A New Shakespearean Dictionary

ISBN: 9780243393565 出版年：2018 页码：356 Richard John Cunliffe Forgotten Books

I have aimed at helping those who wish to read Shakespeare in a scholarly spirit, with a full understanding of the sense, and at providing the means of forming an accurate idea of the extent to which the Shake spearean vocabulary diflrers from our own, and of the details of the difference. The Shakespearean language is, to an extent greater than is sometimes supposed, a dead tongue to us; and can be thoroughly mastered only by study with the aid of grammar, dictionary and com ment. In the matter of grammar the student's needs are amply supplied; there is at his disposal a body of comment, of varying excellence, it is true, but of great extent; but there seems to be. Room for a dictionary on the lines of the present work, showing the results of a reconsideration of the vocabulary in the light of recent research. In particular the time seems to have come for a fresh treatment of the subject in view of the fact that the New English Dictionary, to 'which further reference is made below, is so far advanced towards completion. So far as I am aware this is the first work of the kind on a considerable scale in'which the materials furnished by the Dictionary have been systematically drawn upon, and in which the scientific guidance to the treatment of the words which it affords has been fully made use of — a feature which may of itself be thought to entitle the book to some consideration.