to an actor to be physically close to the person they’re talking to on stage.
A good starting point when acting or reading Shakespeare for the first time is to always be aware of whether the characters are using thou or you to each other.
If they’re using thou to each other, and there are other people not involved in the dialogue, can those other people hear what’s being said? If they’ve been using thou to each other, but then one character switches to you, what made that character switch? Do they feel insulted? What might have made their attitude change?
There are hundreds of examples of this happening scattered throughout the plays, and either as an actor, a reader, or simply a watcher of Shakespeare, not to be aware of the changes is to ignore a great part of his intention when he was writing.
A couple, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, starting to use thou to each other when they haven’t before, is a little like when you start a relationship with someone nowadays, and begin to call them honey or darling, sweetheart or love.
Conversely, when two characters stop using it to each other, it equally means a great deal. Using this writing technique, something of great import can be subtly conveyed without anything more direct being said out loud.
There’s a great and often-missed moment right at the beginning of Hamlet – considering it’s the opening ten lines, Shakespeare packs an awful lot of back-story into very few words. Looking at the second-person pronouns and their variant forms, you can gather a lot of information about what’s happening (the italics aren’t there to show stress, only to point out pronouns):
BARNARDO: Who’s there?
FRANCISCO: Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
BARNARDO: Long live the King!
FRANCISCO: Barnardo?
BARNARDO: He.
FRANCISCO: You come most carefully upon your hour.
BARNARDO: ’Tis now st
ruck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.
BARNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?
Two men encounter each other. Francisco, a guard on duty hearing someone call to him, assumes his authority and demands the other man show himself, and he uses the formal yourself to do it. Because both men have asked the other for identification, and particularly as Francisco is being formal, we can assume that either it’s too dark or Barnardo is too far away for Francisco to see clearly, or both.
Barnardo gives the password, an affirmation of Friend rather than Foe, with ‘Long live the King’ – a formal greeting that would imply they’re at a more heightened state of watch than normal.
Once identity is established, Francisco responds formally, courteously, with you, one professional talking to another: ‘You come most carefully upon your hour.’
By the time they seem to physically meet, Barnardo becomes more informal and chatty: he uses ’Tis instead of ‘it is’, and he switches to the more friendly thee when he sends Francisco off to bed:
BARNARDO: ’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.
So we find out it’s twelve o’clock, and cold, Francisco’s being sent off to bed, so it is most likely night-time; Barnardo is the relieving guard, and we find out a little later that they’ve been on guard like this for a few days now … But why?
FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.
Thank goodness for that, says Francisco, it’s bloody cold and I’m not happy about any of this.
For some reason, in response to what Francisco has just said, Barnardo immediately switches from using the thou form of ‘Get thee to bed’ back to the you form:
BARNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?
Now why would he do that? There must be more to ‘I am sick at heart’ than I’m ill or I’m tired, to provoke a change of formality from Barnardo.
As we later find out, they’re on guard because a ghost has been seen walking the battlements, so they must be pretty on edge (thus the formal ‘Friend or Foe’ opening). Perhaps Barnardo thinks Francisco saw the ghost while he was on duty. ‘Have you had quiet guard?’, asks Barnardo, switching to the you of professional soldier and boss that he used when he entered, rather than the thee of a friend and colleague that came a little later.
To the relief of both, Francisco gives a curious, and probably pointed but welcome reply: ‘Not a Mouse stirring …’
An incredible amount of subtext and back-story, all glaringly obvious once you know what you’re looking for, and most of it simply conveyed with a couple of pronouns.
There are some great thou/you instances in Shakespeare, which can lead to intense discussions in a rehearsal room.
In Othello, both Desdemona and Othello always use thou to Iago, and you to Cassio. Is that a sign of great respect and intimacy to Iago, or is it a great affront, seeing that the you form is technically more formal (and so more respectful)?
It’s hard to say, but saying thou to someone could sometimes be taken as an insult – in Twelfth Night, Sir Toby Belch advises Andrew Aguecheek to insult his enemy by calling him thou.
Particularly interesting for us, in anticipation of the final Act of this book, is what Shakespeare does in Macbeth.
The relationship between Macbeth and his wife is one of many fascinating relationships that Shakespeare scripted, and the complexity of the relationship is reflected in the way they refer to each other.
To begin with, the forms they use suggest a great closeness (take a look at Act 1, Scene 5 – the letter scene – to see her changing use of thou and you), but very quickly we find a relationship that shifts in respect, formality, and intimacy. After Act 1, Scene 7 – once Macbeth has tried to convince his wife that they shouldn’t kill Duncan – Lady Macbeth never uses thou to her husband again.
