Shakespeare's Non-Standard English A Dictionary of his Informal Language [Paperback]

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. However, the bulk of Shakespeare's output consists of plays and to make these appear lifelike he needed to employ a colloquial and informal style. This aspect of his work has been largely disregarded apart from his bawdy language. 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, fashionable words and puns.Blakes dictionarywith concise definitions, judiciously selected citations, and abbreviations marking forms 'found only in Shakespeare' and those 'first found in Shakespeare'could not have been entrusted to a keener eye & the Arden Dictionaries have made an enormous contribution. While each volume impresses the reader with Shakespeares grasp of a particular topicwide, deep, and, as experts in various fields have noted, accurateit is impossible to view all of the dictionaries together and not come away with renewed awe at his commodious erudition. Deborah T. Curren-Aquino,Shakespeare Quarterly

AcknowledgementsIntroduction Abbreviations Dictionary Select Bibliography Index