Why would Shakespeare's create different styles of speech for different characters?

Answer 1

Shakespeare's characters are interesting because they are not one-dimensional. While they may have a characteristic, it is often balanced with others which soften the starkness of that characteristic. For example, at times Hamlet seems indecisive and yet he decides to kill Polonius in an instant. Also, the characters grow and change as the play goes on. Lear goes from selfish arrogance to furious impotence to insanity to serenity to despair and misery. It's a long and complicated journey. All characters have some sort of motivation for what they do.

Because the characters are complex, there can be a great variety of them. For example, Malvolio in Twelfth Night has many characteristics in common with Angelo in Measure for Measure. They are both puritanical, both regard themselves as more important than they are, and both find themselves unexpectedly desiring a woman. But they are very different men. Malvolio may be deluded about his attractiveness to Olivia and his ability to leap the social gap between them, but he pursues her honourably. Angelo has no such scruples, perhaps because his position enables him to lie to cover his attempt to ravish Isabella, perhaps because there is no honourable way to pursue a relationship with Isabella because she's a nun. In the hands of a less skillful writer, both of these characters would come out the same.

Answer 2

It is natural for different kinds of people to speak differently and for people to speak differently in different circumstances. All good playwrights, including Shakespeare and his contemporaries, change the style of speech of their characters to reflect that fact. Contrast what someone might say after their pocket has been picked: "Stop! Thief! Get him!" with what someone might say while making the toast to the bride at a wedding: "I am not sure why Joanna asked me to give this speech, because I am really not much of a public speaker, but I am certainly willing to give it my best shot." Writers of Shakespeare's day wrote the latter kind of speech, the kind for formal addresses, protestations of love and so on, in what is called Blank Verse, units of ten syllables alternating weak and strong stresses, a rhythmic pattern which is natural and common to English. At the same time, speech of this kind was in what is now called Heightened Language, language beefed up with similes, metaphors, personifications and other figures of speech. This kind of language can express feelings and points of view much more powerfully than ordinary language in ragged rhythms without figures of speech can. But sometimes it is not appropriate to the kind of speech required, especially when the part is for a comic character or for a character who is under acute mental stress and is going mad or has already done so. Both Othello and Lear start off speaking in heightened Verse, but end up in jagged prose, just as the speech of the man who is giving the toast to the bride will change after his pocket has been picked. Shakespeare did not invent these two different styles of speech; they are present in all the writers of the time. Shakespeare uses them masterfully.

Answer 3

The supernatural characters have more poetic styles than the ordinary characters in order to distinguish their roles!