It’s a subtle change in the use of pronouns that would seem to imply she’s lost a certain degree of love and respect for her husband …
All of these things – the pronouns, the need for the original phrasing and the particular words he chose to use – are ingredients to the big birthday cake that is the poetry Shakespeare wrote. But before I cut a big slice for you, there’s a main course to take care of …
Scene 4
A Christmas tree, Liverpool
When I started writing this book, I found a report in a newspaper that described new research by a scientist in Liverpool. The scientist said that when you read Shakespeare, the extra work that the poetry and the unfamiliar words require makes a part of the temporal lobe of your brain known as the Sylvian Fissure light up like a Christmas tree.
Basically, he said, reading Shakespeare, and taking the time to work through the hard words and the poetry, makes you smarter.
I’m not going to pretend that everyone loves poetry. Personally speaking, I used to despise it.
But a Shakespeare director, a very nice bearded chap called Patrick Tucker, told me once that Shakespeare’s poetry has a system to it; that it’s full of hidden clues from Shakespeare telling his actors how to deliver his lines; and that once you know how, the poetry is practically colour-coded, virtually letting you read it by numbers. Alan Turing and Dan Brown eat your heart out.
Before I’d learnt this system in Shakespeare, it seemed like poetry was surrounded by a vast amount of technical terminology used by very flouncy people, and so either required too much work that I didn’t want to do, or a goatee and a hat, neither of which I had. I had an overall sense that I just really didn’t get it, that poetry was a club I wanted to join but which didn’t want me as a member.
It felt a bit like when I wanted to get into jazz, but knew nothing about the music: I knew only that there were hundreds of artists waiting to be discovered, that it was generally thought of as being inaccessible unless you understood it (which just seemed ridiculous), and I had been told by others that it was a chaotic, disorganised sort of music … I had no idea where and how to begin, really only knowing that if I did find a way in, I’d probably be hooked forever.
Thank you, Miles Davis. When I listened to his record Kind of Blue, it seemed so simple to begin with. The repetitive themes sounded basic, and the other instruments seemed disjointed, completely separate from each other. But Davis was a genius too, and listening again, I realised the themes were actually quite beautifully complicated, the instruments were in a sort of a-rhythmic harmony. My ears just weren’t used to what was going on. The way Davis played jazz, he led you into his world, and taught you how to listen to his music. Shakespeare did the same for me with poetry.
With poetry, though, I had already been struggling for some time to understand it technically, having learnt a rather stringent set of rules on How To Take A Poem Apart … though the word deconstruct was more than likely used instead. And this is part of the problem when looking at poetry: a lot of fancy names are given to what are essentially very simple ideas.
One simple idea, in particular, causes a lot of trouble. Specifically, a type of poetry that was incredibly popular while Shakespeare was an up-and-coming writer, looking for a nice cash bunny to set him up.
So popular was this particular type of poetry, and so varied were the ways of using it, that he dedicated most of his writing career to mastering, playing with, and perfecting the style. Indeed, ‘it’ remained the popular style of poetry for the rest of his life, and for quite a time beyond, partly due to his own success in writing it. What is this particular, popular, money-spinning style of writing poetry called?
You’ve probably heard its name.
Take a deep breath, and say it with me. Whisper it …
… iambic pentameter …
Good. I’m glad we got through that together, so now let’s deal with it. Like a sticking plaster, let’s get it over and done with, and rip it off
quick.
Why do we have to deal with it in the first place? Why can’t we get away with ignoring it and pretending it isn’t there? Because to do so would be to ignore the bulk of what Shakespeare is. Shakespeare saw potential in iambic pentameter, in a similar way to the programmers who saw the basic search engines, and invented Google.
Understand iambic pentameter and you understand Shakespeare.
For whatever reason – although I imagine the phrase itself is part of the problem – iambic pentameter is the main stumbling block with Shakespeare, where most people, myself included, have fallen. Those words confused me more than I’d like or care to admit.
They seemed like a very pointless pairing of difficult academic words, used to describe even more pointless, difficult words. Of course, they’re nothing of the sort, but that’s the way I felt at the time. So many of the good things about Shakespeare seemed shrouded in mystery and out of my reach, hidden behind other, similarly impenetrable words.
Nowadays when I run workshops and say those dreaded words, a shiver runs through everyone like I’ve set a curse. A dark cloud falls over the room. A look of fear enters everyone’s eyes …
But what ‘it’ is, is simple. What it means is a little more complicated, but you could go through the rest of your life thoroughly enjoying Shakespeare on a rudimentary level and know only that iambic pentameter was the popular style of writing poetry in Shakespeare’s time.
Think about it in terms of Italian opera. I don’t speak Italian, but I could go to an opera sung in Italian and I’d enjoy it on a basic level: I’d revel in the fights, the lights, the sounds, and the raw emotions. Or I could (and one day, I promise myself, I will) learn a little Italian, maybe read the libretto before I go.
