12.19.06
I’ve been Shakespeared.
Check out this article on wired.com discussing why Shakespeare mystifies us. In short, Shakespeare employees a linguistic technique known as functional shift that uses one part of speach in the place of another, e.g., using a noun to serve as a verb.
Professor Philip Davis, from the University’s School of English, said: “The brain reacts to reading a phrase such as ‘he godded me’ from the tragedy of Coriolanus, in a similar way to putting a jigsaw puzzle together. If it is easy to see which pieces slot together you become bored of the game, but if the pieces don’t appear to fit, when we know they should, the brain becomes excited. By throwing odd words into seemingly normal sentences, Shakespeare surprises the brain and catches it off guard in a manner that produces a sudden burst of activity – a sense of drama created out of the simplest of things.”