ABSTRACT
We can read Shakespeare much more easily than Chaucer. For that obvious reason I need spend comparatively little time on grammatical matters. However, despite the great simplification in morphology (the shapes o f words, including inflexions) between Chaucer and Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s grammar and syntax are not yet completely our own. Anyone who wishes to investigate the less important differences - o f importance, that is, to the philologist but less so to the literary critic - may find them illustrated in three books whose approach is usually very different from mine: G. L. Brook, The Language o f Shakespeare (1976), C. Barber, Early Modern English (1976), and E. A. Abbott, A Shakespearean Grammar (published in 1870 and still useful). Nor shall I delay over certain differences which I suspect afford little difficulty to the reader and even less to the theatre-goer. We no longer, with the eighteenth century, wish to correct Shakespeare, and so his double comparisons, double superlatives and multiple negatives1 do not bother us:
Nor that I am more better Than Prospero, master o f a full poor cell.
