[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-493899-105":59,"doc-detail-493899-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","shakespeares-words-to-modernise-or-not-to-modernise","Shakespeare's Words - To Modernise or Not to Modernise","","Discussion of whether Shakespeare’s language is inherently unintelligible to modern readers and whether it should be modernised. The text frames the issue linguistically and theatrically, describing a research approach that examined vocabulary across the plays and poems. It distinguishes genuine meaning-change problems from difficulties caused by general educational knowledge, then uses quantified glossary data to estimate the share of words whose meanings differ from Elizabethan English to today.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/shakespeares-words-to-modernise-or-not-to-modernise/493899/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/shakespeares-words-to-modernise-or-not-to-modernise/493899.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"asda1da","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-27","2026-10-01",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":81},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What debate does the text address about Shakespeare’s language?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It asks whether Shakespeare needs modernisation for modern audiences, based on how much his vocabulary changed in meaning between Elizabethan English and today.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the article distinguish language difficulty from other knowledge gaps?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It argues some difficult lines require understanding of general references (e.g., mythological figures) rather than actual language change.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What kind of evidence does the text use to support its conclusions?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It relies on counts from a new glossary built by examining the plays and poems line by line, and it reports estimated percentages of words showing problematic meaning differences.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},493899,1792668014,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":81,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":81,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":24},3985747861852,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","# Shakespeare's words\n\nIs the language of Shakespeare really so difficult for modern earsto understand?Only a fraction of his vocabulary comprisesstrange or obsolete words,says David Crystal  \nTo MODERNISE OR NOT TO MODERNISE:thought I'd take a look at the question from  \nimagine -three years,in fact-and weended up with about 50,000 wordshighlighted.That may sound like a lot,butwhen you consider that there are nearly amillion words in the whole of theShakespeare canon,it's not as many as itseems.But more on that in a moment.  \nthat is the question.I'm talking about a linguistic point of view.And Shakespeare  \nShakespeare,of course,where every year or was very much on my mind at the time,  \nso someone makes a splash by saying that because my actor son Ben and I had just  \nShakespearian English is largely published a new glossary and language  \nunintelligible and needs translation tomake sense to a modern audience or reader.It's happened most recently in an article ina magazine called Around the Globe,asplendid periodical published by theLondon theatre,Shakespeare's Globe.Thewriter was arguing that the Englishlanguage has changed so much sinceShakespeare's time that he's now a foreignlanguage to most people.So the best we cando is translate him into Modern English-get a modern author to do it,like TomStoppard or Seamus Heaney.  \ncompanion to the Bard:it's calledShakespeare'Words.This was a two-prongedattack on the topic.I looked at thevocabulary from a linguist's point of view,and Ben looked at it from the theatricalangle.What we did was work our waythrough all the plays and poems,line byline,and every time we came across a wordor phrase which presented even the slightestdegree of difference in meaning or use from  \nIt was certainly time for a new glossary.The last big one -the one I used whenI was studying Shakespeare at college-wascomplied by the Victorian lexicographer,Charles Talbot Onions,and that was nearlya hundred years ago.Since then,thingshave changed.Take all the Latin words inShakespeare,for instance.In Victorian  \nthat found in Modern English,we times,educated people had studied Latin in  \nhighlighted it,worked out its meaning,and school-not so today,so they need to be  \nput it into a database.It took us quite a carefully glossed.Or take the words which  \nWell,when this article appeared I ti  \ntime to complete the job,as you can have changed their meaning-like Goths  \nThere are Goths in Titus Andronicus,referring to the South European Germanictribe;but to a modern youngster,Goths arepeople with black eye make-up and a weirdtaste in music.And of course we mustn'tforget that in the past century new playshave been added to the Shakespeare canon-most recently Two Noble Kinsmen,whichhad a production at the Globe a couple ofyears ago,and King Edward Ⅲ,whichplayed in Stratford last year.  \ndifficulty of understanding because of theway the language has changed betweenthen and now?What proportion ofShakespeare's vocabulary is Elizabethan-50 per cent?40 per cent?60 per cent?Towork this out,the first thing you have toknow is how many different words thereare in Shakespeare as a whole.It's not asmany as you might think.Only just over  \nthe language has changed,the moderniserswin.If they aren't,their opponents do.So I've been doing some counting.  \nThe basic question is:How many wordsare there in Shakespeare which havechanged their meaning betweenElizabethan English and now?Notice I say\"changed their meaning\".Shakespeare usesplenty of words which haven’t changed theirmeaning but are still difficult.Classicalreferences are a good example.Do youremember in Romeo and Juliet the sentencewhich Paris uses to explain why he hasn'tmentioned his feelings to the grieving Juliet:“Venus smiles not in a house of tears”?Well,it makes no sense until you know whoVenus is.And she turns out to be the samegoddess of love today as she was 400 yearsago.In other words,this isn’t a linguisticproblem -it isn’t a matter of languagechange.It's a matter o","cbCainCy9gCMLQjU","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCainCy9gCMLQjU","pdf",2413868,"English","# To MODERNISE OR NOT TO MODERNISE\n## Linguistic vs theatrical approaches\n## The glossary and historical vocabulary changes\n## Educational knowledge vs meaning change\n## Counting difficult words and percentages","[{\"question\":\"What debate does the text address about Shakespeare’s language?\",\"answer\":\"It asks whether Shakespeare needs modernisation for modern audiences, based on how much his vocabulary changed in meaning between Elizabethan English and today.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article distinguish language difficulty from other knowledge gaps?\",\"answer\":\"It argues some difficult lines require understanding of general references (e.g., mythological figures) rather than actual language change.\"},{\"question\":\"What kind of evidence does the text use to support its conclusions?\",\"answer\":\"It relies on counts from a new glossary built by examining the plays and poems line by line, and it reports estimated percentages of words showing problematic meaning differences.\"}]","Shakespeare's Words - To Modernise or Not to Modernise | PDF",1790886924]