Selected Writings of Otto Jespersen (Routledge Revivals)

Otto Jespersen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415573023
• eBook ISBN: 9781135155445
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume, first published in 1960 to commemorate the one hundredth birthday of Jespersen, collects together as many of his writings as possible in order to allow students of the English language, or indeed of language in general, to read those shorter papers which have hitherto escaped their notice. The layout of the book largely follows the nature of the subjects dealt with: English grammar, phonetics, history of English, language teaching, language in general, international language and miscellaneous papers.

A MARGINAL NOTE ON SHAKESPEARE’S LANGUAGE AND A TEXTUAL CRUX IN ‘KING LEAR’¹

NOTHING could well be more wide of the mark than Tolstoy’s assertion that Shakespeare lacks the true dramatist’s power to make different characters speak differently. On the contrary, it would be difficult to find another dramatist using individual style and individual language for the purpose of characterizing different persons to the same extent as Shakespeare. Hotspur does not speak like Prince Hal, nor Rosalind like Viola or Cordelia; Shylock has a language all his own, and the insincerity of the King in Hamlet is shown characteristically by a certain tendency towards involved sentences and avoiding the natural and straightforward expression. Even minor characters are often individualized by means of their speech, thus the gardeners in Richard the Second (Act III, Sc. iv) or Osric in Hamlet. But this has not always been noticed by commentators and editors, and I think a truer appreciation of Shakespeare’s art in this respect will assist us in explaining at least one crux in his text.

I am specially alluding to one passage in King Lear (IV. 3. 19 ff.), where the first Quarto reads—the whole scene is omitted in the Folio—

Patience and sorrow strove,
Who should expresse her goodliest[.] You haue seene,

20 Sun shine and raine at once, her smiles and teares,
Were like a better way those happie smilets,
That playd on her ripe lip seeme[d] not to know,

¹ A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, ed. by Israel Gollancz. Oxford 1916, p. 481–483.

What guests were in her eyes which parted thence,
As pearles from diamonds dropt[.] In briefe,
Sorow would be a raritie most beloued,
If all could so become it.

I have here only changed streme into the obvious strove, and seeme into seemed, besides putting full stops after goodliest and dropt.

Lines 20–1 are difficult. ‘It is not clear what sense can be made of it’ (W. A. Wright). ‘It is doubtful if any meaning can be got out of these words’ (W. J. Craig). Those editors who are adverse to violent changes generally follow Boaden and Singer in taking like to mean ‘like sunshine and rain’ and explaining a better way adverbially as equal to ‘but in a better way as being more beautiful’, after which they put a semicolon. But certainly this is very unnatural. Therefore a great many people have thought the text corrupt, and the Cambridge edition particularizes how the imagination of emendators has run riot. A few would change like and read

Were link’d a better way,

Were link’d in bright array.

or

Others retain like, and then set about discovering what her smiles and tears may have been like. Only one letter needs to be changed in order to produce the readings:

Were like a better day;

Were like a better May—

but then better is not very good; why not, therefore, go on changing:

Were like a bitter May;—

Were like a wetter May.

or

No doubt, this last conjecture (Theobald’s) is highly ingenious; only it may be objected that the description does not suit the traditional notions concerning the climate of the month of May; hence, obviously, Heath suggests:

Were like an April day

Other conjectures are:

Were like a chequer’d day;

Were like a bridal day;

Were like a bettering day;

but the inventor of the last emendation is honest enough to say: ‘But this is no more satisfactory than the rest of the guesses’ (W. J. Craig).

Now, to my mind, the pr

ton pseudos of all these random shots is due to our emendators’ attempts to make the passage into natural English and good common sense without noticing who the speaker is and what would be in keeping with his mental attitude. But it so happens that although the speaker is merely a nameless ‘Gentleman’, whom we meet with in two small and insignificant scenes only (Act III, Sc. i, and here), yet we see what kind of man he is: a courtier, second cousin to Osric, and like him, fond of an affectedly refined style of expression. It is impossible for him to speak plainly and naturally; he is constantly looking out for new similes and delighting in unexpected words and phrases. The number of similes and comparisons is relatively very small in King Lear; the iniquities and cruelties of life seem at that period to have made Shakespeare forget the fondness of his youth for verbal refinement and a smooth versification; his style has become unequal and his verse uneven, and the play is powerful by virtue of its very ruggedness. In the middle of the play however—in a subordinate part, so unimportant for the action of the play that some of the finest things of Act III. Sc. i and the whole of Act IV. Sc. iii can be left out of the play (see the Folio)—Shakespeare introduces a gentleman, who is above all a stylist, as the reader of these two scenes will easily notice. Note also especially his words ‘in brief’.

