Robert Wrubel wrote:
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> Tahir commented that Shakespeare's language is often too poetic, too elevated. This might apply to the English history plays, but not to Hamlet or even less to King Lear. What Tahir calls "the dialectic of high and low" speech is more central to Shakespeare than any other writer I can think of. And that may be the core of why Carrol finds S so fascinating ("weird") -- the continual intermingling and testing of the lofty with the base ( e.g. "th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame. ." ) Marianne Moore called it making "imaginary gardens with real toads".
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The textbook illustration of this is "Rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine / Making the green one red." This mixture of "saxon" and "latin" is one of the more immediately striking features of Shakespeare's style. Of course "making the green one red" (i.e., making the green sea red throughout) involves the same sort of special Shakespearean quality we have been discussing. It takes a split second to focus on "one" as pairing with "red" rather than "green," and that affects the cadence of the line.
Incidentally, I have a personal impression that many of the lines from many other poets that catch one's attention will be 9-word lines: 8 monosyllables and a bisyllable.
Carrol