The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-10-03
SHAKSPEARE'S AMERICANISMS.
Good Authority for the Use of Certain
American Forms of Speech.


From Review of Henry Cabot Lodges
We are specially attracted to the essay
on ''Shakspeares Americanisms." Mr..
Lodge begins by referring to the proneness
of our British cousins to criticize both in
our speech and writing what they are
pleased to call "Americanisms,' and he
justly remarks that it is futile to try to
shut out from the language and literature,
as it is used in America, certain words and
phrases merely because they are not used
in the British isles, whence the people and
their speech originally came. 1t does not
in the least follow, because a word is not
used to-day in England that it is either
new or bad. The mere fact that the word
exists in one place and not in another of
itself proves nothing.
Some time ago an English reviewer con-
demned some of the letters Of James Rus
sell Lowell, stigmatizing them as 'provin-
ciaL'' But, as Mr.. Lodge remarks, they
were provincial simply because they were
not in the language or spirit of the critics
own parish.
The explanation of many peculiarities in
the American speech is found in the fact
that the people of this country have re-
tanned the original English speech. For, as
the writer points out, it is necessary to
bear in mind that for the most part the
early emigrants who settled in Virginia. and
New England were educated men. 1t was
SO in Virginia, and it was specially so in
New England. Among the early Puritans
the average education was high, and they
showed their love of learning by their i'm
mediate foundation of the College of Har-
ward and of public school system. The
Puritan clergy were almost without excep-
ton graduates of Oxford and Cambridge
England, and not few or them had been
eminent in these colleges before they
migrated to the new world And the lam
guage which these people brought with
the language of Shakespeare, who lived and
wrote, and died, just before the Puritans
migrated TO America. Inc author Is mere
ly discussing Shakspeare's Americanisms
or it would have been much more TO the
point to have said that they brought over
the language of King Jamess Bible. 1t
was the English Bible, in its successive
TRANSACTIONS, which formed the language of
Shakespeare.
Mr. Bartlett. in his Dictionary of Ameri-
canisms." says that. one of the most
marked peculiarities of American speech is
the constant use of the word ''well," as
an interjection, especially at the beginnin g
Shakspearean idiom. The Danish soldiers,
with Italian names and idiomatic English
For example:
Bernardo-Have you had quiet guard?
Francisco-Not a mouse stirring.
Bernardo-WeH, good night.
This is s. precise example of the American
use of the word well. And it was a
most common interjection, as a reference
TO a Shakspearean concordance will show.
But the writer does not surely mean to
imply that it is not used in England even
at the present day. If he has, as he says,
more than once found patrOnizing criti-
cisms Of this popularity of American
speech" they must have been made by
some one thoroughly unacquainted with the
general speech of the English people; or
as Mr.. Lodge would say, of those who
knew nothing of their So. ech beyond that
of their own parish"
as an Englishman We lid say, is probably
more to the mark This is a distinct AmeTi-
ranism IN the present day lay; But Shakespeare
the word sick in the general sense. In
the Bible the word is always SO used, and
also in the book Of Common Prayer. 1t
also conforms to the usage of Chaueer,
Milton Dryden and Cowper.
Englishmen commonly use the word lug
gage when the Americans would say
baggage" In this we agree with Touch
stone, who says: Though not with bag
and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage."
Leontes, in the Winters Tale" employs
the same phrase Shakespeare uses the word
luggage twice, but solely with regard
to the effects of an army, as 1.-THE luggage
Among characteristic American words
none is more common than Ito guess in
rhs hs word of Ito thnk But
Measure for Measure where Escalus re-
plies to Angelo, in American fashion, Il
of interest to remark that in the South the
people usually say Il reckon" instead of
Il guess, an expression which is clearly
Biblical (see Romans, viii, 49,
Mad in the sense of angry. is usually
regarded in England as peculiarly Amer
lean, and as a very improper use of the
ord a
Juliet" Lady Capulet says to her husband
You are too hot and he replies, Gods
braed, it makes me mad And from
Pepys's Diary we find that the word
mad" in the sense of angry, was a COM
mon colloquial usage.
Mr.. Lodge also selects the word fleet
as verb in the sense of Ito pass or TO
move which he says is still in use on the
island OF Nantucket, in the State of MaSsa-
chusetts; It has doubtless fingered there
among American fishermen and farmers as
an echo of the Elizabethan period. The
word is used in Shakespeare by Charles the
Wrestler in las You Like It." Thus:
him every day, and feet the time careless
~, as they did in the golden world" 1t
word feet Ito novel is still retained in
the provincial use of the word fit or
lifting in all parts Of England.
In this essay Mr.. Lodge has chosen a
very interesting subject, and one which, if
taken up in connection with the speech of
the English Bible, the language of Milton,
in the Southern States of this country as
well as In the New England States a very
pure form of English has been retained. In
many cases the proper as we'll as the orig
inal pronunciation of English words has
been retained. while in England more fire.
quent intercourse with the London cockney
has vitiated the pronunciation of many an
educated Englishman, who is but too prone
to criticise American speech while the
Yankee is unconSciously Speaking not only
the language of Shakespeare but of those
learned divines who formulated that Ian
guage in the English translations of the
Scriptures.