This, then, is the way in which I should read the passage in question, changing only the punctuation:

You have seen

Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears Were like —

[pronounced in a rising tone, and with a small pause after like; he is trying to find a beautiful comparison, but does not succeed to his own satisfaction, and therefore says to himself, ‘No, I will put it differently.’]

— a better way:

[‘I have now found the best way beautifully to paint in words what I saw in Cordelia’s face.’]

those happy smilets
That play’d on her ripe lip seem’d not to know
What guests were in her eyes.

Lingtdstica, 1933.

THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONSIDERED IN ITS RELATION TO OTHER SUBJECTS

No single human individual ever lived completely isolated from his fellow beings; no nation was ever entirely cut off from other nations; and no contact between individuals and nations ever took place without leaving traces in their coming lives. Language is inconceivable without such contact, and nothing is more contagious than modes of speech. From the manner in which a man talks, one can always tell what sort of people he has had most intercourse with and what sort of influences, intellectual and moral, he has been chiefly subject to in the whole of his life. This is true of nations too; a complete survey of the English language would, therefore, show to the initiated the whole of the life of the English nation from the oldest times till the present day.

Let us for a moment imagine that all human records, all books, documents, inscriptions, letters, etc., were lost, with the single exception of a number of texts written in English at various dates, and let us imagine a body of men buckling down to the task of writing the history of the English language with that material only. They would be able, of course, to find out a great many things, but however highly gifted we imagine them to be, there would always remain to them an immense number of riddles which no amount of sagacity would enable them to solve, and which now, to us, are no riddles at all. In the old texts they would encounter a great many words whose meanings could be gathered with more or less certainty from the context; but a vast number of other words would remain unintelligible to them, which are now made perfectly clear to us by their similarity with words in cognate languages. How much should we understand now of Beowulf, if we had not Gothic, German, Norse, etc., to compare the words with? And then the forms of the words, their inflections and modifications: our supposed philologists would be at a loss to explain such phenomena as vowel-mutation (umlaut) or to understand the use and formation of the different cases, etc. Similarly, when they saw a great many of the old words disappear and give way to others that were hitherto totally unknown, they would not be in possession of the key we now have in Scandinavian, in French, in Latin and Greek: much of what is now self-evident would under these circumstances strike everybody with amazement, as falling down from heaven without any apparent reason.

A scientific treatment of the English language must, then, presuppose the scientific treatment of a great many other languages as well, and the linguistic historian cannot possibly fulfill his task without a wide outlook to other fields. Not only must he have some acquaintance with the cognate languages, the Arian (or Indo-European)...

Table of contents

• PREFACE
• CONTENTS
• NEGATION IN ENGLISH AND OTHER LANGUAGES
• CHAPTERS ON ENGLISH FREFACE
• ADVERSATIVE CONJUNCTIONS1
• THE ROLE OF THE VERB
• THE HISTORY OF A SUFFIX
• A SUPPOSED FEMININE ENDING1
• EFFICIENCY IN LINGUISTIC CHANGE
• FOR+SUBJECT+INFINITIVE
• A FEW BACK-FORMATIONS
• PUNNING OR ALLUSIVE PHRASES IN ENGLISH
• THE SYSTEM OF GRAMMAR
• THE TEACHING OF GRAMMAR1
• WHAT IS THE USE OF PHONETICS?
• SYMBOLIC VALUE OF THE VOWEL I1
• VOICED AND VOICELESS FRICATIVES IN ENGLISH1
• MONOSYLLABISM IN ENGLISH1
• THE NASAL IN NIGHTINGALE, etc.
• NOTES ON METRE1
• A MARGINAL NOTE ON SHAKESPEARE’S LANGUAGE AND A TEXTUAL CRUX IN ‘KING LEAR’1
• THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONSIDERED IN ITS RELATION TO OTHER SUBJECTS
• THE CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES
• NATURE AND ART IN LANGUAGE1
• INTRODUCTION, AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
• HISTORY OF OUR LANGUAGE1
• ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGES AFTER THE WORLD-WAR1
• PREFACE, NOVIAL LEXIKE
• INTERLINGUISTICS
• INTRODUCTION, THE UNIVERSAL ADOPTION OF ROMAN CHARACTERS
• SPEECH IN HONOUR OF VILHELM THOMSEN1
• VILHELM THOMSEN’S INTERPRETATION OF THE ORKHON INSCRIPTIONS1
• KARL VERNER1
• PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
• FAREWELL LECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY
• CONGRATULATORY MESSAGE