5/ *Write a short analysis of how the language of Egeus is used to express his fury.

In the tutorial, we compared the language of lurvers to the language of the Court. It is Egeus’ language that sets the mood for this scene as condescending and accusatory towards Lysander.

But first lets recap what happened in this scene;

Egeus, Hermia’s father is having a confrontation with Thesus (the King) about what to do if Hermia refuses the proposal to marry Demetrius. Egeus is telling Thesus that he must make his daughter marry Demetrius or there will be consequences for her actions, by being exiled (sent to a nunnery). Thesus responds to this by trying to convince Hermia to listen to her father as he should be a King in her eyes and obey him.

The language that Egeus uses is possessive. The repetition of “My child”, “My daughter” especially the line,
“As she is mine, I may dispose of her” are all representative of how Egeus is trying to control the situation in accordance with his wishes. Egeus is focusing on himself, utterly disregarding the desires of others who surround him. Egeus is disrespectful of Lysander by referring to him in the 3rd person, “Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes…” which demonstrates his cunning act of trying to get rid of Lysander and not allow the marriage. Furthermore, the language of the court is polysyllabic, meaning, they have more than one symbol, thus creating a musical sound when read out loud. These musical sounds are also demonstrated by the long sentence structure, use of lists and lack of rigid punctuation, allowing the protagonist to become more wound up within their speech. The term consonantal explosiveness  was used within the tutorial to express Egeus’ language as angry and forceful, this is due to the plosive constants of chh, shh, k, c that occurs when read out loud (plosive constants –denoting a consonant that is produced by stopping the airflow using the lips, teeth, or palate, followed by a sudden release of air). 

Personally, I find the language and technicality of Shakespeare’s words very difficult. It intrigues me how the sounds and meanings of the words when placed together can create the changing mood or atmosphere of the play segment. I hope this small analysis of the language is correct and useful to anyone struggling to understand Shakespeare’s language.