Young Writers Society

Hello! I'm interested in writing a guide to King James English, so here I am to ask for your help.

I must confess, I've read more of the Bible than I have of Shakespeare. And apparently, the KJV was deliberately written in archaic language to preserve its solemnity. Therefore my first question is: How does it differ from the everyday English of Shakespeare's time?

Hello there, Stori.
I'm not entirely sure if I understand exactly what you're asking here. Do you mean, how does the King James English differ from Shakespearean English?

I honestly haven't read much of Shakespeare at all, but I read the Bible quite often. In my understanding, Shakespeare was quite the dramatic guy and used a lot of metaphors and vocabulary, he invented some phrases and words then, that we use now. But the translators of the Bible tried to keep the Bible blunt and concrete, and apparently close to the everyday language, because after all, it is the Word of God.

I found these articles somewhat helpful:
http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2012/09/king-james-bible-myths-and-realities-.html
http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/blog/shakespeare-and-the-king-james-bible/

Sorry, I couldn't help much. : ( I don't know a whole lot about this subject.

Yes, I guess I was interested in the differences. Also, I'd like to prevent another author from using "ye" to refer to one person, and so on.

See, anything mass produced and/or for mass consumption at the time wasn't actually that archaic (because it had to be comprehensible), and my understanding of the King James Bible is it was written poetically to focus more on the symbolism. The Bible stopped being blunt with the King James version, and began to become the poetry and indirect messaging we know today.

In fact, I'd argue that Shakespeare was more blunt and to the point than the Bible, because Shakespeare had to appeal to the common folk while a poetic, flowery Bible had more room for interpretation to suite whatever political agenda was needing to be pushed at the time. The thing is, we've lost the cultural context for Shakespeare's bluntness, so it looks archaic to us.

Because of the modern contexts around the two documents, where the Bible is revered while Shakespeare is seen as very high brow, the works are taken out of their historical context and end up flip-flopped in terms of linguistic association. The Bible is meant to be poetry and an intellectual exercise in trying to understand it, while Shakespeare is the equivilent of trash tv.

A very important note: Shakespeare didn't "invent" words; he was simply the first instance of these words being written down. He wrote for the masses, hence the sheer number of crude jokes and lampooning of political figures/rivals ("a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" was directed at the rival Rose Theatre, that was known to be particularly stinky from sewage). If he had truly invented those words, then nobody would've been able to understand his plays.

In general, the type of English you're looking at is Early Modern English, which was in the early days of standardization at the time. Printing was beginning to become well known, so books were no longer horrendously expensive to produce and therefore could be spread around much more.

Fun fact: the reason words from around that time have so many extra e's is because people wanted the type to line up flush, so they'd throw on extra e's in there just for that sake. Spelling wasn't standardized at the time.

Honestly, if you go for the actual linguistic classification of both types of language, you'll get a better answer. The two are not actually that far removed, linguistically, especially for how King James would've been influenced by Shakespeare (considering Shakespeare was alive for much of his reign, and was known as a court entertainer).

Rosie to the rescue! Thanks very much for your reply; you've been me much to think about.