Commentary
Romeo and Juliet was a play written by William Shakespeare between the period of 1589 and 1613. The play was written in the Early Modern English era where English language was going through a new phase of transformation in the Renaissance. Shakespeare was born in Warwickshire, England. His works included poetry, playwrights of tragedies, comedies and romances.
Features of Early Modern English could be found in the William Shakespeare’s work. There were some words that were shortened with an apostrophe (contraction). In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 2 scene 2, line 12, Shakespeare used “haviour” to contract the word “behavior” which was a significant feature of the early modern English. King Henry VIII, who also produced his works during the Renaissance had used “embroider’d” instead of “embroidered in “Greensleeves”,. This further validates the point that contractions were used at the point of time. In Act 2, Scene 2, Line 66, Romeo “o’erperched” the walls, this showed evidence of the usage of contractions in our example text. Another change that can be seen from early modern English would be the birth of “comma”, as it was used to provide a pause to sentences instead of using a virgule (/). As seen in http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/language_timeline/index.shtml, there were several virgules that are used in the text in 1490 by William Caxton. In Shakespeare text, all virgules were replaced with commas and this is also evident in our text. There were also semantic features that gave more evidence to the language used, usage of words were “narrowed” down. For example, “stony limits” was equivalent to “stone walls” in line 67 of our selected text.
The renaissance in 1500-1650, was considered to be the rebirth of culture, especially in Europe. There was an increase in the need for self expression through artistic and individualistic approaches, increasing in the number of budding artists and musicians. While the famous works of arts from Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo showed the physically artistic expression of the renaissance, Shakespeare’s works of English literature brought out the beauty of the time through language. The renaissance was also the time of increased religious influence, especially in Christianity which henceforth brought in words of Latin origins such as ‘saint’, ‘baptised’ and ‘heaven’ into the English language. Modern day English has continued to adapt new words from other languages. An example will be the inclusion of the word “Honcho” which means boss or leader, taken from the Japanese word “hancho”.
Certain features of early modern English are still used in today’s context. The first example will be that many words have been shortened for the sake of convenience in emails, letters or even songs. In certain cases, such features are also used to make the correspondence. Apostrophe is often used in words like “cannot”, “let us”, “do not”, “they are”, “could not”, “you have”, etc. These words were shortened with an apostrophe forming “let’s”, “don’t”, “they’re”, “couldn’t”. The shortening of words for aesthetics still do exist, as can be seen from how some words in song lyrics are also shortened to fit the values of the notes and to facilitate for the flow of the song to be smoother. For example, in the song “I say a little prayer for you”, “Prayer” is shorten into “Pray’r” and “Little” is shorten into “Lil’”.
It is evident that English has never stopped changing since ancient times. It will always be a language, like every other language, adaptive yet constant. From the transition from Old Early English to Modern English; it has taken many forms and accepting new words into the dictionary. In the last decade, the popularity and use of English has increased, to become a universal language, especially in multilingual countries.