Re: Shakespeare Theory
Posted by:
Strangely anonymous... (---.cache.pol.co.uk)
Date: September 04, 2002 08:32PM
<HTML>A more 'user-friendly language' like, er, Esperanto? Anyway, the bard's English is perfectly modern as far as people from Stratford are concerned...
For in the words of the Bard...
Honest, fair Bea, people dost speak that way
In Stratford's merrie town, and merriley
Dost they scorn to use a diktionary.
For foul are words prescrib'd by authors here unknown.
Thus, unkempt in verse, with metre scorned,
We've got 15 acres, and you've got forty more,
And we've got a brand new combine harvester
And we'll give you the key. Zoider, Zoider, Suicoider la la la la la etc.
Okay, so Stratford folk don't really talk like that until just before closing time in the pub, but believe me, there are places in England where the verb 'to be is declined thus:
I be, you be, he be, we be's, you be's, they be's.
And morris dancing is considered cultured, and incest merely a game for all the family... (Apologies to any rustics reading this, but then no, you won't have got electricity yet and anyway you'll be too busy trying to work out how that three-pronged thing on the end of the wire (we call it a p-l-u-g) is supposed to dig vegetables, exactly)
The language of the bard is great, but needs to be spoken to make much sense, and the puns are mostly lost to a modern audience, leaving them weaker than my own sense of humour. Although I'm fond of Lear's 'Every inch a king' (Think about it...;-D )
Before a million people complain that I'm being unfair on the sticks, I grew up here and I'm allowed to mock it. Anybody else does though and I'll be after you in my tractor...</HTML>