1066 - Shakespeare's English

Shakespeare's English

Example from King Lear (1)

[ This topic is developed in more detail here. ]

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow.

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks.

You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o’th’world;

Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,

That makes ingrateful man.

The first three lines set the pattern for the entire passage: native – borrowed – native

Lines 8-9 reproduce the pattern in three “miniatures”: native word – loanword – native word

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Shakespeare’s Command of English