Playing with Words

In all Shakespearean plays, William Shakespeare makes use of wordplay. This man was a master of language and bended words to his will. Sometimes his wordplay makes his works difficult to understand, but the presence of puns and jokes throughout ensure that they will never be dry.

Shakespeare is known to use puns, perverted hidden meanings, and the occasional antanaclasis in his texts. The last one is a literary device where he uses the same word multiple times within a scene but employs a different definition each time. These are not always clear to the casual reader (something I know from experience after reading Romeo and Juliet casually and then again analytically) but they add pleasure and meaning to the work.

One occasion of an antanclasis that I found to be very interesting was in the conversation between Ophelia and Polonius in Act I, Scene III of “Hamlet.” The key word here was “tender,” which could mean anything from offering of love to money to taking care of something or someone. Shakespeare employs it here five times, which is not a coincidence.

The first appearance of the word is when Ophelia uses it as a description of the words of love that Hamlet has offered her: “He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection to me.” This use and the next use of the word both employ the definition “offering” or “showing.” The third employs an entirely different definition. Polonius says, “You have ta’en these tenders for true pay, which are not sterling.”  Here the word “tender” is used more as a description of money or some form of currency, specifically a fake or counterfeit currency. The use of the word “tender” as both an offering of affection and a form of money draws the parallel between love and payment. Payment for exchange of love is prostitution so in drawing this comparison Polonius is essentially calling Ophelia a harlot and stating that Hamlet’s “tenders” for her are lies.

The next appearance of the word is when Polonius says to Ophelia: “Tender yourself more dearly; or—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, running it thus—you’ll tender me a fool.” The first use of the word in this sentence means “take better care of yourself,” of course, but the second is far more harsh and far harder to read. In order to understand it, one must also understand the term “fool,” which here is “to kid.” Essentially, the phrase waters down to “you’ll provide me a kid,” but it is much harsher than that. The phrasing makes a fool of not only Ophelia for having a kid, but also of Polonius for having a daughter with a tarnished reputation. The words “you’ll tender me a fool” equate to the entire phrase “You will get yourself pregnant and humiliate me and yourself in the process.” With four words, Shakespeare shows that not only is Polonius making fun of and verbally abusing Ophelia, but he is also showing how both of their reputations could be tarnished because of her actions. How’s that for wordplay?