Case V: Shakespeare's Tongues: Henry V and the Babel of English

Audio Tour: Curator Marjorie Rubright discusses Case V

For Renaissance playwrights, dictionary makers, and antiquarians thinking and writing about the history of the English language, the category of English raised problems because of its long historical entanglements with other tongues, including French, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Dutch, German, Italian, and Latin. Historically speaking, King Henry the Fıfth (1413–22) was the first King to make English the official language of the court.The phrase ‘the King’s English’ is thought to have originated in reference to Henry V ’s policy, which shifted the official language of England’s court from French to English. The differences between monoculture and cultural diversity, between monolingualism and multilingualism, have also been central to the legacy of Shakespeare’s play. The questions raised by the play’s portrayal of England’s linguistic landscape has long made it central to scholarly explorations of Renaissance English national and ethnic identity. As Henry’s ‘English’ army battles the French, they discover themselves internally divided, made up of a loosely-assembled crew of English-, Irish-, Welsh- and Scots-men whose differences of language and dialect raise questions regarding how national unity across somuch linguistic diversity might be fostered.

Audio Tour: Curator Marjorie Rubright discusses Henry V

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Published according to the True Originall Copies. London: Printed by Isaac Jaggard, and Ed. Blount, 1623. The First Folio.

The opening on display features the final scene of Shakespeare’s The Life of King Henry V, a history play that raises important questions about the relation of language to national identity in a period when the English language was often characterized as a ‘babel’ unto itself. In this final scene, the King of England and Princess of France attempt to communicate across their linguistic differences. A close study of their exchange opens onto the ways Shakespeare’s theatre was staging language lessons that reminded English audiences of the French history of their English tongue.

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Richard Verstegan (ca. 1550-1640). A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities Antwerp: Printed by Robert Bruney, 1605.

The foundational text of English Gothicism, A Restitution rejects the long-standing myth of Britain’s roots in Troy to argue instead that English ethnicity was rooted in a Northern European, Germanic history. Drawing upon the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, Verstegan argues for the importance of linguistic history in deciphering the racial and ethnic origins of nations. His philological perspective onto European history linked together disparate nations through a story of forgotten kinships.

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John Baret (d. 1580?). An Alvearie or Quadruple Dictionarie. London: Henry Denham, 1580.

First published as a triple dictionary of English, French, and Latin in 1573, the Alvearie (‘Beehive’) was born of a London schoolteacher’s frustrations with his students, who ran ‘to me for every word they missed’ in their translation exercises. The beehive on the title page figures the method by which he and his students collected the words for this multilingual dictionary. Renaissance scholars have long argued that William Shakespeare consulted Baret’s Alvearie. The dictionary recently made news worldwide when two booksellers claimed to have discovered an annotated copy in Shakespeare’s hand.

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Robert Dodsley (1681-1750). On Biblical Subjects [Manuscript]. Mansfield, [170?].

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In verse rendition, Robert Dodsley conveys the story of the Tower of Babel in a beautifully hand-illustrated manuscript. The book invites the reader’s interaction: ‘Lift up you’ll see their Tower tumbling down.’ With flaps closed, the tower appears unfinished, under construction. As the reader opens the flaps, she enacts the curse. The tower appears sundered by God’s curse as mankind disperses in opposite directions to form new nations around the globe.

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John Minsheu (1560-1627). Ηγεμων εις τας γλωσσας, id est, Ductor in linguas, The Guide into Tongues. London: I. Browne, 1617.

An ambitious eleven-language polyglot ‘guide into tongues,’ Minsheu’s work emphasizes the interrelation among languages as a ‘harmony of tongues.’ The use of differential type—roman, italic, black letter fonts—(right opening), as well as a Key of abbreviations for each language (left opening), aided readers in navigating the density of lexical information in each entry. Also a publisher of the first English-Spanish dictionary for an English readership, Minsheu supported his lexicographic ambitions in an innovative way, making his works available through subscriptions. 

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Henry Cockeram (fl. 1623-1658). The English Dictionary or, An Interpreter of Hard English Words. London: H.C. Gent, 1631. 3rd edition.

When first published in 1623, Cockeram’s English Dictionary marked the first time the word ‘dictionary’ was used to describe a monolingual English book. Marketed to ‘Ladies and Gentlewomen, Clarkes, Merchants, young Schollers, Strangers, and Trauellers,’ the work aims less at an educated elite than at a reading public determined to make sense of their world of words. The Dictionary focuses on ‘hard words’: imported terms from other languages, difficult terms that appear among learned authors, as well as ‘vulgar’ terms or ‘mocke-words which are ridiculously used in our language.’ The ‘babel’ of English—its internal mixedness as well as diversity of dialects, regional and professional,—had become a problem that dictionary makers both showcased and promised to redress. 

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Noël de Berlaimont (d. 1531). Dictionariolum et colloquia octo linguarium Antwerp: Hendrick Aertsens, 1662.

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Europe’s best-selling polyglot wordlist, this eight-language dictionary and dialogue book had its origins as a bilingual Flemish-French vocabulary, first published in the 1530s by the Netherlandish schoolteacher, Noël de Berlaimont. Over the course of its print history, ten different languages were represented on its pages: Flemish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, English, Czech, Polish, and Latin. Editions were published in commercial centers spread as far afield as Antwerp and Venice, London and Leipzig, Paris and Warsaw. The dialogues teach readers how to: converse at a ‘dinner party of ten’ international guests, participate in the ‘common talk’ of an inn, and ‘demand one’s debts’ on the exchange floor of Europe’s marketplaces. 

Case V: Shakespeare's Tongues: Henry V and the Babel of English