The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

It's often said that language in Shakespeare's plays is what makes them so good. I was at a play called Cranford recently, it's a play about the lives of upper class women in a Victorian village. It was written in 1900. They say things like:

"Your tea-bread and spongecake are the perfection of lightness; and your china and silverware are the oldest and dantiest in Cranford!"

Whereas nowadays we might say "you know your cakes are really good, especially your spongecake. They're really light. And your china's good too, the cakes look nice on it."

I prefer hearing the first version. It's less rough on my ears somehow, and it's actually more accurate and to the point too. But I don't think we could all talk like that all the time. It'd take too much effort. Also, only the upper classes talk like this in the play. The servant says things like this:

"Here Mister! Here's our sign! I got Jem to take it down for you, because he telled me you had a taken a fancy to it and would pay handsome!"

She still doesn't talk exactly like we do - e.g. would pay handsome - but then again she is a country girl. I think it's closer to what we talk like today than what the upper class women talk like.

So if the quality of speech of the upper classes was better a hundred or so years ago, would it logically be even better five hundred years ago? I think so. I think Shakespeare's popularity today is helped by the effect of a 500-year difference in the language. Today people don't talk poetically, or respectfully, or with metaphor and puns.

Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;

Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Whereas we would put much less effort in and say, "Are you going? It's still early."
or "Are you going? The sun hasn't even risen yet. You're going because you thought you heard a lark, aren't you? Well I can tell you it was a nightingale, not a lark. We get one in the garden, you see." 

Hm.

Perhaps in 500 years today's contemporary language will sound like poetry to those in the future. In fact, I'm certain of it. Because in the future, they'll probably talk like this:

RU K? WOT U UP TO? U WANT NETHIN FROM SHOP?