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It meant gentle, pliable, the opposite of hard, just like it does now. Cleopatra says, "As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle". Coriolanus says, "When steel grows soft as the parasite's silk" Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona says, "poets' sinews, whose golden touch could soften steel and stones."

Shakespeare uses the word "soft" an awful lot the way we might say "Hush!" or "Shhh!"--as an interjection to be quiet. And it makes sense, since to speak softly is to be quieter. He does this in Hamlet eight times and uses "soft" in other ways only three.

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12y ago

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