Shakespeare’s Non-Standard English: A Dictionary of His Informal Language N. F. BLAKE Continuum Shakespeare’s Non-Standard English A Dictionary of His Informal Language ATHLONE SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARY SERIES Series Editor Sandra Clark (Birkbeck College, University of London) Shakespeare’s Legal Language B. J. Sokol & Mary Sokol Shakespeare’s Military Language Charles Edelman Shakespeare’s Books Stuart Gillespie Shakespeare’s Theatre Hugh Macrae Richmond ATHLONE SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARY SERIES Shakespeare’s Non-Standard English A Dictionary of His Informal Language N. F. BLAKE First published 2004 by Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 15 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010 © N. F. Blake 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers or their appointed agents. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-8264-7322-9 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire In memory of Carol Paula Chapman 1950–2004 Acknowledgements During the period this dictionary was being prepared I have delivered several lectures on informal English in Shakespeare. In particular, I gave in 2000 the Jespersen lecture at the University of Copenhagen, in 2001 another paper at the Dictionary Society of North America Conference at Ann Arbor, and in 2002 a further paper at the Historical Lexicography Conference at Leicester University. I am indebted to comments and advice from scholars present at these and other lectures. I should also like to acknowledge the guidance and support offered to me by Dr Sandra Clark, the General Editor. Contents Acknowledgements vi Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 Dictionary 7 Select Bibliography 359 Index of Words 366 Abbreviations 1. Works by or attributed to Shakespeare AC Antony and Cleopatra AW All’s Well That Ends Well AY As You Like It CE Comedy of Errors Cor Coriolanus Cym Cymbeline E3 King Edward III 1H4 The First Part of Henry IV 2H4 The Second Part of Henry IV H5 Henry V 1H6 The First Part of Henry VI 2H6 The Second Part of Henry VI 3H6 The Third Part of Henry VI H8 Henry VIII (or All is True) Ham Hamlet HL The History of King Lear (Quarto text) JC Julius Caesar KJ King John KL The Tragedy of King Lear (First Folio text) LC A Lover’s Complaint LL Love’s Labour’s Lost MA Much Ado About Nothing Mac Macbeth MM Measure for Measure MN A Midsummer Night’s Dream MV Merchant of Venice MW The Merry Wives of Windsor Oth Othello Per Pericles PP Passionate Pilgrim R2 Richard II R3 Richard III RJ Romeo and Juliet RL The Rape of Lucrece Son The Sonnets TA Titus Andronicus viii Abbreviations TC Troilus and Cressida Tem The Tempest TG Two Gentlemen of Verona Tim Timon of Athens TK Two Noble Kinsmen TN Twelfth Night TS The Taming of the Shrew VA Venus and Adonis WT The Winter’s Tale 2. Abbreviations of scholarly works Most books and articles are indicated by the surname of the author and date of publication and can be expanded through consulting the Bibliography. Other abbreviations include the following, whose full details can be found in the Bibliography: CDS J. Green, Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang Dent R. W. Dent, Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language DSUE E. Partridge, Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English GSSL G. Williams, A Glossary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Language GTSW W. W. Skeat, A Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words Hulme Hilda Hulme, Explorations in Shakespeare’s Language King Arthur King, The Language of Satirized Characters in Poëtaster OED Oxford English Dictionary PWPS Ernst Leisi, Problemwörter und Problemstellen in Shakespeares Dramen RDHS E. Partridge, Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang ShL A. Schmidt, Shakespeare-Lexicon SML Charles Edelman, Shakespeare’s Military Language: A Dictionary SSNT A. F. Falconer, Shakespeare’s Sea and Naval Terms SW D. and B. Crystal, Shakespeare’s Words 3. Other Abbreviations a ante Add.Pass. Additional Passage adj. adjective/modifier adv. adverb(ial) AFr. Anglo-French c circa, dated about C century (e.g. C17 = seventeenth century) cf. compare conj. conjunction Epil. Epilogue F First Folio (1623) Fr. French Gk Greek ix Abbreviations Germ. German Gmc Germanic Ind. Induction interj. interjection Ital. Italian Lat. Latin ME Middle English n. noun Obs. Obsolete OE Old English OFr. Old French PdE Present-day English pl. plural prep. preposition pret. preterite Prol. Prologue Q(q) quarto(s) (distinguished as Q1 [first quarto], Q2 [second quarto] as necessary) sc. scene Scn Scandinavian sg. singular ShE Shakespeare’s English v. verb † a form found only in Shakespeare or not recorded at all in the OED * a form first found in ShE according to the OED | end