25 Words

Elizabethan English

The term Elizabethan English, the type of English used at the time Shakespeare wrote, comes from the fact that Queen Elizabeth I also ruled at that time period (late 1500s to early 1600s). This version of English is typified by the use of thee and thou, st at the end of verbs, art for are, wherefore, thither and hither, etc. (You may also notice that the King James version of the Bible, the first version of the Bible written in English and where most modern American Bibles are adapted from, also uses Elizabethan English because it was published in 1611, the same time that Shakespeare wrote). Once you get used to the language, it is not too difficult to understand. In order to help you work with the language and get used to it, please complete the following assignment.

Go through the first act or two of Romeo & Juliet and find at least 25 words that seem typical of Elizabethan English. Write down each of these words and what you think each word means.

Although the average English speaker has a vocabulary of about 4000 words, Shakespeare had about 29,000 different words published in his plays. Shakespeare invented many new words by playing with language and many of these have become part of our language today such as:

amazement

gloomy

zany

equivocal

barefaced

critical

leapfrog

obscene

submerged

fretful

hurry

lonely

just to name a few.

All of these words can make for difficult reading, but once you adjust, it becomes much easier. Coleridge said of Shakespeare 'I believe Shakespeare was not a whit more intelligible in his own day than he is now to an educated man.' It's true Coleridge was talking two centuries ago, but he was also talking two centuries after Shakespeare.