Free William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition by William Shakespeare

variations in accent, especially in the London area.
    Despite their limitations, the reconstruction of the Early Modern English sound system indicates that pronunciation norms have changed greatly in the past four hundred years. Modern performances and readings, though, almost always introduce present-day sounds without comment, allowing only for cases where an earlier pronunciation is needed to satisfy the needs of the metre or to convey the effect of a pun. So the situation with speaking is very similar to that with writing: most modern readers and playgoers remain unaware of the extent of the difference. And this is why, when people discuss the distinctive language of Shakespeare, the main topics are usually restricted to the three areas of language that are present in both: grammar, vocabulary, and discourse conventions. In each case, the number of differences between Early Modern English and Modern English is relatively small, but several of the points of difference turn up very frequently - which is the chief reason that people think Shakespeare’s language is more different from Modern English than in fact it is.

Grammar
     
    The grammatical rules of the language have little changed during the past four centuries: some 90 per cent of the word orders and word formations used by Shakespeare are still in use today. A grammatical parsing of the prose extract from Julius Caesar above would bring to light nearly two hundred points of sentence, clause, phrase, and word structure, but there is only one construction which is noticeably different from Modern English: ‘Had you rather Caesar were living’. Today we would have to say something like: ‘Would you rather have Caesar living’. A less significant difference, in that passage, is the use of the subjunctive (as in If there be any in this assembly ), which is unusual in British (though not American) English today. But apart from this, and allowing for the rather formal rhetorical style, the other grammatical usages in the extract are the same as those we would use now.
    There is nonetheless a widespread impression that Shakespeare’s grammar is very different from what we find today. The impression arises for two reasons: because of the way grammar operates within discourse, and because of the influence of metrical constraints.

GRAMMAR IN DISCOURSE
     
    Grammar is different from vocabulary in the way it appears in connected speech or writing. An individual word may not be present in a particular speech - or even in a whole scene - but core grammatical features are repeatedly used. Each page of this essay will provide many examples of the definite article, forms of the verb to be , plural endings, conjunctions such as and, and other essential features of sentence construction. In the same way, Shakespearian grammar repeatedly uses several Early Modern English features, such as older pronouns ( thou, ye ), inflectional endings ( -est, -eth ), and contracted forms ( is’t, on’t ). It is the frequency of use of such forms which can give a grammatical colouring to a speech - often, out of all proportion to their linguistic significance, as in this extract from Hamlet (5.1.271-5):
    HAMLET ( to Laertes ) Swounds, show me what
thou’lt do.
Woot weep, woot fight, woot fast, woot tear thyself,
Woot drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?
I’ll do’t. Dost thou come here to whine,
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
     
    Woot, often edited as woo’t, is a colloquial form of wilt or wouldst thou . It is a rare literary usage, but here its repetition, along with the other contracted forms and the use of thou , dominates the impression we have of the grammar, and gives an alien appearance to a speech which in all other respects is grammatically identical with Modern English:
    Show me what you will do.
    Will you weep, will you fight, will you fast, will you
tear yourself,
Will you drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?
I’ll do it. Do you come here to whine,
To outface me with