Language and Devices in 12th Night

In today's session, we will be looking at language. Here is a useful link to an article about Shakespeare's use of Prose. And here follows a copy of the handout that we will be using in today's session:

TEN LITERARY DEVICES AND CONCEPTS

IN SHAKESPEARE’S TWELFTH NIGHT

1. Verse/Prose Usage: Shakespeare wrote his plays using two different kinds of language: verse and prose.  You can tell if a passage is written in verse if

a.)    the words do not go all the way across the page;

b.)    the first word on each line is capitalized, regardless of the sentence break;

c.)    there is a regular rhythm of unstressed and stressed syllables;

d.)    there are usually 10 or 11 syllables in each line.

Example: “O, then unfold the passion of my love;
Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith;
It shall become thee well to act my woes.”
12^th Night, I, 4, lines 24-26

You can tell if a passage is written in prose if

a.) the words go all the way across the page;

b.) the first word of each line does not begin with a capital unless it is the first word of a sentence;

c.) the words do not share a consistent rhythmic pattern.

Example: “What a caterwauling do you keep here? If my lady have not called up 
her steward Malvolio and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me.”
12^th Night, I, 3, lines 72-74

As a general rule (applicable in about 95% of the cases) you can assume that

a.) upper class characters speak verse; lower class characters speak prose.

Examples: Duke Orsino in verse (almost all the time) versus Feste in prose (almost all the time)

b.) serious material will be in verse; comic material will be in prose;    

Examples:  Orsino explaining his passion for Olivia in verse
The phony letter that fools Malvolio is in prose

c.) noble characters will speak verse; villains will speak prose;

Examples: Sebastian speaks in verse almost always Malvolio speaks in prose almost always

d.) romantic passages will be in verse; non-romantic passages in prose.

Examples: Viola describes in verse how she would love Olivia, I, 5, 269
Feste describes in prose Malvolio’s misperception, IV, 2, 37.   

Watch for places where a character changes from one form to another in the same scene, such as when Viola Act I, scene 5 changes from prose when she banters comically with Olivia to verse when she tells her how cruel and unreasonable her rejection of Orsino’s suit is.

2.Use of Rhyme: Almost all of Shakespeare’s verse is called blank verse, meaning there are 10 or 11 syllables in each line, in iambic pentameter (five units or feet in an unstressed/stressed pattern) and the lines are unrhymed, or blank.  Sometimes Shakespeare will use verse, which is rhymed with similar sounds at the end of the lines.  Such rhymed passages are done to make the contents more formal, or to emphasize the emotional content (Olivia’s rhymed speech on love at the end of Act I, scene 5).  Rhyme and unusual rhythm can be used to evoke magical charms as in Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or they can emphasize musical effects, as in all Feste’s songs in 12^th Night.

3. Unusual Metaphors: One of the dominant qualities of Shakespeare’s language, regardless of the form, is the incidence of unusual comparisons, often expressed in metaphors where the comparison is implied.  When Maria in Act I, scene 5 at line 201 asks Viola to “hoist sail, sir,” she refers to her as if she were a ship that is no longer welcome in port.  Viola answers using the same nautical metaphor: “No, good swabber [sailor]; I am to hull here [remain in port] a little longer.”  Sometimes a comparison can be very elaborate with a number of different parallels drawn between the two things being compared.  In Act I, scene 5, at lines 220 -- 229 Olivia compares Viola’s declaration of Orsino’s love as if it were a sermon in church, based on a text from the Bible.  In Shakespeare’s terms such complex comparisons are called conceits, and they were highly prized by Shakespeare’s audiences.

4. Puns: A pun is a play on words, usually for comic effect.  In Act I, scene 1 of 12^th Night at line 18 Orsino’s servant Curio asks the love-sick duke if he wants to go hunting the “hart,” a male deer.  “Why, so I do, the noblest that I have,” replies Orsino, referring to his heart, the seat of his passion.  Shakespeare’s audience valued such puns more than modern audiences do and found nothing strange in characters using puns in serious situations for serious dramatic purposes.

