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Posted By: Julie Vognar

Because one can read a Sghakespeare play without a dictionary, and listern to it without an interpretor, it is considered modern Ebglish. ctually, most people probablty call it "Shakesperarian English," but NEVER Middle English. My complete Chaucer in the original has at least 30 footnotes a page--and these are not minor quibbles over meaning, or to inform you that a word has changed its meaning, but are absolutely necessary glosses to tell you what an unknown word means. Not to mention the difference in pronounciation ("tache" is the way you pronounce "teache.") This is of course not so with Shakespeare.

I checked with my son, who graduated from Berkeley in English in '94, just in case there has been a great change in termionology. He says you're nuts.

Now, there are some problems with "Shakespeare" and "modern." For instance, in several of the plays, Shakespeare refers to the "two hours' traffic of our stage." But when you try to produce a Shakespeare play without cutting it, it comes out more like 4 hours. Did Elizabethans speak more quickly than we do? Did they have lousy watches? Who knows?

Incidentally, Gertrude has no soliloquies in Hamlet. Not one.

Julie