Shakespeare's Non-Standard English

Most scholarly attention on Shakespeare's vocabulary has been directed towards his enrichment of the language through borrowing words from other languages and has thus concentrated on the more learned aspects of his vocabulary. However, the bulk of Shakespeare's output consists of plays and to make these appear lifelike he needed to employ a colloquial and informal style. This aspect of his work has been largely disregarded apart from his bawdy language. This dictionary includes all types of non-standard and informal language and lists all examples found in Shakespeare's works. These include dialect forms, colloquial forms, non-standard and variant forms, fashionable words and puns. Examples of words and phrases covered include 'beetle-headed', 'flap-eared', 'whoremonger', 'fancy-free', 'to the manor born', 'bid the world good-night', 'beaten with brains', 'crook-back', 'go-between', 'see the church at one's back' (get married).