Cover not available

Article published In: Revisiting Shakespeare's Language
Edited by Annalisa Baicchi, Roberta Facchinetti, Silvia Cacchiani and Antonio Bertacca
[English Text Construction 11:1] 2018
► pp. 81–104

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

‘Come what come may, Time, and the Houre, runs through the roughest Day’

Temporal phraseology and the conceptual space of futurity in Macbeth

 | University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
 | University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Published online: 27 August 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00005.bon
Abstract
The paper maps the lexico-grammatical resources of the representation of time in Macbeth, looking in particular at the way futurity is portrayed. The study is based on concordance analysis of the top full lexical items in frequency lists and of time-related keywords (generated using the other Shakespearian tragedies as a reference corpus). Paying particular attention to the occurrences in Macbeth and his wife’s speeches, the analysis centres on the collocations and semantic preferences of the items identified. The top full lexical items in the wordlist are shown to be related to the notion of time, especially contrasting the present and the future, hence contributing to the pace of the plot in the play. Keywords highlight the connection of the notion of time with the notion of fear and with the impossibility of predicting the future. In general, the analysis depicts a conceptual space in which time and futurity are not connected to hope but to fear, thus creating a menacing universe that has its origins in the protagonist himself, in the tension between deceitful prediction and frustrated volition.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: The question of time in Macbeth
  • 3.The present study: Materials and methods
  • 4.Frequency lists: Time and beyond
  • 5.Keywords: Time, fear and futurity
    • 5.1A promised fate of fear
    • 5.2Negative keywords: Focus on will and shall
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (58)
References
Bergs, Alexander. 2010. Expressions of futurity in contemporary English: A Construction Grammar perspective. English Language and Linguistics 14 (2): 217–238. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berry, Francis. 1958. Poets’ Grammar: Person, Time, and Mood in Poetry. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. 2005 [1998]. An essay by Harold Bloom. In Macbeth. Annotated Shakespeare, Burton Ruffel (ed.). New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 169–204.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008 [1987]. “Introduction,” from Macbeth (Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations series). In Bloom’s Shakespeare Through the Ages. Macbeth, Harold Bloom (ed.). New York: Infobase Publishing, 339–343.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Booth, Stephen. 1983. King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition and Tragedy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boroditsky, Lera. 2000. Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition 75 (1): 1–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 1973. Space, time, semantics, and the child. In Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language, Timothy E. Moore (ed.). New York: Academic Press, 27–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clemen, Wolfang. 1951. The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery. London: Methuen and Co.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Consiglio, Maria Cristina. 2008. E-Lears. A corpus approach to Shakespeare and Tate. In The State of Stylistics, Greg Watson (ed.). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 191–205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Craig, William J. (ed.). 1916. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crystal, David & Ben Crystal. 2004. Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion. London: Penguin. Online edition: <[URL]> (Last accessed on 28 December 2017).
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2014 [2001]. Language and Characterisation: People in Plays and other Texts. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. Computers, language and characterisation: An analysis of six characters in Romeo and Juliet. In Conversation in Life and in Literature: Papers from the ASLA Symposium, Ulla Melander-Marttala, Carin Ostman & Merja Kytö (eds). Uppsala: Universitestryckeriet, 11–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 2000. The grammar of future time reference in European languages. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, Östen Dahl (ed.). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 309–328. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Engler, Balz, Regula Hohl, Christian Gebhard, Lukas Rosenthaler & Marco Fava. 2003. Hyperhamlet. Basel: Department of English, University of Basel.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentner, Dedre. 2001. Spatial metaphors in temporal reasoning. In Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought, Merideth Gattis (ed.). Cambridge: MIT Press, 203–222.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guj, Luisa. 1986. “Macbeth” and the seeds of time. Shakespeare Studies XVIII1: 175–188.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harcourt, John B. 1961. “I Pray You, Remember the Porter”. Shakespeare Quarterly 121: 393–402. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hays, Michael L. 2008 [2003]. “Macbeth: Loyal Stewards and Royal Succession,” from Shakespearean Tragedy as Chivalric Romance. In Bloom’s Shakespeare Through the Ages. Macbeth, Harold Bloom (ed.). New York: Infobase Publishing, 350–358.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Honigmann, Ernst A. J. 1989. Past, present and future in Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra . In Myriad-minded Shakespeare. Contemporary Interpretations of Shakespeare. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 93–111. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hope, Jonathan. 2003. Shakespeare’s Grammar. London: Thomson Learning. