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Did the average playgoer understand Shakespeare's plays and the vocabulary when they were first performed?
Wiki User
∙ 12y ago
Yes they did. Even though a lot of words in the plays must have been unfamiliar to the audiences, they could (as modern audiences also do) figure out the meaning from context. The vocabulary used in the plays is enormous, far more than the average speaker used then or uses now. This is one reason why the plays are much easier to understand if you watch them in performance than if you read them--the actors give you clues as to what the words mean by the way they deliver their lines and move on the stage.
And you can understand what is going on in the plays without understanding every single word that is said. If you cannot figure out a speech, forget about it. As likely as not, Shakespeare will make the point again in a different way.
Wiki User
∙ 12y ago
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