Shakespeare’s grammar is not a different language but an earlier version of our own, and once its handful of patterns is clear, lines that look obscure turn out to be precise.
This guide explains the features of Early Modern English grammar that readers meet most often in the plays and poems: word order, verb endings, thou and you, contractions, and words left out. Every example is a real line from Shakespeare. For the vocabulary side of his English, see our Archaic Words Guide.
At a Glance
Here are the main features of Shakespeare’s grammar in brief.
Word Order
Modern English relies heavily on word order: the subject comes before the verb, and the verb before the object. Early Modern English was more flexible, and Shakespeare rearranges the usual order constantly, both to suit the meter and to put weight on a particular word.
Inversion
The most common change is inversion, placing the verb before the subject. It is how Shakespeare often asks questions, without the helping verb do that modern English needs. In the first scene of Julius Caesar, the tribune Marullus asks the crowd, “Knew you not Pompey?” We would say, “Didn’t you know Pompey?” Portia asks the same way: “Is Brutus sick?” Inversion also appears in statements, as when Antony’s servant says, “Thus did Mark Antony bid me fall down.”
Object First
Shakespeare also moves the object to the front of the sentence, where it gets the emphasis. In Julius Caesar, Cassius tells Casca, “Him and his worth and our great need of him / You have right well conceited,” meaning “You have judged Brutus, his worth, and our need of him very well.” Brutus, not the verb, is what the sentence is about, so Brutus comes first. In Measure for Measure, Angelo refuses a plea with a sentence built the same way: “Look what I will not, that I cannot do.”
Interrupted Phrases
Sometimes a phrase is split by other words, so that a verb waits a long time for its object or a subject for its verb. The effect is often of a mind working in real time, adding and qualifying as it goes. It is especially common in soliloquies, where characters are thinking aloud rather than reporting finished thoughts.
The general rule for all three patterns is the same: the word in the prominent position, at the start or end of a line or set apart by the syntax around it, usually carries the emphasis. Finding that word is often the first step to understanding what a line is doing.
Verb Endings
Early Modern English kept verb endings that modern English has lost. Two appear in almost every scene.
The -eth Ending
The -eth ending is the older form for “he,” “she,” or “it,” equivalent to the modern -s: goeth means “goes,” hath means “has,” and doth means “does.” When Lucius tells Brutus, “The taper burneth in your closet, sir,” he means the candle is burning in his study.
In Shakespeare’s time the two endings lived side by side, and he uses both, sometimes for the sake of the meter. The same play can have both forms of one verb. In Julius Caesar, Casca says of Caesar, “He doth, for he did bid Antonius / Send word to you,” and Decius says of him, “He says he does, being then most flattered.” The forms hath and doth are especially common.
The -est Ending
The -est or -st ending goes with thou: thou goest, thou speakest, thou dost. A few verbs are irregular, such as thou art (“you are”), thou wilt (“you will”), and thou shalt (“you shall”). The ending is often shortened. The forged letter Brutus finds begins, “Brutus, thou sleep’st. Awake, and see thyself!” and Caesar asks the soothsayer, “What sayst thou to me now?” Once thou is read as “you,” these endings take care of themselves.
Negatives
Modern English makes most verbs negative with do: “I do not know.” Shakespeare can do that too, but he often puts not straight after the verb instead. Both forms appear in Julius Caesar. Lucius answers Brutus, “I know not, sir,” while Caesar says of Cassius, “I do not know the man I should avoid / So soon as that spare Cassius.” Cassius combines the short form twice in one line: “I know not what may fall. I like it not.”
Shakespeare also uses double negatives, which were not yet considered errors and simply added emphasis. In Twelfth Night, Feste piles them up when Sebastian insists he does not know him: “No, I do not know you; nor I am not sent to you by my lady, to bid you come speak with her; nor your name is not Master Cesario; nor this is not my nose neither.”
Thou and You
The most dramatically important feature of Shakespeare’s grammar is the difference between thou and you. Modern English uses you for everyone, but for Shakespeare’s audience the choice between them was a live social signal.
Thou (with thee, thy, and thine) is singular and personal. It is used between intimates, from parents to children, from masters to servants, and in prayer. Used to an equal or a superior who expects you, it becomes an insult. You is the polite, formal, or neutral form. It is used to a superior, between equals keeping their distance, and always for more than one person.
Thou as an Insult
The insult was strong enough to have its own verb. In Twelfth Night, Sir Toby tells Sir Andrew how to write his challenge to Cesario: “taunt him with the licence of ink: if thou thou’st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss.” To thou someone was to talk down to him, and in a written challenge, Sir Toby suggests, it would sting.
Thou and You in Conflict
The pronouns can carry a whole argument. When Hamlet comes to his mother in Act 3, scene 4, she greets him with the parent’s thou: “Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.” He answers with the cold, formal you, and turns her words back on her: “Mother, you have my father much offended.” By “thy father” she means his stepfather, Claudius. By “my father” he means the murdered king. Minutes later, afraid of him, she is still using thou, but now it is the thou of panic: “What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?” Our guide to Hamlet follows the scene.
Thou and You Between Lovers
Between husband and wife, the shift can mark a door opening. When Portia begs Brutus to share his secret, he answers in the respectful you: “You are my true and honorable wife.” Moved by her proof of her strength, he promises, in the language of intimacy, that “by and by thy bosom shall partake / The secrets of my heart. / All my engagements I will construe to thee.”