5. Malaprops: These are words which have been misused for comic effect.  Often uneducated characters are shown misusing words, usually if they have two or more syllables, especially when they are trying to impress others.  For example, in Much Ado About Nothing the uneducated constable Dogberry, who likes to act like an important person,  tells Leonato in Act  III, scene 5, line 43, “Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended [for ‘apprehended’] two auspicious [for ‘suspicious’] persons.”

6. Taboo Words: Shakespeare has his characters use obscenities when he wishes to emphasize strong emotions.  These obscenities, however, do not refer to sex or bodily waste; they are sacrilegious terms, which treat God’s name in an irreverent fashion, the strongest taboo in Shakespeare’s day.  The two most frequent taboo words are “Zounds” for “God’s wounds” and “Sblood” for “God’s blood.”

7. Bawdy: “Bawdy” is what Shakespeare called sexual references.  Bawdy can be explicit, as in Much Ado About Nothiug when Beatrice in Act III., scene 4 at line 62 says, “I am stuffed,” meaning she has a cold; Margaret answers, “A maid [virgin] and stuffed [meaning pregnant]!”  Or the bawdy can be implicit, as in 12^th Night  in Act II, Scene 5 at line 87 when Malvolio thinks he recognizes Olivia’s handwriting: “By my life, this is my lady’s hand.  These be her very C’s her U’s and her T’s, and thus makes she her great P’s.”  “CUT” spelled a common slang term for a woman’s genitalia, and “P” was a synonym for “piss.”  In Much Ado About Nothing Dogberry in Act III, scene 3, line 26, tells the watchmen, “You are to bid any man stand, in the Prince’s name.”  He means “halt” but references to “stand” in the comedies almost always carry the connotation of a male erection.

8.  Cuckoldry: A man whose wife was unfaithful was called a “cuckold.”  This fear of betrayal was an obsession for Shakespeare’s male characters.  The cuckold was associated with the cuckoo bird, which supposedly laid its eggs in other birds’ nests, much as a man might get a cuckold’s wife pregnant.  According to folklore a cuckold grew horns out of his forehead, invisible to him but plainly seen by everyone else as a badge of his public humiliation.  For example, when Benedick’s friends in Act I, scene 1, line 252 of Much Ado About Nothing, kid him about eventually bearing the yoke of marriage, he responds, “The savage bull may, but if ever the sensible/ Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set/ them in my forehead.”

9. Venereal References: In Shakespeare’s day Europe faced a major public health crisis in the rampant spread of syphilis.  Much like the spread of AIDS today, this sexually transmitted disease, often called the “pox,” had no known cure and was usually fatal.  Furthermore, people were quick to attribute the disease to other countries, so that the English called it the “French disease,” just as the French blamed the Italians, and the Italians blamed the Spanish.  In its final stages the most notable symptom of syphilis is the loss of hair.  Shakespeare’s plays contain many references to this condition, almost all of them humorous.  For example, in Act I, scene 2 of  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one character describes a phony beard he wants to wear as being “French crown colored,” that is, the golden yellow of a kind of coin called a French crown.  His friend responds, “Many French crowns [heads] have no hair at all,” that is, suffer from advanced syphilis. In 12^th Night Sir Andrew uses references to syphilis as casual oaths in Act III, Scene 4, at lines 291 and 294.

10. Oxymoron: An oxymoron is a self-contradictory phrase, something that cancels itself.  Such common phrases as “jumbo shrimp” or “freezer burn” really don’t belong together.  Shakespeare most often used oxymoronic phrases or concepts to talk about love and how it makes us feel “bittersweet” or “sweet sorrow.”  In 12^th Night in Act IV, scene 2 at line 37 Feste uses several oxymorons for comic effect when he tells the deluded Malvolio, who complains of being locked in a dark room, “Why, it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes [barricades], and the clerestories [sky lights] toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony.”