Modern English → Shakespearean
| Modern English | Shakespearean |
|---|---|
| How are you? | How dost thou? |
| Where are you going? | Whither goest thou? |
| Why are you sad? | Wherefore art thou sad? |
| Please listen to me. | Prithee, hear me. |
| I think it will rain. | Methinks it will rain. |
| I have to leave now. | I must hence. |
How Shakespearean English works
Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English, the English of around 1600. Most of it is our language with a few old habits. The biggest one is “thou”: Elizabethans said thou, thee, thy and thine to one person they knew well, and “you” to several people or to someone above them.
Verbs change with “thou”: thou art, thou hast, thou dost, thou goest. With “he” and “she” you will see both the old -eth ending (he hath, she doth, it goeth) and the modern -s. Sprinkle in words like prithee, ere, anon and methinks, and you have the sound of the Globe Theatre.
“Wherefore” doesn’t mean “where”
When Juliet asks “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”, she is not looking for him. Wherefore means why: she is asking why he has to be Romeo, a Montague, the son of her family’s enemy. “Whither” is the word for where to, and “hence” means from here.
Shakespeare is not Old English
Many people call Shakespeare’s language “Old English”, but Old English is the language of Beowulf, spoken a thousand years earlier and unreadable without study. If you want the real thing, try the Old English translator; Chaucer’s English in between is Middle English.
Shakespearean words to know
- thou / thee
- you (one person, familiar)
- thy / thine
- your / yours (thine before a vowel)
- art · hast · dost
- are · have · do (with thou)
- hath · doth
- has · does
- wherefore
- why
- whither · hence
- where to · from here
- anon
- soon, right away
- ere
- before
- prithee
- please (from “I pray thee”)
- methinks
- I think
- forsooth
- truly, indeed
- ’tis
- it is