Although Shakespeare’s plays are four hundred years old, the stories they tell are still as exciting and relevant as they were to Shakespeare’s audience. When you pick up of one of the texts though, you may groan, and complain that they are too hard and need translating from Old English into Modern English.
However, Shakespeare’s English is actually very similar to the English that we speak today, and in fact isn’t Old English at all! What makes Shakespeare’s language difficult isn’t the grammar or the vocabulary as much as the fact that it is written in verse, and therefore most of the words, phrases, sentences, and speeches have multiple meanings.
In the classification we have made of English language periods, Shakespeare fits officially into the ‘modern’ category. His language is what is called Early Modern English. Old English is a completely different thing. Look at the following passage in Old English and try and read it:
Fæder ure þuþe eart on heofonum
si þin nama gehalgod tobecume þin rice gewurþe þin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice.
Do you recognize it? If not, try this one:
Oure fadir þat art in heuenes halwid be þi name;
þi reume or kyngdom come to be. Be þi wille don in herþe as it is dounin heuene.
yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.
And foryeue to us oure dettis þat is oure synnys as we foryeuen to oure dettouris þat is to men þat han synned in us.
And lede us not into temptacion but delyuere us from euyl.’
Easier, and perhaps you recognize it now, but only just? Look at the next one:
Our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
In these three samples of text you have just seen the evolution of the English language. The first is Old English, of which the most famous literary work written in that form is epic poem Beowulf. The Old English extract above though is taken from the Bible and is part of the Lord’s Prayer.
The second passage is from the Wyclif Bible of 1348, two hundred years before Shakespeare’s time, and it is written in what is called Middle English. The most enduring and famous writer of that time is Chaucer.
The third text extract is from the King James Authorized Bible and it came out in the same year as The Tempest, in 1611. You will likely have no difficulty reading this extract because it is written in Modern English, and will probably find it far easier to read than a Shakespeare text, although the language is the language all English people spoke in Shakespeare’s time.
That is because the text is not expressed in the concentrated form that poets used. It was conventional to write plays (and of course sonnets and poems too) in verse during Shakespeare’s time, so you would have the same difficulty reading Ben Johnson or any other of Shakespeare’s contemporary playwrights.