Shakespeare’s Now

Abstract

This paper argues that the word now was for Shakespeare and fellow playwrights a precise as well as polyvalent linguistic tool which they used not only as a temporal adverb, but as what linguists call a pragmatic discourse marker to structure the spatio-temporal dramatic design as well as to represent the dynamics of interpersonal exchanges among characters, especially power relations. This is first illustrated by the work of two of Shakespeare’s contemporaries from whom he arguably learned much about the craft: Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Christopher Marlowe’s Dido Queen of Carthage. Close analysis follows of two early Shakesperean play texts: the comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona and the history 3 Henry 6, the Folio play text with the highest number of instances of now. Both plays are shown to anticipate the direction Shakespeare’s use of now will take. Specifically, the structuring function of now is withdrawn from male figures of authority who are thus denied the hold over history to which they aspire.