The Language of Capitalization in Shakespeare's First Folio

Abstract

The traditional approaches to Elizabethan capitalization—conventional noun grouping and contextual emphasis—fail to deal adequately with the many inconsistencies in the age’s practice of capitalization. In addition they do not disclose the Elizabethan use of the capital letter as a linguistic indicator of the various emotional connotations of words. By using a representative sample of 11 of the 36 plays in Shakespeare’s first folio, it is possible to show through patterns of capitalization frequency how the compositors of the folio used the capital letter to indicate connotations of emotional charge, elevation, uniqueness, and poetic respectability in a variety of words and word groupings.