Overuse of the word “the” in “Macbeth”

This isn't a data science question. Especially if the data science is blind to meter and to phonetics.

> [...] Look like th' innocent flower,/But be the serpent under ’t.

It is still acceptable in modern English to say something like

> Seem like the innocent flower, but be as the serpent underneath it.

Certainly not casual, everyday speech -- but using a rhetorical strategy of referring to an archetypal innocent flower, or an archetypal serpent. I think it's an enormous stretch to claim that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth had a specific innocent flower in mind when they were speaking.

"Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by;"

Or Much Ado About Nothing:

"I have the toothache."

It is not surprising that the way (a way?) articles are used has changed in the last 400 years.

    for f (*.txt); do echo $f; tr " \r" "\n\n" < $f | grep -A100000 ACT | egrep -v "^[A-Z]+$" | grep -i [A-Z] | egrep -i "^th['e]$" | wc -l; tr " \r" "\n\n" < $f | grep -A100000 ACT | egrep -v "^[A-Z]+$" | grep -i [A-Z] | wc -l; echo; done

    | Rank | Play                        | The or Th’ | Words | Per 10000 |
    |------+-----------------------------+------------+-------+-----------|
    |    1 | macbeth                     |        724 | 16929 |     427.7 |
    |    2 | henry-v                     |       1065 | 25577 |     416.4 |
    |    3 | coriolanus                  |       1126 | 27294 |     412.5 |
    |    4 | loves-labors-lost           |        855 | 21093 |     405.3 |
    |    5 | henry-viii                  |        962 | 24074 |     399.6 |
    |    6 | the-merchant-of-venice      |        834 | 20985 |     397.4 |
    |    7 | henry-iv-part-2             |       1001 | 25762 |     388.6 |
    |    8 | henry-vi-part-2             |        990 | 25597 |     386.8 |
    |    9 | hamlet                      |       1142 | 30006 |     380.6 |
    |   10 | henry-iv-part-1             |        856 | 24100 |     355.2 |
    |   11 | henry-vi-part-3             |        866 | 24491 |     353.6 |
    |   12 | antony-and-cleopatra        |        861 | 24465 |     351.9 |
    |   13 | king-lear                   |        898 | 25661 |     349.9 |
    |   14 | the-winters-tale            |        854 | 24568 |     347.6 |
    |   15 | king-john                   |        717 | 20730 |     345.9 |
    |   16 | cymbeline                   |        959 | 27738 |     345.7 |
    |   17 | a-midsummer-nights-dream    |        564 | 16377 |     344.4 |
    |   18 | richard-iii                 |        985 | 28914 |     340.7 |
    |   19 | richard-ii                  |        753 | 22224 |     338.8 |
    |   20 | henry-vi-part-1             |        715 | 21575 |     331.4 |
    |   21 | pericles                    |        605 | 18282 |     330.9 |
    |   22 | troilus-and-cressida        |        837 | 25810 |     324.3 |
    |   23 | titus-andronicus            |        659 | 20621 |     319.6 |
    |   24 | alls-well-that-ends-well    |        724 | 22683 |     319.2 |
    |   25 | measure-for-measure         |        693 | 21858 |     317.0 |
    |   26 | the-tempest                 |        518 | 16489 |     314.1 |
    |   27 | the-comedy-of-errors        |        455 | 14552 |     312.7 |
    |   28 | the-two-noble-kinsmen       |        735 | 23751 |     309.5 |
    |   29 | julius-caesar               |        592 | 19251 |     307.5 |
    |   30 | as-you-like-it              |        664 | 21692 |     306.1 |
    |   31 | twelfth-night               |        573 | 19675 |     291.2 |
    |   32 | othello                     |        737 | 25670 |     287.1 |
    |   33 | much-ado-about-nothing      |        591 | 20843 |     283.5 |
    |   34 | romeo-and-juliet            |        677 | 23948 |     282.7 |
    |   35 | the-merry-wives-of-windsor  |        604 | 21603 |     279.6 |
    |   36 | timon-of-athens             |        504 | 18262 |     276.0 |
    |   37 | the-taming-of-the-shrew     |        449 | 18709 |     240.0 |
    |   38 | the-two-gentlemen-of-verona |        404 | 17010 |     237.5 |

That said, although these days it is uncommon to use generic nouns with the definite article ("the"), I understand that this was a lot more common in Shakespeare's day. I wonder if this is more common in Macbeth than in Shakespeare's other plays, whether it was a deliberate choice, and whether Jacobean audiences would have felt the same sense of creepiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Folio

> Macbeth is a creepy play.

But my brain wanted really badly to swap the emphasised word:

> Macbeth is a creepy play.

Edit: Maybe that was the point of the author. A couple of paragraphs later they say “Actors and critics have long remarked that when you read Macbeth out loud, it feels like your voice and mouth and brain are doing something ever so slightly wrong. There’s something subconsciously off about the sound of the play, and it spooks people.”

Shakespeare's famous romantic scene does exactly the same thing: "it is the east, and Juliet is the sun." That's how he wrote.

> But fans of Macbeth often say its freaky qualities are deeper than just the plot devices and characters. For centuries, people been unsettled by the very language of the play.

> Actors and critics have long remarked that when you read Macbeth out loud, it feels like your voice and mouth and brain are doing something ever so slightly wrong. There’s something subconsciously off about the sound of the play, and it spooks people. It’s as if Shakespeare somehow wove a tiny bit of creepiness into every single line. The literary scholar George Walton Williams described the “continuous sense of menace” and “horror” that pervades even seemingly innocuous scenes.

> For centuries, Shakespeare fans and theater folk have wondered about this, but could never quite explain it.

The article claims to explain it - in the play, the word "the" is used a lot!

Um.. gee, in high school it was pointed out to me how constant themes in Macbeth are how unnatural things have become, how everything is strange, qualities/values reversed from normal - fair is foul and foul is fair etc, animals doing weird things, bad omens etc. It never stops, all the way through. I had to go through the play and list how many animals are mentioned, doing strange things. It's constant. People meet and it's not "Lovely day isn't it" but an anecdote about how so-and-so saw something incredibly weird and impossible happen. Over that background is the quickly escalating paranoia and madness of Macbeth & Lady Macbeth. Etc. Can't be bothered writing more, I didn't want to say just "This is total nonsense.", but it is. (Flagged.)