‘You’ and ‘Thou’ in Shakespeare

This companion explores, through analysis of a wide range of scenes and a series of acting workshops, the power-play, emotional self-revelation and complex dynamics that lie hidden in the use of ‘you ‘or ‘thou’ by Shakespeare’s characters.

Romeo and Juliet always use ‘thou’ to each other, but they are the only pair of lovers in Shakespeare to do this. Why? All the women in Richard III address Richard as ‘thou’, but no man ever does. Why? When characters address the dead, they use ‘thou’ – except for Hamlet, who addresses Yorick as ‘you’. Why? Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have known the answers to these questions because they understood what ‘thou’ signified, but modern actors and audiences are in the dark. Through performance-oriented analysis of extracts from the plays, this book explores the language of ‘trulls’ and termagants, true loves and unwelcome wooers, male impersonators, smothering mothers, warring spouses and fighting men, as well as investigating lèse-majesté, Freudian slips, crisis moments and rhetorical flourishes. Drawing on work with RSC actors, as well as the author’s experience of playing a range of Shakespearean roles, the book equips the reader with a new tool for tracking emotions, weighing power relations and appreciating dazzling complexity.