John Barton made a stunningly simple point about Shakespeare’s language: It’s the monosyllables that are the bedrock and life of the language. And I believe that is so with Shakespeare. The high words, the high phrases he sets up to then bring them down to the simple ones which explain them. Like “making the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.” First there is the high language, then the specific clear definition. At the heart of Shakespeare, listening to it for acting, the great lines, often the most poetic, are the monosyllables. Deep feeling probably comes out in
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