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This dialogue gives us a good look at the characterization between these two characters.Tybalt thinks that the Montagues are nothing but cowardly dogs,and has no respect for them.Once again, adding dramatic tension to the scene.Okay, now here's a spoiler alert.Tybalt's hotheadedness and severe hatred of the Montagues is what we literature people call his hamartia,or what causes his downfall.Oh, yes.He goes down at the hands of Romeo.So when you're looking at Shakespeare,stop and look at the words,because they really are trying to tell you something.

Benvolio: I do but keep the peace;put up thy sword,or manage it to part these men with me.Tybalt: What, drawn and talk of peace!I hate the word, as I hate hell,all Montagues, and thee.Have at thee, coward!Okay, heartless hinds.We know that once again,it's not a good thing.Both families hate each other,and this is just adding fuel to the fire.But just how bad is this stinger?A heartless hind is a coward,and calling someone that in front of his own men, and the rival family,means there's going to be a fight.Tybalt basically calls out Benvolio,and in order to keep his honor,Benvolio has to fight.

Looking deeper, biting your thumb in the time in which the play was written is like giving someone the finger today.A pretty strong feeling comes with that,so we now are beginning to feel the tension in the scene.Later on in the scene, Tybalt,from the House of the Capulets,lays a good one on Benvolio from the House of the Montagues.Tybalt: What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?Turn thee, Benvolio,and look upon thy death.

Okay, so how does this development help us understand mood or character?Well, let's break it down to the insult.Biting your thumb today may not seem like a big deal,but Sampson says it is an insult to them.If they take it so, it must have been one.This begins to show us the level of animosity between even the men who work for the two Houses.And you normally would not do anything to someone unless you wanted to provoke them into a fight,which is exactly what's about to happen.

In Act I Scene 1, right from the get-go we are shown the level of distrust and hatred the members of the two families,the Capulets and Montagues, meet.Gregory: I will frown as I pass by,and let them take it as they list.Sampson: Nay, as they dare,I will bite my thumb at them,which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.Enter Abraham and Balthasar.Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Want another example?Romeo and Juliet has some of the best insults of any of Shakespeare's plays.It's a play about two gangs,and the star-crossed lovers that take their own lives.Well, with any fisticuffs you know that there is some serious smack talk going on.And you are not disappointed.

But if you dig some more, fishmongermeans a broker of some type,and in this setting,would mean like a pimp,like Polonius is brokering out his daughter for money,which he is doing for the king's favor.This allows you to see that Hamlet is not as crazy as he's claiming to be,and intensifies the animosity between these two characters.

Now, even if you did not know what fishmonger meant,you can use some contextual clues.One: Polonius reacted in a negative way, so it must be bad.Two: Fish smell bad, so it must be bad.And three: monger just doesn't sound like a good word.So from not even knowing the meaning,you're beginning to construct some characterization of the relationship between Hamlet and Polonius,which was not good.

Let's first go to Hamlet.Right before this dialogue,Polonius is the father of Ophelia,who is in love with Prince Hamlet.King Claudius is trying to figure out why Prince Hamlet is acting so crazy since the king married Prince Hamlet's mother.Polonius offers to use his daughter to get information from Prince Hamlet.Then we go into Act II Scene 2.Polonius: "Do you know me, my lord?Hamlet: "Excellent well.You're a fishmonger.Polonius:Not I, my lord.Hamlet: Then I would you were so honest a man.

Words, specifically dialogue in a drama setting,are used for many different reasons:to set the mood of the scene,to give some more atmosphere to the setting,and to develop relationships between characters.Insults do this in a very short and sharp way.

It's because of his words.Back in the late 1500s and early 1600s,that was the best tool that a person had,and there was a lot to talk about.However, most of it was pretty depressing.You know, with the Black Plague and all.Shakespeare does use a lot of words.One of his most impressive accomplishments is his use of insults.They would unify the entire audience;and no matter where you sat, you could laugh at what was going on onstage.

Translator: Bedirhan Cinar Why do we cringe when we hear ShakespeareIf you ask me, it's usually because of his words.All those thines and thous and therefores and wherefore-art-thous can be more than a little annoying.But you have to wonder,why is he so popular?Why have his plays been made and remade more than any other playwright?

Stylometric analysis may reveal what makes Shakespeare's works structurally distinct,but it cannot capture the beauty of the sentiments and emotions they express,or why they affect us the way they do.At least, not yet.

It can help us determine when a work was written,whether an ancient text is a forgery,whether a student has committed plagiarism,or if that email you just received is of a high priority or spam.And does the timeless poetry of Shakespeare's lines just boil down to numbers and statistics?Not quite.

The pretender's works just don't match up with Shakespeare's signature style.However, our intrepid statisticians did find some compelling evidence of collaborations.For instance, one recent study concluded that Shakespeare worked with playwright Christopher Marlowe on Henry VI,parts one and two.Shakespeare's identity is only one of the many problems stylometry can resolve.

We can then test the works of our candidates against those principal components.For example,if enough works of Francis Bacon fall within the Shakespearean variance,that would be pretty strong evidence that Francis Bacon and Shakespeare are actually the same person.What did the results show?Well, the stylometrists who carried this out have concluded that Shakespeare is none other than Shakespeare.The Bard is the Bard.

Let's look at use of the word thee and visualize it as a dimension, or axis.Each of Shakespeare's works can be placed on that axis,like a data point, based on the number of occurrences of that word.In statistics, the tightness of these points gives us what is known as the variance,an expected range for our data.But, this is only a single characteristic in a very high-dimensional space.With a clustering tool called Principal Component Analysis, we can reduce the multidimensional space into simple principal components that collectively measure the variance in Shakespeare's works.

And in the late 1800s,a Polish philosopher named Wincenty Lutosławski formalized a method known as stylometry,applying this knowledge to investigate questions of literary authorship.So how does stylometry work?The idea is that each writer's style has certain characteristics that remain fairly uniform among individual works.Examples of characteristics include average sentence length,the arrangement of words,and even the number of occurrences of a particular word.

Most Shakespeare scholars dismiss these theories based on historical and biographical evidence.But there is another way to test whether Shakespeare's famous lines were actually written by someone else.Linguistics, the study of language,can tell us a great deal about the way we speak and write by examining syntax, grammar, semantics and vocabulary.

Some are born great,some achieve greatness,and others have greatness thrust upon them, quoth William Shakespeare.Or did he?Some people question whether Shakespeare really wrote the works that bear his name,or whether he even existed at all.They speculate that Shakespeare was a pseudonym for another writer,or a group of writers.Proposed candidates for the real Shakespeare include other famous playwrights, politicians and even some prominent women.Could it be true that the greatest writer in the English language was as fictional as his plays?