
Shakespeare’s Genius Is Nonsense - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/shakespeares-genius-is-nonsense
======
mhartl
The subject of the piece (Stephen Booth) has written "400 pages of virtuosic
commentary exploring the ambiguity and polysemy of Shakespeare’s verse." Does
anyone know if he addresses Step Zero of appreciating the sonnets, which is to
use Original Pronunciation (OP)? [1] Many of the sonnets don't even rhyme
properly when pronounced in modern British or American English, but they do in
OP. [2]

[1]:
[http://www.pronouncingshakespeare.com/](http://www.pronouncingshakespeare.com/)

[2]: See, for example, the recitation of Sonnet 116 at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt7OynPUIY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt7OynPUIY8).

~~~
anatoly
I find David and Ben Crystal's efforts to promote the Original Pronunciation
admirable, but ever since I've heard their version of Sonnet 116 a few years
ago, I've harbored doubts about their particular choices. Several books I read
on Early Modern English phonetics agree that love-prove, love-move, love-
remove etc. are not visual rhymes. But Ben Crystal chooses to pronounce all
these words with the short [ʌ] sound (like the vowel of modern 'cut'). And I
think it's wrong (well, not on my own authority, I'm not a linguist or a
specialist in this area, just someone very interested in historical phonetics
of English who read a bunch of books and articles).

Words like move, remove, prove used to be pronounced with the long [o:] sound
before the Great Vowel Shift (which is how they got their spelling), and by
Shakespeare's time they moved to [u:], which they retained until modern times.
I tried to find any evidence _other than the love- rhymes_ that these words
could be pronounced with a short [ʌ] sound, and couldn't.

On the other hand, "love" was probably pronounced usually with a short [u]
sound, the same sound we use today in "put". All the words with u in a closed
syllable used that sound as well, like "cut", "but", "cup" "sun" etc. The
change from this [u] to [ʌ] happened after Shakespeare's time, mostly later in
the 17th century, resulting in the familiar pronunciation of "but" "cup"
"sun", but leaving after it a fair number of exceptions that refused to follow
the change, such as "put" "push" etc.

"prove" and "love" did rhyme when Shakespeare used them; but perhaps the rhyme
was a bit inexact, rhyming long [u:] of "prove/move/remove" and short [u] of
"love" (but still much more exact than modern [u:] and [ʌ] of course). Or, as
Charles Barber claims in his "Early Modern English" (unwieldly Google Books
links: [http://bit.ly/1uI7SWQ](http://bit.ly/1uI7SWQ)), "love" was exceptional
in having a variant [u:] pronunciation especially beloved by poets, precisely
because they could use it to rhyme it with handy words like "prove" and
"move". Either way, the love/move rhyme did not sound at all the way Ben
Crystal pronounces it.

~~~
thaumasiotes
The sound we use today in "put" isn't [u], it's [ʊ]. Today, it would
definitely not be considered an adequate rhyme for [u:]; would you call "look"
[lʊk] an inexact rhyme for "Luke" [lu:k]?

On the other hand, I tend to suspect that [u], if it occurred, would be
accepted as an exact rhyme for [u:]. Any line-final [u] in a poem would sort
of necessarily be promoted to [u:], though.

On an unrelated note, are there areas that use a [lʊv] pronunciation of "love"
today? That might explain the to-me odd use of "lurve" in humor.

~~~
anatoly
Thank you for correcting my careless notation. I often forget about the
differences between some of the u-sounds, because my native language (Russian)
has just one. To me, "look" and "Luke" actually sounds like a passable rhyme,
and in general one feature common to nearly everyone who speaks English with a
Slavic accent is that they do not distinguish between [ʊ] and [u:]. I know the
difference intellectually, and I try to pronounce them correctly, but I
probably still get it wrong every now and then.

I believe [ʊ] used to be [u], but I don't remember when this quality change
happened.

I think there are still current dialects in the center and north of England
where this split didn't happen, so they would have [lʊv]. Here's an
interesting self-aware example:
[http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/6911/understa...](http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/6911/understanding-
the-strut-vowel-as-a-listener-without-the-split)

------
zaroth
"Shallow processing explains our predisposition to miss the problem of whether
a man should be allowed to marry his widow’s sister."

What a neat example!

