Wherefore Born to the Manor?

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

We all know that line. It's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene ii. Unfortunately, many a Juliet—aspiring, wannabe, or otherwise—has delivered it incorrectly. (The showbiz term for how a line is delivered is the "reading," and it includes intonation which in turn is bound up with the meaning: how the actor understands the line and how line will be grasped by the audience.)

The mistake has to do with the meaning of the word wherefore. Note that, as I have (correctly) reproduced the line above, there is no comma after thou. That should be a tipoff.

That is because, contrary to what many people believe, wherefore is not synonymous with where. Wherefore means 'why'. Think of the old phrase "the whys and wherefores." These are two pretty much synonymous words. (Legal usage is the model for giving two essentially synonymous words: it often was felt necessary to give both an Anglo-Saxon and an equivalent French word, in the days when in England both languages were in use, and we still find this in our legal documents.)

In the line from Romeo and Juliet, if you go on and read (or listen to) the rest of the soliloquy, it should be clear that Juliet is not wondering where Romeo is. The meaning is, Why do you have to be Romeo, and a Montague, when the Montague family are my family's enemies? (I would hope that many professional actresses and directors who have put on Romeo and Juliet realize this.)

Language changes. English has changed in the 400 years since Shakespeare, and many words, and meanings of words, have become obsolete. We continue to use words in what you might call ossified or frozen phrases: that is, a phrase may be current but it contains a word with a meaning that has become obsolete.

Some more examples: "Time and tide wait for no man." This does not mean the tide of the oceans, rising and falling. It means 'season', as in Yuletide, Whitsuntide, Easter tide.

What about the phrase, spic and span? Who knows the meanings of the component words? (As a partial gloss, at one time the phrase was more fully, spic and span new, with span being a form of the word we have in brand new.)

Yet another example, this one also from Shakespeare: The phrase is often quoted as "to the manor born"; but in fact, it's manner (Hamlet, Act I, scene iv, line 15). Hamlet is talking about the king's reveling (drinking), and says that he was born to the manner (custom) but does not do it.

So we may hear and even utter phrases that contain words with meanings that are now obsolete or otherwise obscure, and we—perhaps in a very human attempt to make sense out of the language we hear—misinterpret.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein