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The right of Stuart Griffiths to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2000. Pontcanna Press UK.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 987-0-9533476-0-5

www.pontcanna.com
www.pontcanna.co.uk

My intention is that anyone  who reads carefully through the book will be able to understand better the language of any Shakespeare play.     By Shakespeare's language I mean the way he framed and built his sentences. Individual words of any play will still need to be looked up in a glossary, the number depending on the reader.     Committing to memory one or two of the quotations in each section should also help to achieve the desired result.      I have concentrated on the main sentence forms which emerge again and again when we read or listen to a Shakespeare play.     There are of course other forms, lesser forms, and those frequent occasions when Shakespeare deliberately broke the rules for his own literary and dramatic purposes. These I have not dealt with.     A knowledge of the main lines, without the branch lines, should be sufficient. *   *   *     I begin with an account of the reasoning and the research behind the book.     There will be much talk of Grammar and Latin. These can present difficulties to the reader, but I have tried to minimise them.     There are only about half a dozen Latin words in the account; these have their English translations alongside.     The simplest way to think of Grammar is that it is the study of how a sentence is formed, the way it is put together, the way it is built.

How to use this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

THE BACKGROUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
An explanation of the thinking behind the book, the research
involved, and the book's purpose.

THE QUOTATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Representative quotations from Shakespeare, and his sources.
These are the  main sentence  forms which emerge  constantly
when we see or read one of his plays.

The Infinitive: TO
     a) The Infinitive of Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
     b) The Infinitive used as a Noun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
     c) The Infinitive: other forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44


The Conditional Sentence:
     IF with a Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

The Command form LET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

The Mood of Wishing:
     WOULD meaning WISH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

The Conditional Sentence:
     IF with WOULD or SHOULD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58

The Conditional Sentence:
     IF with COULD or MAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

The Conditional Sentence:
     IF with WILL or SHALL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64

Sentences expressing a Result: SO . . . THAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67

Sentences expressing Purpose: THAT . . . MAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73

Sentences expressing Preference and Comparison: THAN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79

The Present Participle: –ING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84
Also: the adjective form; the self-contained phrase;
the verbal noun.

The Past Participle: –D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

The Impersonal Verb: IT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Manner: AS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104

WHAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

THAT WHICH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110

THE ORDER OF WORDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
Verb emphasis; noun emphasis; prepositions; adjectives;
balance, symmetry, antithesis; long sentences.

THE STORY CONTINUED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Representative quotations from other great writers:
Marlowe,  Ben Jonson,  Bacon,  Milton,  Bunyan, Dryden,
Pope, Swift, Dr Johnson, Gibbon, Macaulay, Wordsworth.
Also examples from great oratory.

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

      Children and adults often have difficulty in understanding Shakespeare's language. This is not primarily due to the intermittent archaic words, or to words which have changed their meaning. It is due mainly to Shakespeare's grammar.
      In fact, Shakespeare's grammar, viewed in its entirety, is wonderfully precise. It has however a strong Latin base, and  this can deter people.
      The sixteenth century Elizabethan Grammar School lived up to its name. It gave its pupils a rigorous training in Latin grammar. It consolidated this with a comprehensive study of Roman rhetoric, poetry, drama, moral philosophy, and history.
      The work was suitably intensive for a time when Latin was the second language of all educated people. From the age of six to fourteen, or older, pupils studied Latin for ten hours a day, six days a week, most weeks of the year.
      The most important book in this whole course of study was the Latin Grammar of Erasmus, Lily and Colet. It may not, like Ovid, have inspired Shakespeare's great poetry, or, like Cicero, his blazing rhetoric. It did provide the framework and the building bricks of his sentences. It is therefore a work of the highest significance.

The Latin Grammar of Erasmus, Lily and Colet
      In the early part of the sixteenth century in England, a widespread need existed for a co-ordinated and unified Latin Grammar for use in all schools. This need was answered by the great European humanist and scholar Erasmus, and two distinguished English schoolmasters, Lily and Colet. Their work was finally completed by 1540. Although it had no author on the title page, it came to be known as Lily's Latin Grammar.
      It lasted for three centuries, and it gave the elements of Latin Grammar to every English schoolboy from Shakespeare to Gladstone.
      It was exported overseas, to Europe and America. It very likely formed part of the school education of the American founding fathers.
      Lily's Latin Grammar did not change much during its 300 years of continuous use. The major change was that the second part, in which the instructions were in Latin, was translated into English in the eighteenth century. The first part was always in English.

Cicero: "The orator will say something, but desire to have      it understood in the opposite sense." Antony: "For Brutus is an honourable man;      So are they all, all honourable men . . ."

All rights reserved. Copyright © Stuart Griffiths 2000. Pontcanna Press UK.

Ovid's Metamorphoses and Golding's translation

The Infinitive expressing Purpose
    i.e. an aim, intention or objective.

The Infinitive expressing Purpose
Shakespeare's sources: examples

Note: Lily's Latin Grammar was the standard textbook of Latin Grammar used in English schools for three hundred years: 1550 to 1850. There are many references, direct and indirect, to Lily's Latin Grammar in Shakespeare's plays. (Some information in The Background will be repeated in this section.)

IF with a Command
Shakespeare's sources: examples