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Shakespeare & Beyond

Shakespeare's mother tongue: English and Latin collide in The Merry Wives of Windsor

Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor
Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor
Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 4, Scene 1. Published by Rodwell and Martin, 1821. Folger Shakespeare Library.

In the early modern period as today, the “mother tongue” referred to a native language, the one you were born with. This common phrase sets up a curious relation between women and language. For ordinary people living in early modern England, the mother tongue contrasted with the highly popular language of Latin. Latin was an official language, used at court by lawyers and taught in schools. It was a learned language and brought with it a great tradition of oratory that was heavily imitated and highly respected.

During the sixteenth century, English, as a common mother tongue, competed with Latin to be seen as an eloquent language. (Jenny Mann discusses this in her excellent book Outlaw Rhetoric, 2012). Shakespeare dramatizes this collision between natural and learned, common and educated language in his comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Merry Wives was written around 1597, and is often considered to be Shakespeare’s most English play. Whereas foreign settings are often disguises for Elizabethan England, such as Athens in Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors, Merry Wives is unique in the comedies as it is set in an English town. The action takes place in the shadow of Windsor Castle, in the surrounding park, houses, fields, streets, and inns. The concerns of the play are of ordinary life in a small country town, and the play is filled with characters recognizable to an Elizabethan audience.

The main characters are not the monarchs or courts of the histories or tragedies, but citizens, wives, children, servants, an innkeeper, country justice, parson, and a doctor. One of these is Mistress Quickly, a servant to the French Doctor Caius. She claims of her own work that “I keep his house, and I wash, wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the beds, and do all myself” (I.4.100-102). This suggests the ordinary world of Windsor and Quickly’s role within it. She is also an important messenger between characters and a keeper of secrets.

In Act 4, Scene 1, she is placed within a Latin school lesson and her speech suddenly takes on a different significance. The conceit of the scene is that Mistress Quickly simply does not understand Latin. She is excluded from the Latin recitations of the schoolboy William and schoolteacher Hugh Evans. Evans quizzes William on his Latin grammar, asking him to translate words and decline nouns. Instead of remaining silent, Quickly interrupts the lesson, wildly guessing what the Latin means. Evans asks “What is ‘fair’, William?” which William correctly translates as “Pulcher” (IV.1.25-7). Quickly, however, hears something very different and cuts in “Polecats? There are fairer things than polecats sure” (IV.1.28). Evans turns back to William instructing: “Remember, William, focative is caret” but Quickly interrupts again, “And that’s a good root”, confusing the sound of “caret” with carrot (IV.1.53-54).

Comments

It is beautifully written and more drops of light gathers on this really english play thanks to you Prof. Alice Leonard

Maryem Salama — October 2, 2017

The schoolmaster Parson Evans is one of Shakespeare’s native Welsh-speakers. With him, as with Fluellen in Henry V, Shakespeare uses spelling impressionistically (and a little maliciously) to represent pronunciation. To Shakespeare’s ear, Welsh people often confused voiced consonants like B and D and G with their unvoiced equivalents P and T and K. Hence Fluellen memorably refers to “Alexander the pig”—meaning “the big”, i.e. Alexander the Great, asking “What call you the town’s name where Alexander the pig was porn ?”; while Evans tells the children playing fairies in a procession “Trib, fairies, trib”, meaning “Trip, fairies, trip”; refers to “the tevil and his tam” when he means “the devil and his dam”; and pronounces the Latin pronouns “hic and hoc” as “hig and hog”. I doubt Shakespeare meant to suggest that Evans did not know how to decline the Latin pronoun hic. The comedy lies rather in the contrast between Evans’s erudition and the way his thick Welsh accent is misheard by Mistress Quickly.

Mark O'Connor — October 5, 2017