Shakespeare Concordances
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[edit] Shakespeare Concordances
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Welcome to the newest effort at applying the tools of digital scholarship to the greatest classics of all times! You are also welcome to go to the Lynx Line Indexer digital scholarship page.
If you have any questions concerning the program, just email me at Shakespeare at the Phillins Online Free School Resources site. I will be glad to answer all your enquiries.
[edit] Click here to go directly to the Hamlet Concordance
[edit] Click here to go to How to Create Concordances
[edit] Click here to go to the Shakespeare Main Page
[edit] Click here to go to the Table of Contents for this Site
[edit] Click here to go to a concordance template page.
[edit] Click here to go to a related digital scholarship site, the Lynx Line Indexer
[edit] Click here to go the Concordances Page Index.
[edit] How to Read a Concordance Entry
Click on the first asterisk to go to the fixed concordance page, either to gather the link to the text page or to check for notes.
Click on second asterisk to go to an editable wiki page. Here is where you will contribute your definitions, notes, etc.
Click on the hyperlinked selection + number to go to the corresponding text page.
Click on the last asterisk to go to a notes/plot summary page which may include questions that will help you determine whether you have understood what you have read, as well as help guide you in a re-reading.
If you are the first, or among the first to annotate a play, Click here to go to a concordance template page. Open this in its edit box, and copy-paste the wiki-text into succeeding concordance page editing boxes. Then edit each to reflect its new text selection number.
If you would like to submit test questions, just place them on the test questions page. I will post them on the testing web pages just asap. Unfortunately, I cannot redo all the work it took to create the test templates right away (they were done in html).
That's it! You're ready to rock and roll.
[edit] Click here to go to Shakespeare Concordances (continued).
[edit] How to Create Concordances
[edit] Definitions
The definitions used in the note pages are simply the closest approximations I can manage to the meanings that we believe Shakespeare to have intended. Where we think that Shakespeare intended a double or triple meaning, a double entendre, or pun, that is indicated.
Where we believe that the word should be more grandly illustrated, there may also be a few more meanings, however, for the sake of speed, we are not linking the word to dictionary pages, or giving it a full dictionary description.
For example, the word "draw" is used by Claudius to describe what he fears Laertes might do to those he believes guilty of his father's death. In any and every dictionary, the meaning of the word draw does not come close to anything that can be made to sound sensical in the sentence. Thus, I have reached into the ether, and posed the word as part of the phrase, "draw and quarter," which means execute. Now the sentence makes sense, for Laertes certainly will execute or murder those he suspects of murdering his father.
Our style of definition writing is thus: If it is a single word that might be defined, it is highlighted in bold, and the definition that makes the of Shakespeare intelligible to the modern ear follows.
If it is a phrase that needs translation, the phrase is placed in italics, and followed by a paraphrase. Almost always, there will be an unknown word within this phrase, and this is placed in bold-character, thus it is italicized and bold-character. Then, in the following plain character translation, the word used in translation is placed in italics.
For example: Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen, - Will so place ourselves, so that we may watch without being seen.
bestow -to place.
[edit] Example 2
My lord, he's going to his mother's closet:
Behind the arras I'll convey myself,
To hear the process; and warrant she'll tax him home:
And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.
Paraphrase: My lord, he's on his way to his mother's bedroom. I'll hide myself behind the screen and so be in the position of overhearing the conversation and guaranteeing that she force Hamlet to admit what is bothering him. As you stated before, it's fit and proper that someone else than his mother (since nature makes mothers partial to their children), should overhear the conversation, so that some advantage may be had from it. Farewell, my lord: I'll see you before you retire and inform you as to the outcome of their meeting, and what I have learned.
closet - private quarters
arras - decorative screen
warrant - guarantee
tax him home - force Hamlet to admit to what is bothering: him. forcibly bring something home to someone:
'Tis meet - It's fit and proper
o'erhear- overhear
vantage - To use a circumstance, situation, etc in such a way as to get some benefit from it
liege - lord
[edit] Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is the process by which we take a perfectly good, but quite unintelligible passage from one of Shakespeare's plays, and turn it to American Colloquial English. Are we committing a crime in doing so? We hope not. I'm a reviewed author, and believe I can turn a phrase as neatly as most. However, if hearing approximations of Shakespearian English makes you sick, ignore the paraphrasing and just use the definitions.
My theory in paraphrasing is that Middle English, the language Shakespeare wrote in, is about half as close again to American Colloquial English as Fresian Dutch. That makes it just a hair short of being a foreign language. I doubt if any native English reader can read Shakespeare fluently, but if you need to "go like hell," and must convince your English teacher that you really have read the play, feel free to use my paraphrasing. It is probably one-hundred percent accurate, and I have changed imagery on very few occasions. For example, instead of having Laertes say, as for my "vows, to the blackest devil!," I write, "my vows can be writ where the devil does shit." Thus, I believe, I hold to the spirit of the piece, while making the sentence a little more understandable to the average reader.
Is Shakespeare guilty of "botching" words, any old way, just as he has a witness say that Ophelia is doing in her mannered madness? With some tiny experience with Nordic languages, I can assure you that the average speaker did not mince words in the Late Middle Ages, and very few words sufficed to say what we express with far more verbosity. It is this tremendous economy of speaking which makes Shakespeare such a powerful writer, and so very quotable. It probably would not be possible in a Latin tongue, and has very much to do with the influence of the Danes and Norwegians. The area of Shakespeare's birthplace, is, I suspect from reading Hamlet, part of the Danelaw, that part of England so raided, settled and colonized by the Vikings, that it came to be known as the land under Danish law, the Danelaw.
Perhaps a reader can help me with that one.
Again, as always, good luck. - John
