Figurative Language In Shakespeare

Let us begin our discussion of Shakespeare’s crossing to the continent by considering in which languages the English comedians staged their plays in Germany. As Brennecks explains, prior to their arrival, “[c]lassical and neoclassical dramas were produced at the schools and universities, in Latin,” not German (3). Early German theatregoers were therefore more familiar with Latin literature (and subsequently many of Shakespeare’s source texts), than German. Similarly, English struggled for cultural legitimacy even in its native land. As Jonathan Hope notes, “in the late 1570s…English was a language of small prestige and little use.” (240). That said, unlike German, English was already on the rise: in addition to England’s bustling theatrical

Ophelia, he declares, speaks things in doubt
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move
The hearers to collection. (4.5.6-9)
Similarly, Shakespeare’s Claudius accurately places Ophelia’s madness within the larger tragedy of the play, rather than merely dismissing the news as unfortunate:
O, this is the poison of deep grief! It springs
All from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude
When sorrows come they come not single spies,
But in battalions. (4.5.72-75)
This way, while Shakespeare’s characters understand the greater significance Ophelia’s madness portends to the tragedy and can accurately convey this information to his audience, the royal couple of Brudermord relates it as an indifferent, trivial statement of fact. Thus, the English comedians’ poor German directly resulted in the stripping of Shakespeare’s poetic language throughout the text, much to the detriment of his characters. In fact, it did so to such an extent that during William Poel’s 1925 English revival of the play, the actors often “found themselves snickering at the characters

While Brennecke observes that in Brudermord, “Shakespearean blank verse [i]s generally reduced to flat German prose,” the most striking example of this simplification is the play’s total exclusion of Hamlet’s famous soliloquies (10). For example, where Shakespeare’s “rogue and peasant slave” Hamlet agonises as to the certainty of his uncle’s guilt and his own ability to act (2.2.527), the German Hamlet forgoes this trouble and simply accepts his father’s ghost at his word, pledging