A glossary for readers of Shakespeare
Type any word from Shakespeare and get a plain-English definition, the play it appears in, and what you would say today. Built for students reading at midnight.
Searches 80 words as you type. Definitions, parts of speech, and play citations included.
Students ask about this more than any other words in Shakespeare. The system is simple once you see it:
| Word | Job in the sentence | Modern equivalent | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| thou | Subject (does the action) | you | Thou art a villain (you are a villain) |
| thee | Object (receives the action) | you | I love thee (I love you) |
| thy | Possessive before a consonant | your | thy father (your father) |
| thine | Possessive, stands alone or before a vowel | yours / your | To thine own self be true |
Thou and thee were the informal forms, used with friends, family, children, and social inferiors. Strangers and superiors got you. Calling a king thou could start a fight.
Hath means has. It is the third-person singular of have. Where we say "he has," Shakespeare wrote "he hath." You will also meet it constantly in the King James Bible, translated in the same era.
Wherefore means why, not where. When Juliet asks "Wherefore art thou Romeo?", she is asking why Romeo has to be a Montague, the son of her family's enemy. She knows exactly where he is: under her balcony.
Prithee means please. It is a contraction of "I pray thee," used to soften a request. "Prithee, tell me" is simply "please tell me."
Hark means listen. It is a command to pay attention, the way a teacher claps twice. "Hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" (Cymbeline) means "listen, the lark is singing."
Partly the pronouns (thou and thee), partly the verb endings (hath, doth, -est), and partly words whose meanings shifted. Presently meant "right now," by and by meant "immediately," and humor meant "mood." The grammar is close to ours; the vocabulary is the real barrier, which is what this page fixes.
These 80 entries cover the words students stumble on most in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, plus general archaic English of the period (roughly 1590 to 1650). Definitions follow the standard scholarly consensus, cross-checked against Schmidt's Shakespeare-Lexicon (1902, public domain) and Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913, public domain). Play citations give the act and scene where the example appears. Spelling is modernized throughout.
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