Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T08:22:35.502Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Shakespeare and language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2011

Margreta De Grazia
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Stanley Wells
Affiliation:
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Get access

Summary

When Shakespeare and his contemporaries thought about language, they thought of speech: breathy, ephemeral sounds cast into the air. This very ethereality was taken as a proof of one of the key Renaissance ideas about language: inasmuch as it allowed humans to make evident their ability to reason, it was a divine gift, distinguishing humanity from, and elevating it above, the rest of creation. The gift of language could raise the monstrous to the level of the human, as it does Caliban, and the voluntary abandonment of language suggested a descent: as when the arrogant Ajax, swollen with pride at the prospect of single combat with Hector, loses his ability to distinguish social rank, along with his humanity, to a mumbling silence:

thersites The man's undone for ever, for if Hector break not his neck i'th'combat he'll break't himself in vainglory. He knows not me. I said, 'Good morrow, Ajax', and he replies, 'Thanks, Agamemnon'. What think you of this man that takes me for the General? He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster . . . he'll answer nobody. He professes not answering. Speaking is for beggars . . . He wears his tongue in's arms.

(Troilus and Cressida , 3.3.249-60)

Language is social in the Renaissance in a formal, public sense we no longer quite appreciate: there is a clear link here between Ajax’s loss of language and his mistaking the lowly Thersites for the highest of the Greek generals. His loss of language is not complete: Ajax can still manage a dismissive ‘Thanks, Agamemnon’, and he can proudly declare that speaking is for beggars – but he has lost his reason, and therefore his membership of society. He is instead its laughing-stock.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×