Shakespeare's Non-standard English

About This Book

Most scholarly attention on Shakespeare's vocabulary has been directed towards his enrichment of the language through borrowing words from other languages and has thus concentrated on the more learned aspects of his vocabulary. But the bulk of Shakespeare's output consists of plays in which he employs a colloquial and informal style using such features as discourse markers or phrasal verbs. Both today and in earlier periods many informal words were gradually accepted into the standard language, and it may be difficult to recognize when certain words have become acceptable. This dictionary includes all types of non-standard and informal language and lists all examples found in Shakespeare's works. These include dialect forms, colloquial forms, non-standard and variant forms, fashionalbe words and puns.