Although welcome as a magnificent tool, this doorstop compendium prompts an alarming question: has Shakespeare become a foreign language to us? Are non-English-speakers, as some Shakespeare scholars have suggested, more at home with their translated Shakespeare than English-speakers with their genuine article? It's not so much the hard words, such as "fardel" or "grise" or "orgulous". The context will explain these, as it does whole passages: "Proclaim no shame," says Hamlet in disgust at Gertrude, "When the compulsive ardure gives the charge,/ Since frost itself as actively doth burn,/ And reason panders will." Don't try-you get the drift. More insidious are the places that seem safe. When Hamlet asks Ophelia if she is "honest", and two lines later if she is "fair", do we feel the sexual sting? The word "sex" and its derivatives were not used in our sense then. Shades of meaning in honesty, affection, fancy, sense or blood, did the business. Lucky foreigners, it is said, who can render the connotations-and sweep away the inauthentic air of archaism.
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