In an English sentence, meaning is quite dependent on the place given each word. “The dog bit the boy” and “The boy bit the dog” mean very different things, even though the individual words are the same. Shakespeare frequently shifts his sentences away from “normal” English arrangements—often to create the rhythm he seeks, sometimes to use a line’s poetic rhythm to emphasize a particular word, sometimes to give a character his or her own speech patterns or to allow the character to speak in a special way. When we attend a good performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the actors will have worked out the sentence structures and will articulate the sentences so that the meaning is clear. In reading for yourself, do as the actor does. That is, when you become puzzled by a character’s speech, check to see if words are being presented in an unusual sequence.
Look first for the placement of subject and verb. Shakespeare often places the verb before the subject (e.g., instead of “He goes,” we find “Goes he”). In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we find such a construction when Egeus says “Full of vexation come I” (instead of “Full of vexation I come . . . “). Lysander uses this same kind of construction when he says, “There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,” as does Hermia, when she says “Before the time I did Lysander see / Seemed Athens as a paradise to me.” Helena’s “But herein mean I to enrich my pain” is another example of inverted subject and verb.
Such inversions rarely cause much confusion. More problematic is Shakespeare’s frequent placing of the object before the subject and verb (e.g., instead of “I hit him,” we might find “Him I hit”). Egeus’s “And what is mine my love shall render him” is an example of such an inversion (the normal order would be “And my love shall render him what is mine”), as is Helena’s “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity,” where “things base and vile” is the object of the verb “transpose.”
Inversions are not the only unusual sentence structures in Shakespeare’s language. Often in his sentences words that would normally appear together are separated from each other. Take, for example, Theseus’s “But earthlier happy is the rose distilled / Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, / Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.” Here the phrase “withering on the virgin thorn” separates the pronoun (“which”) from its verb (“grows”). Or take Lysander’s lines that begin “My fortunes every way as fairly ranked / (If not with vantage) as Demetrius’,” where the normal construction “as fairly ranked as Demetrius’” is interrupted by the insertion of the parenthetical “If not with vantage.” In order to create for yourself sentences that seem more like the English of everyday speech, you may wish to rearrange the words, putting together the word clusters (“that which grows,” “as fairly ranked as Demetrius’”). You will usually find that the sentence will gain in clarity but will lose its rhythm or shift its emphasis.
Locating and rearranging words that “belong together” is especially necessary in passages that separate basic sentence elements by long delaying or expanding interruptions. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the interruptions are often decorative lyrical passages. Hermia uses such an interrupted construction when she says to Lysander:
I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow,
By his best arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,
And by that fire which burned the Carthage queen
When the false Trojan under sail was seen,
By all the vows that ever men have broke
(In number more than ever women spoke),
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.
Occasionally, rather than separating basic sentence elements, Shakespeare simply holds them back, delaying them until subordinate material has already been given. Lysander uses this kind of delaying structure when he says, “For aught that I could ever read, / Could ever hear by tale or history, / The course of true love never did run smooth” (where the basic sentence elements “The course of true love never did run smooth” are held back until two lines of explanatory material are introduced).
Lysander’s speech to Helena uses this same delayed construction:
Tomorrow night when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the wat’ry glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass
(A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal),
Through Athens’ gates have we devised to steal—
delaying the basic sentence elements “we have devised to steal through Athens’ gates” and then doubly inverting them.
Sentences in Shakespeare’s plays are sometimes complicated not because of unusual structures or interruptions but because Shakespeare omits words and parts of words that English sentences normally require. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream omissions are few and seem to result from the poet’s wish to create regular iambic pentameter lines. For instance, Theseus says, “Thrice blessèd they that master so their blood” instead of “Thrice-blessèd are they.” This omission creates a rhythmically regular line. In the line “Steal forth thy father’s house tomorrow night,” the omission of the word from in the phrase “forth from” again creates a regular rhythm.
Adapted from Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (editors), the New Folger Library Shakespeare edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. © 1993 Folger Shakespeare Library
