Shakespeare And Language: Reason, Eloquence and Artifice in the Renaissance

''Much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to: in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.'' Porter, Macbeth, II i. Why would Elizabethan audiences find Shakespeare''s Porter in Macbeth so funny? And what exactly is meant by the name the ''Weird'' Sisters? Jonathan Hope, in a comprehensive and fascinating study, looks at how the concept of words meant something entirely different to Elizabethan audi.