In recent years the language of Shakespearean drama has been described in a number of publications intended mainly for the undergraduate student or general reader, but the studies in academic journals to which they refer are not always easily accessible even though they are of great interest to the general reader and essential for the specialist. The purpose of this collection is therefore to bring together some of the most valuable of these studies which, in discussing various aspects of the language of the early 17th century as exemplified in Shakespearean drama, provide the reader with deeper insights into the meaning of Shakespearean text, often by reference to the social, literary and linguistic context of the time.

Table of Contents:
1. Preface; 2. Acknowledgements; 3. Introduction; 4. I. Shakespeare and the English Language; 5. Shakespeare and the English Language (by Quirk, Randolph); 6. Shakespeare and the Tune of the Time (by Cusack, Bridget); 8. Elizabethan Colloquial English in the Falstaff Plays (by Salmon, Vivian); 9. The Social Background of Shakespeare's Malapropisms (by Schlauch, Margaret); 10. Shakespeare's Salutations: A Study in Stylistic Etiquette (by Replogle, Carol); 11. Me, U, and Non-U: Class Connotations of Two Shakespearean Idioms (by Gillett, Peter J.); 12. III. Studies in Vocabulary; 13. (1) Some interpretations; 14. Propertied as All the Tuned Spheres: Aspects of Shakespeare's Language (by Eagleson, Robert D.); 15. The Spoken Language and the Dramatic Text: Some Notes on the Interpretation of Shakespeare's Language (by Hulme, Hilda M.); 16. 'Thou' and 'You' in Shakespeare: A Study in the Second Person Pronoun (by Mulholland, Joan); 17. "You" and "Thou" in Shakespeare's Richard III (by Barber, Charles); 18. An Aspect of Shakespeare's Dynamic Language: A Note on The Interpretation of King Lear III. VII.113: 'He Childed as I Father'd!' (by Wales, Kathleen); 19. (2) Lexical innovation; 20. Some Functions of Shakespearian Word-Formation (by Salmon, Vivian); 21. Shakespeare' Latinate Neologisms (by Garner, Bryan A.); 22. Latin-Saxon Hybrids in Shakespeare and the Bible (by Garner, Bryan A.); 23. (3) Shakespeare's use of specialised vocabularies; 24. Shakespeare and the 'Ordinary' Word (by Bland, D.S.); 25. Thieves' Cant in King Lear (by Musgrove, Timothy); 26. Legal Language in Coriolanus (by Tanselle, G. Thomas); 27. IV. Shakespeare and Elizabethan Grammar; 28. (1) Studies in syntax; 29. Sentence Structures in Colloquial Shakespearian English (by Salmon, Vivian); 30. Pronominal Case in Shakespearean Imperatives (by Millward, Celia); 31. The Perfect Auxiliaries in the Language of Shakespeare (by Kakietek, Piotr); 32. May and Might in Shakespeare's English (by Kakietek, Piotr); 33. Notes on the Use of the Ingressive Auxiliaries in the Works of William Shakespeare (by Biese, Y.M.); 34. Multiple Negation in Shakespeare (by Singh, Rajendra); 35. (2) Studies in inflection; 36. Shakespeare's Use of eth and es Endings of Verbs in the First Folio (by Taylor, Estelle W.); 37. Shakespeare's Use of s Endings of the Verbs to do and to have in the First Folio (by Taylor, Estelle W.); 38. V. Studies in Rhetoric and Metre; 39. Shakespeare's Use of Rhetoric (by Vickers, Brian); 40. Hendiadys and Hamlet (by Wright, George T.); 41. The Iambic Pentameter Revisited (by Koelb, Clayton); 42. VI. Punctuation; 43. Shakespearian Punctuation - A new beginning (by McKenzie, D.F.); 44. Repunctuation as Interpretation in Editions of Shakespeare (by Warren, Michael J.); 45. VII. The Linguistic Context of Shakespearean Drama; 46. Shakespeare's view of Language: An Historical Perspective (by Grazia, Margreta de); 47. The Poor Cat's Adage and other Shakespearean Proverbs in Elizabethan Grammar-School Education (by Orkin, Martin); 48. Language in Love's Labour's Lost (by Matthews, William); 49. Index