Actors study these shifts because they work like stage directions hidden in the grammar. When a character suddenly moves from you to thou, or back, something has changed. The question is always what, and why now.
Contractions and Elisions
Shakespeare shortens words constantly, usually to fit the meter. ’Tis is “it is,” ’twas is “it was,” o’er is “over,” ne’er is “never,” e’en is “even,” and i’ th’ is “in the.” These are not careless or casual forms. They let a line keep its meaning and its rhythm at once.
The apostrophe marks a sound that has been dropped, and reading it correctly matters for the meter. When Brutus says, “Set honor in one eye and death i’ th’ other,” the i’ th’ is spoken as a single syllable, which keeps the line to the ten syllables of blank verse, with one light syllable at the end. Spelled out as “in the,” it would add a beat and break the rhythm. The same goes for a word like o’erread, “read over,” which counts as two syllables, not three.
Omissions
Shakespeare often leaves out words that modern grammar requires. The missing word can nearly always be supplied from context, and leaving it out makes the line move faster.
Missing “Who” or “That”
Modern English can drop “that” or “whom” in “the man I love,” but it cannot drop “who” when it is the subject of the clause. Shakespeare can. In Measure for Measure, Isabella begins her plea to Angelo, “I have a brother is condemned to die,” meaning “a brother who is condemned to die.” In Julius Caesar, Calpurnia tells Caesar, “There is one within, / Besides the things that we have heard and seen, / Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch,” meaning “there is someone inside who recounts.” Once you know to look for the missing “who,” sentences like these become clear.
Missing Verbs of Motion
After words like will, shall, and must, Shakespeare often leaves out a verb meaning “go.” The tribune Flavius says, “I’ll about / And drive away the vulgar from the streets,” meaning “I’ll go about.” Caesar, refusing to stay home, declares, “Caesar shall forth,” meaning “Caesar shall go forth.” Before Philippi, Cassius agrees, “We’ll along ourselves and meet them at Philippi.” The direction word, about, forth, or along, tells you the missing verb.
Syntax as Character
The most rewarding reason to notice Shakespeare’s grammar is what it shows about his characters. How a person builds a sentence often tells you more than what the sentence says.
Brutus’s speech to the Roman crowd, in prose, is built from perfectly balanced sentences: “As Caesar loved me, I weep for him. As he was fortunate, I rejoice at it. As he was valiant, I honor him. But, as he was ambitious, I slew him.” The grammar is orderly, reasonable, and a little cold, like the man. Antony, speaking after him in verse, relies on repetition instead, returning again and again to “Brutus is an honorable man” until the phrase means its opposite.
Caesar has a grammatical habit of his own: he often speaks of himself in the third person, as if he were already a statue. “Caesar shall forth,” he says, and “Shall Caesar send a lie?” Even his last words keep up the habit: “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar.” Our guide to the Julius Caesar characters looks at what that habit reveals.
A Closer Reading: Thou in Brutus’s Tent
One quarrel in Julius Caesar shows how much a pronoun can do: in a single speech, Cassius drops the polite you and reaches for thou, and the switch carries both his rage and his love.
For most of their argument in Act 4, scene 3, the two generals keep to you, the pronoun of Roman equals. The insults are formal even when they are savage. Brutus says, “you yourself / Are much condemned to have an itching palm,” and Cassius protests, “You wrong me every way, you wrong me, Brutus.” Even “You love me not” keeps its distance.
Then Cassius breaks. He offers Brutus his dagger and his bare chest, and the grammar changes with the gesture: “If that thou be’st a Roman, take it forth. / I that denied thee gold will give my heart. / Strike as thou didst at Caesar, for I know / When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better / Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.” In five lines he says thou or thee six times. It is at once a challenge, the thou of a man daring another to strike, and a confession, the thou of a man speaking to the friend he loves most.
Brutus answers in the formal register: “Sheathe your dagger.” The you is not cold here. It is a way of lowering the temperature, of refusing the duel that thou invites. When the two are reconciled, Cassius asks, still in you, “Have not you love enough to bear with me?” The storm has passed, and the pronouns have gone back to their places. A reader who takes every thou as a simple “you” hears the words of this scene, but misses its temperature.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Shakespeare’s grammar, answered briefly.
What Does “Thou” Mean in Shakespeare?
“You,” addressed to one person. Thou is the subject form, thee the object form (“I love thee”), thy and thine mean “your” and “yours.” It usually signals intimacy, or superiority, or, when used to someone who expects you, an insult.
What Is the Difference Between Thou and You?
You is polite or formal and is always used for more than one person. Thou is singular and personal, used to family, close friends, lovers, servants, and God. Shakespeare’s characters often switch between them to show a change of feeling.
What Do “Hath” and “Doth” Mean?
Hath means “has,” and doth means “does.” They are the older -eth forms of the verbs for “he,” “she,” and “it,” and they appear alongside the modern forms in Shakespeare’s plays.
Why Does Shakespeare Change the Word Order?
Mainly for emphasis and for the meter. Early Modern English allowed more freedom of word order than modern English does, and Shakespeare uses it to place the important word where it will be stressed, often at the start or end of a line.
Did Shakespeare Use Double Negatives?
Yes. In his time, a double negative was not considered an error but a way of adding emphasis. Feste’s “nor this is not my nose neither” in Twelfth Night is a well-known example.
Related Reading
Three guides that take Shakespeare’s language further.