Without Measure: The Language of Shakespeare's Prose

Criticism of Shakespeare's dramatic prose often focuses on its situational flexibility as a counterpoint to verse. However, the kinds of language prose tends to employ suggest something more distinctive about its dramaturgical character. Using digitally aided techniques associated with the DocuScope text-tagging software, this essay identifies the prose of the Shakespearean corpus with the language of questions and social references. This pattern remains persistent from the early period of Shakespeare's drama, in which prose often appears as a mode for comic encounters with characters of low status, to the later period, in which it is employed at greater length and in more diverse contexts. The connection between prose and comic wit in the early comedies is further invigorated in the later romantic comedies and tragedies. Examples of prose from Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet are contrasted with a verse passage from Henry VIII, which features the language of affirmative assurance that prose is less inclined to perform. This pattern of linguistic tendencies suggests that Shakespearean prose is an instrument often used to dramatize explicitly the instability within social interactions.