“Shakespeare completely changed the English language”

Interview – More than 400 years after his death, the British poet and playwright’s language continues to inspire. Academic Michael Edwards describes how English has been shaped by his works.

By
Dorian Gralier

Posted On 04/23/2023 at 07:00

Michael Edwards Member of the French Academy and Professor at the College of France. An expert on Shakespeare, he has written several books on the works of the British poet and playwright. Madness is Shakespeare. A different excitement (Puf), released on March 29.

LE FIGARO. – How would you define Shakespeare’s style?

Michael Edwards. – Shakespeare was a British writer who understood his language well. I am writing Shakespeare is crazy English presents herself to him as a perverted and masochistic mistress, to whom he shows all colors. He was probably its author Revival Very inventive and innovative. In many of his plays, sometimes his characters seem to speak in a foreign language. Because he was interested in all the resources of English, especially its Latin and Anglo-Saxon origin, to make them play together. For example, when he writes “Many Seas Incarnate” (“Turn Many Seas Red”), in MacbethHe discovered polysyllabic words of Latin origin “Miscellaneous” And “Avatar”separated by a single letter word “sea”Of Anglo-Saxon origin, to lengthen “sea”.

“Shakespeare was interested in English in its Latin and Anglo-Saxon origins in order to read the literal dimension of the language.”

Michael Edwards, academic and professor at the College of France

In a way, he reminds me of French writers Heather and Fenelon against the attitude of 17th-century academics who refused to create and borrow from abroad. Shakespeare constantly innovated and enriched the language. When his characters are introspective, they use Old English or monosyllables. The brevity of language exaggerates what they say. This is the case in the scene King Lear There the Sovereign realized that he had misjudged Cornelia. When he realizes his mistake by thanking the bishop, Lear simply says: “I did her wrong.” And these four chords sound perfect. This kind of effect is often lost in French translation.

Has his writing evolved over time?

Shakespeare began to write like many of his contemporaries. He gradually developed a more original, more complex language “Love” (A winter’s tale, Storm, Cymbalin) specifically, goes into the stratosphere. He is like Beethoven who, in his last string quartets, invented a new musical language and, in a way, a new world. In the midst of his career tragedies (Hamlet, Othello), the writing is dense and abundant. But eventually, the English language recreates itself in a kind of musical and linguistic paradise.

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Can we really say that Shakespeare’s language was the English of his time?

During his lifetime, the British began to define themselves by their language. But as Elizabethan Englishmen sailed the seas to discover distant lands, the excitement of their adventures is seen in Shakespeare’s early plays. From the very beginning, he began to find his language. It has gone so far as to completely replace English.

In your opinion, is the English language still called “Shakespeare’s language”?

Yes, it is in Shakespeare that we find all the resources of the English language. His verbal enthusiasm inspired classical and neo-classical poets. Alexander Pope, for example, loved classical French literature. He could have written with the concept of economy of language of the French writers of the time. However, he is similar to Shakespeare in that he writes in a structured and rhetorical manner like Boileau or La Fontaine, but he uses a larger vocabulary, popular and humorous, in a proliferation of subjects and voices. A gift stuck at the end because no one can write like him.