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hope, Jonathan & Michael Witmore. 2014. The language of Macbeth. In Macbeth: The State of Play, Ann Thompson (ed.). London: Bloomsbury, 183–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Howard-Hill, Trevor H. (ed.). 1971. The Oxford Shakespeare Concordances. Macbeth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kermode, Frank. 2000. Shakespeare’s Language. London: Penguin Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Knight, Wilson G. 2002 [1931]. The milk of concord: Life-themes in Macbeth. In G. Wilson Knight. Collected Works. The Imperial Theme, G. Wilson Knight, London and New York: Routledge, 125–153.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Knights, Lionel C. 1946. Explorations: Essays in Criticism Mainly on the Literature of the Seventeenth Century. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kolbe, Frederick C. 1930. Shakepseare’s Way. London: Sheed and Ward.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume I: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey N. & Mick Short. 1981. Style in Fiction. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Louw, Bill. 1993. The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies. In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Mona Baker, Gill Francis & Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 157–176. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. The role of corpora in critical literary appreciation. In Teaching and Language Corpora, Anne Wichmann, Steven Fligelstone, Tony McEnery & Gerry Knowles (eds). London: Longman, 240–251.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahlberg, Michaela & Dan McIntyre. 2011. A case for corpus stylistics: Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale. English Text Construction 4 (2): 204–227. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McDonald, Russ F. 2006. Shakespeare’s Late Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moore, Peter R. 2009. Epicurean time in Macbeth. Brief Chronicles: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Authorship Studies I1: 141–154.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mueller, Martin, William Parod, Jeffrey Cousens, Philip Burns & John Norstad. 2006. WordHoard. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Murphy, Sean. 2007. Now I am alone: A corpus stylistic approach to Shakespearian soliloquies. In Papers from the Lancaster University Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics & Language Teaching, Volume 1: Papers from LAEL PG 2006, Costas Gabrielatos, Richard Slessor & Johann W. Unger (eds). Lancaster, UK: Lancaster University, 66–85.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
OED Online, Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <[URL]> (Last accessed on 9 June 2018).
Open Source Shakespeare. An Experiment in Literary Technology. Fairfax: George Mason University. <[URL]> (Last accessed on 18 September 2018).
Palmer, Frank. 2001. Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plescia, Iolanda. 2010. Il discorso del futuro in Macbeth. Memoria di Shakespeare 71: 135–150.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rauber, D. F. 1969. Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth. Criticism 11 (1): 59–67.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salkie, Raphael. 2010. Will: Tense or modal or both? English Language and Linguistics 14 (2): 187–215. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, Susanne. 2006. Future time reference in English and Italian. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 61: 1–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Mike. 2006. Key words and key sections: Exploring Shakespeare. Paper presented at the 7th Conference on Teaching and Language Corpora (TaLC), Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot, 1–4 July 2006.
. 2016. Wordsmith Tools 7.0. Stroud: Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Mike & Christopher Tribble. 2006. Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Semino, Elena & Mick Short. 2004. Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serpieri, Alessandro. 1986. Retorica e immaginario. Parma: Pratiche.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shakespeare Corpus. Lexical Analysis Software Ltd. & Oxford University Press. <[URL]> (Last accessed on 18 September 2018).
Sinclair, John. 1996. The search for units of meaning. Textus 9 (1): 75–106.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. Trust the Text: Language Corpus and Discourse. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Emma. 2013. Macbeth. Language and Writing. London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spevack, Marvin. 1973. The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael. 2005. Conrad in the computer: Examples of quantitative stylistics analysis. Language and Literature 14 (1): 5–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1978. On the expression of spatio-temporal relations in language. In Universals of Human Language, Volume 31, Joseph H. Greenberg, Charles A. Ferguson & Edith A. Moravcsik (eds). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 369–400.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williams, George W. 2004. ‘Time for such a word’. Verbal echoing in Macbeth . In Shakespeare and Language, Catherine M. S. Alexander (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 240–250. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zyngier, Sonia. 1999. “Smudges on the canvas”? A corpus stylistics approach to Macbeth. In Poetics, Linguistics and History: Discourses of War and Conflict, Ina Biermann & Annette Combrick (eds). Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom University, 529–545.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Jekel-Twittmann, Franziska
2025. Zweifelhafte Wesen (in) der Übersetzung. Zeit, Politik und ästhetische Form in Schillers Adaption von Shakespeares Macbeth. In Instabile Translationen [Globalisierte Literaturen. Theorie und Geschichte transnationaler Buchkultur / Globalized Literatures. Theory and History of Transnational Book Culture, 5], ► pp. 67 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue