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| Bawdy song from Love's Labour's Lost |
We know that William Shakespeare never visited France. Nor did he study the French language in a formal sense. French was sometimes used at court, but speaking French was generally seen as an exotic skill, even amongst those wth a formal education.
When French is used directly in Shakespeare, it is generally for comic effect. Sometimes this is via double entendres etc. The bawdy song in Love's Labour's Lost, for example puns on conccolinel as a euphemism for impotency.
In other cases the joke is simply the very idea of those funny foreigners with their strange language. Perhaps the most famous example of this is in the English lesson scene in Henry V:
Use of French Words: that are not Anglicized:
• foison (harvest), sans (without), carcanet (necklace), antres ( “antres vast and deserts idle” in Othello I.3), “gouts of blood” (Hamlet II.i.625)
b) French words Anglicized:
• mal content—used for the first time in Love’s Labor’s Lost, III.i.185
New Words based on French:
omittance, abidance, rejoindure deracinate, encave, plantage, rejoindure, suraddition, exposture, legitimation prophetic, control, confin’d, mortal (as adjectives), eclipse, augur,
French words very rarely used in English:
• Othello tells Desdemona of “antres vast, ” (vast, mysterious places).
• “scrimeurs”—a unique Angilicization of “escrimeurs” (fencers).
French Words used with original French meaning:
embassage (Sonnet 26); “the region cloud”
(Sonnet 33 région: meaning celestial or of the sky); travail (Sonnet 79:
with French meaning of “workmanship” rather than English meaning of
“difficult effort”); reserve (Sonnet 85: with French meaning of preserve/
make permanent); impeacht (Sonnet 125: from the French empêcher);
pain (Sonnet 141: with French meaning of “punishment,”
grand matin - “broad daylight” used twice (245).