Talk Like Shakespeare Day

Posted by Miss Cellania in Book & Lit on April 23, 2009 at 7:21 am



Today is the 445th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare. In honor of this occasion, today is Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Here are some ways to do it:


1. Instead of you, say thou. Instead of y’all, say thee.
2. Rhymed couplets are all the rage.
3. Men are Sirrah, ladies are Mistress, and your friends are all called Cousin.
4. Instead of cursing, try calling your tormenters jackanapes or canker-blossoms or poisonous bunch-back’d toads.
5. Don’t waste time saying “it,” just use the letter “t” (’tis, t’will, I’ll do’t).
6. Verse for lovers, prose for ruffians, songs for clowns.
7. When in doubt, add the letters “eth” to the end of verbs (he runneth, he trippeth, he falleth).
8. To add weight to your opinions, try starting them with methinks, mayhaps, in sooth or wherefore.
9. When wooing ladies: try comparing her to a summer’s day. If that fails, say “Get thee to a nunnery!”
10. When wooing lads: try dressing up like a man. If that fails, throw him in the Tower, banish his friends and claim the throne.

Forsooth, ’tis a pity methinks, if no one deigns to understandeth me. Link -via the Presurfer


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COMMENT

14 comments to "Talk Like Shakespeare Day"

  1. carl
    April 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 am

    methinks tis fun stuff...

  2. teknocholer
    April 23rd, 2009 at 8:51 am

    Just don't time travel back to Shakespeare's day and address someone as "Sirrah" if you don't want a rapier through your liver. It's a term of contempt, roughly the equivalent of "Hey, douchebag". OTOH, it's an ideal word if you're involved in a flame war today.

  3. zeytoun
    April 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 am

    "Thee" is not the plural form of "thou".

    "Thee" is singular, and is used when it is the object of the sentence. As in "I love thee".

    The plural of "thou" is "ye"

  4. JMM
    April 23rd, 2009 at 10:39 am

    It helps to talk like Shakespeare if you've actually read Shakespeare.

  5. meg
    April 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 am

    if you read enough shakespeare in a short period of time, you end up speaking like him without noticing.

    then people back away slowly from you at work D:

  6. Gail Pink
    April 23rd, 2009 at 11:56 am

    This is even gayer than "Talk like a Priate day."

  7. dd.
    April 23rd, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    Thee/ye: Thee is informal, ye is formal. Kind of like tu/vous in French. zeytoun's correct about ye being plural as well (also like vous in French...)

  8. ammonihah99
    April 23rd, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Dang zeytoun beat me to it. Grrrrrrr . . .

  9. Snoot
    April 23rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    To expand on the employment of the word 'Ye', which was touched upon the gentleman who is operating under the alias of dd.:

    Ye can be employed in two ways, firstly as the plural form of thou; so as to address a group of people, in such cases, it is sounded y?; and secondly as an alternate (in written contexts) to the word 'the'. However, this is an alteration in spelling only, and does not in any way necessitate pronouncing it in any manner other than that of the greater-spotted 'the'.

    The reason for the word pronounced as 'the' being written as 'ye' arises due to Middle English's thorn character coming to be written in the same manner as the y. As a spelling, it was used as a seemingly handy abbreviation in handwritting to 'the' until the 19th century, and in printers' types during fifteenth and sixteenth century.

  10. earl
    April 23rd, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    Take care when telling a woman "get thee to a nunnery."
    In Shakespeare's day "nunnery" was slang for a whore house.

  11. mike r baker
    April 23rd, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    Renaissance Fair Speak (fake Elizabethan) uses the same rules but adds that sentence structure is more like... well, try talking like Yoda but with an English accent. And no cockney!

  12. Kalel
    April 23rd, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    lol@Meg!

    So true! After weeks on Renaissance Faire and Shakespeare festivals, I once answered 'Aye', when asked if I wanted fries with my Big Mac.

  13. door
    April 24th, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    Or you just read "Fool" and copy a more modern form:
    'Tis a fair amount of f****ry most foul to be found here

  14. Ajan
    April 27th, 2009 at 3:07 am

    FREAK!!


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