230437 Shakespeare and His English: EModE (S) (WiSe 2026/2027)

In this class we will look at Early Modern English (EModE) and use Shakespeare's dramas to do so. The focus of the seminar will not be the literary content of his writing, but on his use of English. For a small part of this class we will look at the vocabulary that Shakespeare (*1564 – †1616) coined and that is still in use used today. The main concern of this class, however, will be directed at the grammar of this period (1500-1700). While Shakespeare's writing (1589 – 1613) lies more or less in the middle of the EModE period, his grammar was not as clearly fixed or standardized as we might expect. This includes such phenomena as that of the varying uses of the second person singular pronoun, the use or lack thereof of do-support for negations, a still relatively flexible word order (not fully analytic by today’s standards), the varying third-person singular inflection, or the use of pleonastic comparative or superlative forms. We will look at these and more phenomena with a continuous reference to standard ModE and/or standard PDE (Present Day English) and the rules underlying them, which you will find helpful in teaching both grammar and Shakespeare in school.