~~~
tjradcliffe
Is that shallow processing or the presumption of coherence? People frequently
say things using linguistic shorthands that are literally nonsense, and we are
only able to communicate because we routinely impose a generous interpretation
on statements that would otherwise be incoherent. Since the literal
interpretation of "Should a man be allowed to marry his window's sister?"
makes no sense, reading it "incorrectly" in a way that does make sense makes
sense.

~~~
pcrh
*widow's sister

The other is even more nonsense :-)

~~~
emotionalcode
For certain definitions of nonsense:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-QoGKj6YQM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-QoGKj6YQM)

:)

------
acqq
TLDR is actually in the middle of the whole text:

The Shakespeare expert wrote a book (more than a decade ago!) on how
Shakespeare is a genius apparently for controlling and using the nonsense in
his verses.

Much ado (the linkbait quality title) about connoisseur (as in xkcd).

------
foxhedgehog
For further reading, this is Booth's book on nonsense generally:
[http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft538nb...](http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft538nb2zt&brand=ucpress)

------
twelfthnight
Very cool article. For those who didn't read and might wonder why someone is
arguing that Shakespeare isn't a genius, the title is a play on words. The
article argues that Shakespeare's unusual use of language ("nonsense") is what
makes his work genius.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Thanks. I have a hard time defending Shakespeare well enough, but now I don't
have to.

I wonder what translation of Shakespeare, to Italian for example, Booth
prefers. Translators can make the archaic stuff accessible again, and so maybe
the italian crowd gets the jokes that are lost on the english one.

~~~
chrismealy
Yep, that's it. Shakespeare's dialect is full of false friends.

 _Indeed, the irony today is that the Russians, the French and other people in
foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do, for
the simple reason that unlike us, they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the
language they speak. Shakespeare is translated into rich, poetic varieties of
these languages, to be sure, but since it is the rich, poetic modern varieties
of the languages, the typical spectator in Paris, Moscow or Berlin can attend
a production of Hamlet and enjoy a play rather than an exercise. In Japan, new
editions of Shakespeare in Japanese are regularly best-sellers—utterly
unimaginable here, since, like the Japanese, we prefer to experience
literature in the language we speak, and a new edition of original Shakespeare
no longer fits this definition. In an illuminating twist on this, one friend
of mine—and a very cultured, literate one at that—has told me that the first
time they truly understood more than the gist of what was going on in a
Shakespeare play was when they saw one in French!_

\--
[http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/jan10/shakespeare.cfm](http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/jan10/shakespeare.cfm)

~~~
bane
The flip side is that English speakers get to enjoy a treasure trove of 500
years of stories that are basically riffs on his works and a vast collection
of day to day sayings and words which color our everyday language.

We actually get to live intimately with his works even if we can barely
understand the originals.

~~~
bhaak
So do you when you speak German and French. Shakespeare isn't just an English
classic, he is an European and a World's classic and in Europe, many countries
have lived intimately with him for centuries as well.

Granted, not all went as far as the Germans and Klingons, but thinking that
only the English people have a long lived history with Shakespeare is false.

I looked at what Wikipedia had about Shakespeare's influence in non-English
countries and was surprised that this is hardly mentioned.

Is this really an obscure fact that for example in the 19th century
Shakespeare was widely more popular in Germany than in Britain or that Goethe
and Voltaire were avid admirers of Shakespeare?

------
bronson
Looks like the headline got changed. It was, "Shakespeare’s Genius Is
Nonsense" which I thought was both more correct (by HN rules) and more
entertaining.

The headline is currently "What Shakespeare can teach about language and the
limits of the human mind."

~~~
dang
Ok, we put it back. The HN rule, by the way, is to not use misleading or
linkbait titles. This one is obviously the latter. But if it's that
descriptive of the content, we can let it go. (Edit: I'm moving this subthread
to the root level so we can mark it off topic without penalizing the parent.)

~~~
hammock
Since when did legitimately clever headlines, once a source of pride for any
editor, become "obviously linkbait"?

~~~
worklogin
It's clever in context; that is, once you know what the article is about. On
the face of it, someone is saying "it's nonsense that Shakespeare is
considered a genius", and is thus more linkbait than the average, descriptive
title.

~~~
hammock
Shakespeare's penchant for making up words and wordplay is well-known; there
is enough context for an educated reader to figure it out before clicking on
the link.

~~~
tjradcliffe
In a world where the most banal and boring article gets tortured into
clickbait, this educated reader wondered, "Is that something interesting do to
with Shakespeare's use of language, or something dull and stupid that has been
given a ridiculous headline to attract the gullible?"

So no, there is not enough context for "an educated reader" to figure it out.

~~~
tejon
You conflate "educated" with "superficially cynical."