of first speaker’s and beginning of next speaker’s contribution For abbreviations used in the OED consult the OED itself. x Introduction All dictionaries have boundaries, whether they are chronological being restricted to a particular period or to an author such as a Dictionary of Old English, or thematic being restricted to a particular topic such as A Dictionary of Computer Language, or a mixture of both being restricted to certain types of word used by a particular author or in a specified period such as this dictionary. Boundaries cause difficulty for the compiler because of their inherent fuzziness, but the boundaries of thematic dictionaries are more problematic than chronological ones because of the difficulty in defining the topic covered with sufficient rigour. In this dictionary the fuzziness arises from both the difficulty in distinguishing what constitutes Shakespeare’s œuvre and how to define non-standard English. The Shakespearian canon The plays attributed to Shakespeare have varied over the years, because many of them were written in conjunction with others (Vickers 2002). In this dictionary I include all the plays in the First Folio (1623) together with The Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward III which is now regarded as Shakespeare’s, but I have not taken account of those lines in Sir Thomas More which are accepted as Shakespeare’s. However, many of Shakespeare’s plays were published in quarto format before (or occasionally after) their appearance in the First Folio and these are divided into ‘bad’ and ‘good’ quartos. The former may be earlier versions or adaptations of individual plays for a company smaller than the main London one or memorial reconstructions of the plays by one or more actors who were paid for this work by publishers intent on pirating them. It is difficult to decide with the so-called bad quartos how much of what is there constitutes Shakespeare’s own work. But these memorial reconstructions, if they are such, are often invaluable sources of infor- mation for the type of non-standard language which people attributed to Shake- speare, even if not actually representing his own words. The good quartos may differ lexically from the versions in the First Folio, and to what extent these variations are attributable to Shakespeare or to another dramatist employed by the acting company is uncertain. I have adopted the policy that all early versions of a play forming part of the Shakespeare canon, other than the quarto The Taming of a Shrew (whose status is still a matter of debate), are possible sources for the data forming his informal English, though I accept that it is unlikely that all words recorded in this dictionary were introduced by Shakespeare into the plays. With the poems the problem is of a different nature. There are a few longer poems like Venus and Adonis whose attribution to Shakespeare is unchallenged, 1 Introduction since they have dedications over his name. But there are many shorter poems which have been ascribed to Shakespeare over the years, though modern schol- arship has gradually reduced their number. In principle I have accepted as potential sources of data the poems included in Wells & Taylor 1988, but in practice many of the shorter poems contain few words included in this diction- ary because their subject matter is not conducive to the use of non-standard English. Wherever possible the quotations from Shakespeare’s work used as illustrative examples have been quoted in the original spelling. In a volume in which spell- ing and variant forms are significant, it has been important to reproduce the spellings found in the original texts. For the First Folio I have used the facsimile in Hinman (1996); for the quartos I have used the facsimiles in Allen & Muir (1981); for Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece I have used the facsimiles in Griggs (no date) and Praetorius (no date); for the Sonnets I have used the fac- simile in Booth (1977); and for other poems I have relied on the original spelling editions in Wells & Taylor (1986). Non-standard English In contrast to some other volumes in this series, the subject matter of this dic- tionary is more difficult to define. At no period in the English language is there a clear division between non-standard and standard English. One reason for this is that many innovations in English vocabulary occur within the non-standard var- iety and, gradually, some of the words developed at this level are accepted into more formal language. Today this can be seen in the language of drugs and drug- users, for words like crack, which were formerly restricted to certain speakers, are now more widely used. But it is very difficult to determine when this ‘acceptance’ into the standard occurs, and for some speakers this acceptance may never be recognized.