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5 months ago in English Literature , History of the English Language By Arunava Bhar
What specific variety of English did William Shakespeare write in?
Shakespeare’s language feels both familiar and distant to modern readers.It is often described loosely as “Early Modern English.”I want a more precise understanding of what that means linguistically.
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By Neeraj Seth Answered 3 months ago
From my experience teaching Shakespeare, his language is best described as literary Early Modern English shaped by rhetorical training and theatrical practice. I have seen students assume he invented a separate dialect, but in reality he worked within a flexible, rapidly changing language. I would recommend thinking of his English as performative rather than standardized. Its richness comes from exploiting variation in vocabulary, syntax, and register that were still unsettled in his time.
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