Sharing on Prepositions Deep Dive
HI all,
After we did the Prepositions Deep Dive, I shared a note with the participants through a WeChat group, and I thought it might be helpful to move it here so we can all continue discussing the idea together, opening it up to those who joined later or who aren't on WeChat.
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My sister heard this in a podcast and just sent it to me. She knew about our session on Friday, and she said she thought you all would like this part of the podcast, so she made a transcript of it:
In that same passage where the usurped duke says that ‘these actors were all spirits and melted into . . . thin air,’ he concludes the speech by saying, “And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.” That line is the source of the modern phrase ‘the stuff that dreams are made of.’ But note that the original line in The Tempest is “We are such stuff As dreams are made on” not “of.”
As I noted in earlier episodes, during the early modern period, many prepositions didn’t have the same precise meaning that they have today. They could be used in ways that we don’t use them today, especially in phrases like that. So in many of these earlier works, we find these types of phrases where it seems like the wrong preposition was used. It’s part of what gives Shakespeare’s language its unique feel. For example, a few lines later in the same play, we find the line, “We were dead of sleep.” Today, we would probably say that we were “dead from sleep.” But again, prepositions could be used in different ways back then.
Also, note something else about that line “We are such stuff As dreams are made on” or “dreams are made of.” Whichever preposition you use there, it’s at the end of the line. And supposedly, you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. You’re supposed to say something like “We are such stuff as of which dreams are made” or something like that. Of course, that sounds awkward because English doesn’t really work that way. As Shakespeare shows us, English has ended sentences with a preposition for many centuries. The modern prohibition against ending sentences with a preposition largely comes from an English poet and playwright named John Dryden, who formulated the arbitrary rule in the late 1600s. Though he didn’t state his reasons, he was obsessed with Latin and thought English should try to imitate Latin as much as possible. And since you can’t end a sentence with a preposition in Latin, Dryden apparently thought English should follow the same rule. And interestingly, when Dryden formulated that rule in 1672, he specifically cited a line in a play by Ben Jonson which he found objectionable. The play was called ‘Catiline his Conspiracy,’ and the line read “the bodies that those souls were frighted from.” And I mention that play because it was composed around the same time as the Tempest. So both Shakespeare and Jonson sometimes ended sentences with a preposition because pretty much everyone else did. That’s simply the way English worked and still works today.
Unfortunately, Dryden’s artificial rule only created confusion in the language, and it was a rule that many people failed to adhere to – or it was a rule to which many people failed to adhere. And so, some modern grammarians said “What are we doing this for?” – or “For what are we doing this?” They said, “Look. It’s an arbitrary rule that we have to put up with.” Or “It’s an arbitrary rule up with which we have to put.” So most of them decided it was rule that we needed to get rid of. Or it was a rule of which we needed to get rid. Anyway, for that reason, the rule has fallen out of favor in recent years, and today, most grammarians say that it is perfectly fine to end a sentence with a proposition. And I guess all of that gives us something to think about – or something about which to think.