Semantic change

A. Along the lines of silly’s drift from meaning “blessed” to meaning “foolish,” a great many words that Shakespeare used had different meanings for him than they do for us. Most of us do not comprehend Shakespeare as precisely as we often reasonably suppose.

1. Juliet in Romeo and Juliet is often depicted saying, “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” (ii, ii, 33) with a gesture of looking for her lover. But Romeo is standing right below her during this scene. Wherefore actually meant “why.” She follows with “Deny thy father and refuse thy name;/Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,/And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

2. Viola tells us in Twelfth Night (iii, i, 67–70):

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;

And to do that well craves a kind of wit.

He must observe their mood on whom he jests,

The quality of persons, and the time…

Certainly, she doesn’t mean that playing the fool requires being funny. Wit did not yet mean “clever humor” in Shakespeare’s time: it meant knowledge. This usage is now relegated to the margins in English, as in such expressions as mother wit or keep your wits about you.

B. When Polonius in Hamlet (i, iii, 69) advises Laertes to “Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment,” we can only assume that he means that Laertes should receive people’s criticisms without objecting. But in Shakespeare’s time, there was an expression “to take a person’s censure,” which meant “to size someone up.”