ABSTRACT
The late sixteenth century was the period when England began to define itself as a nation state of international importance. It was also the period when the English language finally won the long struggle to establish itself as a respectable medium of intellectual thought. William Shakespeare himself was a great innovator in language, but his linguistic innovations were not confined to his ready acceptance of new words; his unconventional and resourceful use of everyday language, his puns and his wordplay, had the effect of extending the meanings of individual words, and of generating suggestions which go far beyond the paraphrasable meanings of his sentences. One of the central issues which Shakespeare's tragedies dramatize is the way in which the meanings which men construct for themselves through their words, their language and their social conventions are subject to collapse.
