WHAT SEEM TO YOU TO BE THE PROBLEMS TO BE CONFRONTED WHEN TR

The following piece of English literary is taken from one of Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet and is one of his most famous soliloquies. The first half of the speech, in bold, is the original text taken from the first folio in 1623 and the second half is The Arden Shakespeare complete works revised edition published in 2001. The contrasts in the two not only help to magnify the differences between the language and how it has evolved but also show the differences in spelling which pose problems for the modern reader.

To be, or not to be, that is the question: 1

Whether ‘tis nobler in the minde to fuffer

The flings and arrowes of outragious fortune,

Or to take armes againft a fea of troubles

And by oppofing end them. To die to fleepe,

No more; and by a fleepe to fay we end

The hart-ake and the thoufand naturall fhocks

That flefh is heire to: ‘tis a confummation

Deuoutly to be wifht to die to fleepe;

To fleepe, perchance to dreame, I there’s the rub: 10

For in that fleepe of death what dreames may come?

When we haue fhuffled off this mortall coyle,

Muft giue vs paufe, there’s the respect

That makes calamity of fo long life:

For who would beare the whips and fcornes of time,

. . .

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The first problem that we can have in translating a piece of Shakespeare is that the suffix on the word can change the meaning so that it is translated into a different word in modern English. The word ‘fling’, for example, should actually say ‘sling’ and means something different to the present day reader. the rules they must abide for example a sonnet must be 14 lines. Elizabethans were interested in the relationship between sound and writing. man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make 20

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, 30

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Despite all of these ,however, there is one element of any language that will always pose a problem to the reader, whether of a piece from the past or present, and that is the factor of idioms. The impersonal style is the style that the writer must conform to; i. ‘To be cruel to be kind’- taken from Hamlet act III scene iv. The lack of a set of rules for word order causes many problems for the modern reader it does not make for easy reading or understanding. It is because of these that it will always prove useful for the student of English Literature to study the history of the english language. It is through this rule that we can date this particular piece of literary as one of Shakespeare’s earliest pieces rather than his later such as The Tempest.

Approximate Word count = 1724
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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