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3. Morphological peculiarities.
Shakespeare lived at a time when England was experiencing a revolution in the theory and practice of rituals, known to us as the English Reformation. With this came an unprecedented transformation in the language of religious life. While priests once acted as intermediaries between God and people through sacred rites, Reformed theology proclaimed the priesthood of all believers. What followed was not a neat replacement of one doctrine with another, but a long and confused conversation about the conventions of religious life and practice.
In Shakespeare's England, English was a much more flexible language. In addition, Shakespeare wrote as a dramatic poet and playwright, and not as a scientist or historian. Combine the flow of early modern English with Shakespeare's artistic license (and don't forget to add a lot of words that either changed the meaning or completely disappeared from the lexicon), and there will be some subtle difficulties in interpreting the meaning of Shakespeare 400 years after the fact. Like most popular playwrights of any era, Shakespeare uses language with ease and power, but also with conversational freedom.
In English, one word can be a noun, an adjective, or a verb. And Shakespeare's period stands out a lot. It was a time when many words had new grammatical functions. And William Shakespeare stood on the first stage among his contemporaries. In his works, the word can be translated into another grammatical category.
However, Shakespeare's innovative use of grammar distinguished him from his contemporaries. Shakespeare completely rethought grammar, refusing to conform to traditional rules.
We should highlight a passage from Hamlet, where Shakespeare plays with the usual rules of the English language, which require that the sentence be structured according to the order: subject, verb, object. In this scene, the queen says to her son: “Hamlet, you have greatly offended your father.” Nowadays, we would expect, ”You have greatly offended your father Hamlet.""
Shakespeare often used the inversion SOV (subject-object-verb), which translates the sentence as “John caught the ball". This order is usually found in Germanic languages (especially in subordinate clauses), from which the English language borrows most of its syntactic basis. Shakespeare also gives many examples of the construction of OSV (“The ball that John caught"). Shakespeare seems to use this colloquially in many places as a transitional device connecting two sentences to ensure continuity. Shakespeare (and many other writers) may have also used this as a technique to shift the emphasis at the end of a sentence to a verb. Also, another common use of inversion was the VS order shift (“caught John” instead of “John caught"), which seems to be primarily a stylistic choice that further contradicts the Germanic root of modern English.⁴
In Shakespearean transformations of a noun into a verb, “what are considered stable objects... it is freed from its passivity and acquires new power in the form of actions,” it is further noted that “the metaphor harmonizes well with the flexibility of transformation.” This union of metaphor and grammatical transformation is evident in Antony and Cleopatra, where transitions from noun to verb simultaneously confirm the fertility of metaphor and transfer action from the material sphere to a more mobile metaphorical one. Regardless of whether the characters are Romans or Egyptians, their language is constantly creating new words, turning the solidity of nouns and adjectives into a dynamic mobility of verbs. Thus, “joint” becomes a verb in 1.2.91, “safe" in 1.3.55, “dumb" in 1.5.50, “spaniel" in 4.7.21 and “boy” in 5.2.220, while “candy“ turns into ”discandy" in 3.13.166 and 4.12.22. These transformations give huge advantages. For example, Terttu Nevalainen notes that by turning the adjective “mute” into a verb instead of the already existing verb “to be silent”, Shakespeare acquires both the solidity of the Anglo-Saxon root word (instead of the more abstract Latin "silence") and the association with the inarticulacy of animals - animals were and remain usually described as “dumb", and not ”dumb." Such advantages complement what is always present in Shakespeare's functional transformation of nouns and adjectives into verbs - “dramatic energy and economy of expression.”
Adjectives are freely used by Shakespeare as adverbs:
“I know when the blood is burning, how profligate a soul makes vows to the tongue.” (Ophelia's Polonius in Hamlet I:3);
“And you, my tendons, don't age instantly.” (Hamlet I:5);
“What comes easily to a lying person” (Macbeth II:3).
We find two forms of adverb side by side in:
“She was recently settled and recently deified.” (Lover's complaint. 84).
The position of the article shows that mere is an adverb in:
”Heaven and the Most Holy Theotokos are merciful to this." (The first part of "King Henry the Sixth");
“Yes, of course, it's true.” (All is well that ends Well, III:5).
Such transcriptions as “our Lady of mercy” (adj.), where “gracious” is just an epithet, are not common in Shakespeare. For example:
“My dear lady, stand up” (Cymbeline II:3).
“My lady” is more like a single word than “our lady”, and is also an appellative. Such permutations are allowed in the names.
Sometimes these two forms occur together:
“And she will speak very bitterly and strangely.” (Measure for measure V:1).
In Shakespeare's works, intransitive verbs sometimes acquire a transitional meaning. For example:
“Why does this most strict and observant watch work so hard at night on this earth?” (Hamlet I:1).
In rare cases, transitive verbs were used in an intransitive sense. For example, the verb “to lack (to be needed)”.
“... and there will be no shortage of what a poor person like Hamlet can do to express his love and friendly feelings to you, with God's help.” (Hamlet I: 5).
Indicative simple present for the full present with adverbs meaning “for now", etc. This corresponds to the Latin idiom “jampridem opto”, etc., and this is understandable on the grounds that when an action that has lasted up to the present is still going on, the speaker may prefer that the verb simply stop at the fact of the presence of the action, allowing the adverb to express the continuity of the past tense:
“This is the worst news about which I've ever heard of it.” (Henry IV I:4);
“How has Your Honor been doing for so many days?” (Hamlet III:3).
The subjunctive mood after the verbs of command and supplication is especially common; naturally, since the command implies a certain goal.
“We order you to wear.” (Winter 's Tale II:3);
“I conjure you to declare.” (Winter 's Tale I:2);
“ Tell him from me
He behaves with dignity.” (The Taming of the Shrew).