Hendiadys

Angels and ministers of grace defend us. (Hamlet 1.4.39)

Hendiadys means literally "two from one," as in angels and ministers in the quote above.  Rather than saying ministering angels, the two nouns are conjoined by the conjunction and somehow come to mean more than ministering angels.  Angels are trustworthy.  Ministers may or may not be trustworthy.  In his appeal for protection, might Hamlet be inviting deception?  How much is actually known of the nature of angels, and can there be deceiving angels? 

Why, in 1599, beginning with Henry V and running through the great period, through 1606, did Shakespeare so consistently use the rhetorical device of hendiadys? 

I came upon this question while reading again James Shapiro's A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599.  It is in the section dealing with the language of Hamlet (chapter 14) where Shapiro says, "It is very hard to write hendiadys; almost no other English writer did so very often before or after Shakespeare--and neither did he much before 1599.  Something happened that in that year--beginning with Henry the Fifth and As You Like It and continuing for five years or so past Hamlet through the great run of plays that included Othello, Measure for Measure, Lear and Macbeth, after which hendiadys pretty much disappear again--that led Shakespeare to invoke this figure almost compulsively" (p. 287).

Hamlet leads the pack among the plays with 66 instances (counting very conservatively), with the character of Hamlet himself using 23 of those instances.  Othello displays the second most uses, with 28, but all of the plays written from Henry V through All's Well That Ends Well use the device.

Thanks to Shapiro's helpful Bibliographic Essay I was directed to the seminal article by George T. Wright "Hendiadys and Hamlet," (PMLA, 96 [1981], 168-93).  Those lucky enough to have access to the JSTOR database will find it at:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8129%28198103%2996%3A2%3C168%3AHAH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H

(JSTOR is a for pay, Internet-based database that can be accessed through the subscription service of many libraries).

Wright makes the striking point (among many in his excellent article) that in Hamlet the use of hendiadys rather than reinforcing or modifying the meaning of the first noun with the second, creates a wavering imbalance within us that magnifies while distorting the apparent meaning, or, as Shapiro says, "The destablizing effect of how these words play off each other is slightly and temporarily unnerving."  To quote Wright, "The effect of the figure, therefore, is usually of some meaning blurred, of a relationship inaccurately represented, and represented as more straightforward, more dignified, more grand than it actually is" (173).  The use of this device by Hamlet in particular, rather than clarifying, distorts his possible meanings, and accounts for much of the mystery the auditor experiences while listening to play.

For those interested, Wright gives a meticulous table of hendiadys in Hamlet as an appendix (p. 185).  Just to give the flavor, here are some instances from the midst of his Table 1:

38. they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time (11.ii.549-50)
39. The expectancy and rose of the fair state (rr1.i. 160)
40. And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose (r11.i.174)
41. and the very age and body of the time (111.ii.26)
42. his form and pressure (111.ii.26-27)
43. So far from cheer and from your former state (rrr.ii.174)
= from your former cheerfulness
44. That live and feed upon your majesty (r1r.iii.10)
= live by feeding
45. But in our circumstance and course of thought (111.iii.83)
= as far as we mere mortals can judge
46. That blurs the grace and blush of modesty (111.iv.41)
= the innocent (blushing) grace of a modest young woman
47. Yea, this solidity and compound mass (rrr.iv.49)
= solid compound mass (the earth)

Among more recent commentators you will find discussions of hendiadys in Frank Kermode's Shakespeare's Language.  Referring to Hamlet he says, "The play has many doublings, but those which exhibit hendiadys are marked by identifiable tension or strain, as if the parts were related in some not perfectly evident way (101).  Indeed.  Hamlet's mystery is far from perfectly evident.

Kermode notes Shakespeare's compulsive use of the device, relating it to questions "of identity, sameness, and the union of separate selves."  He also draws attention to the parallel constructs in the Book of Common Prayer, but surely every Elizabethan author was heavily influenced by the Book, and only Shakespeare uses hendiadys in so prominant a manner.

What was it, we may ask, that happened in 1599 that started Shakespeare using this device, and why did he essentially stop using it in 1609?  We will never know, of course, but we can ask and perhaps tease out meanings for biography and mental development.  Shapiro notes that by the time of Hamlet Shakespeare had used over 14,000 or so different words or compounds--an exceptional number when compared to other great dramatists--and by the end of his career he had used over 18,000.  The linguistically average finds it difficult to appreciate the precocity of a man so lexically gifted that two words crowded onto the page rather than one, and two with a difference, so that meaning upon meaning spin and mystify.  That capability and golike reason most of us have not.