Vocabulary

Abstract

Coleridge’s claim that poetry consists of the proper words in their proper order is today accepted as a definition of universal validity. In fact as a definition it raises as many questions as it answers, though it is usually understood to mean that for the poet there is only one word that is suitable for any given place in a poem and that substitution of that word by another leads to a distortion of the poem’s meaning. Hence the poet’s task is to find the proper word for each slot in his poem. This attitude, however, is not one that can easily be attested before the eighteenth century, and Coleridge’s dictum is one that he proclaimed to safeguard an intellectual discovery rather than to describe a situation which had always existed. Certainly for Shakespeare and his contemporaries the substitution of one word for another was a frequent occurrence. The acting environment is one in which changes are naturally proposed. In the extant quartos and folios of the plays there are many differences in vocabulary and some are certainly revisions introduced by Shakespeare or the actors in rehearsal or performance. For example, in King Lear the ‘Rash boarish fangs’ (III vii 57) based on the Quarto appears in the First Folio as ‘sticke boarish phangs’, a change which Kenneth Muir, the editor of the Arden edition, regards as ‘probably an actor’s substitution, or a sophistication’,¹ for rash was a relatively technical word.