Shakespeare wrote in English, but his English is 400 years old, and some of his words don’t mean what they seem to. The Word.Studio Shakespeare Translator puts any passage into plain modern English, right next to the original, and explains the words that trip readers up. It also works the other way: type anything in today’s English and get it back the way Shakespeare might have written it, in prose or in verse.
To start, just fill out the form.
The Your Text field is where you paste the passage. You can paste up to 6,000 characters, about one long scene. If it’s from a play, keep the speaker names and line breaks, so the translation can follow who says what. The tool translates only the text you paste. It won’t look up a scene by name, because AI often misremembers exact lines, so copy the passage from your class text or from a free online edition such as the Folger Shakespeare Library’s.
The Translate Into option sets the direction:
- Modern English translates Shakespeare into natural English you’d hear today. This is the default.
- Simple modern English uses short sentences and everyday words, for younger readers or a first pass through a hard scene.
- Shakespearean English turns modern writing into Shakespeare’s English, written as prose like the prose scenes in his plays.
- Shakespearean verse turns modern writing into blank verse: lines of iambic pentameter, the ten-syllable da-DUM rhythm of most of his plays.
When you’re ready, hit “Translate.” Most translations take 10 to 30 seconds. Use the copy button to save the result to your notes.
What You Get
When you translate Shakespeare into modern English:
- Side by Side puts each sentence or short speech of the original next to its modern English, with the speaker names kept, so you can read the two together.
- Tricky Words lists the words in the passage that today’s readers are most likely to get wrong, with what each one means in that spot.
- What’s Happening sums up who is speaking, to whom, and what is going on.
When you translate modern English into Shakespeare, you get the rewritten text, In Shakespeare’s Words, and a short Words Used list of the old words it chose and what they mean.
Shakespeare’s English Isn’t Old English
People often call Shakespeare’s language “Old English,” but it’s Early Modern English, the same English as the King James Bible, used from about 1500 to 1700. It’s close enough to ours that you can read it with a little help. Real Old English, spoken from about 450 to 1100, is the language of Beowulf, and it looks like a foreign language: the poem opens “Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum.” In between came Middle English, the language of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
This translator is built for Shakespeare’s English, and it works the same way on the King James Bible and other writing from his time. It will also put Chaucer’s Middle English and the Old English of Beowulf into modern English and tell you which kind of English it is, but translations of those older texts vary, so check them against a published translation.
Common Shakespeare Words and What They Mean
- Thou, thee, thy, thine: you (as the subject), you (as the object), your, and yours. Shakespeare’s characters use them for friends, family, lovers and people of lower rank, and “you” for strangers, superiors or more than one person.
- Art, hast, hath, dost, doth, wilt, shalt: are, have, has, do, does, will, shall.
- Wherefore: why, not where.
- Whither, hither, thither, hence: where to, to here, to there, and away from here.
- Anon: soon, or right away.
- Ere: before.
- Prithee: please (from “I pray thee”).
- Methinks: I think.
- Soft: wait, or hush.
- Marry: indeed, a mild oath.
- An: if.
- Still: always.
- Would: wish, as in “I would I were” (I wish I were).
- Owe: own.
- Fond: foolish.
- Ay, nay: yes, no.
- Alas, alack: cries of sorrow, like “oh no.”
Famous Lines in Modern English
Romeo and Juliet
- “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” Wait, what’s that light in the window over there?
- “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” Oh Romeo, why do you have to be Romeo? Juliet isn’t asking where he is. She wishes he weren’t a Montague, the family her own family hates.
- “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.” What does a name matter? A rose would smell just as sweet if we called it something else.
- “Parting is such sweet sorrow / That I shall say good night till it be morrow.” Saying goodbye is so sad and so sweet that I could keep saying good night until morning.
- “A plague o’ both your houses!” A curse on both your families! Mercutio, dying, blames the feud.
Macbeth
- “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Good is bad, and bad is good. The witches warn that nothing in the play is what it seems.
- “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?” Is that a dagger I see in front of me, with its handle pointing toward my hand?
- “By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes.” My thumbs are tingling, so something evil is on its way.
- “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” Come out, cursed stain! Come out, I tell you! Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking, scrubs at blood only she can see.
- “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.” Day after day crawls by at this dreary pace, until the end of time.
Hamlet
- “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” Is it better to live or to die? That’s the question.
- “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Something is badly wrong in Denmark.
- “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” I think the lady promises too much. “Protest” meant vow, not object: Gertrude means the queen in the play swears her love so hard that it’s hard to believe.
- “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Don’t borrow money, and don’t lend it.
- “This above all: to thine own self be true.” Most important of all, be true to yourself.
How to Write Like Shakespeare
Choose Shakespearean English or Shakespearean verse and the translator does the work, but a few rules make your own lines sound right too:
- Use thou for one person you’re close to and you for a stranger or a group.
- Match the verb to thou: thou art, thou hast, thou dost, thou wilt, thou speakest.
- Use -eth only with he, she or it (she hath, he doth, it seemeth), never with I or you.
- Swap in a few period words, such as prithee for please, methinks for I think, anon for soon and ere for before, but don’t pile them on.
So “Hey, are you coming to the party tonight?” becomes “Ho, wilt thou come to the party tonight?” and “I can’t sleep because I keep thinking about you” becomes the line of verse “I cannot sleep, for thoughts of thee return.”
Using the Shakespeare Translator in Class
Teachers can link straight to this page from Google Classroom or any learning platform, and students can use it without an account. It works best as a study aid, not a shortcut: have students read the original first and try their own paraphrase, then compare it with the translation and talk about the differences. The Tricky Words list makes a ready vocabulary list for the scene. Going the other way makes a good warm-up: have students turn a text message into Shakespeare and check the thou and thee grammar against the rules above.
AI can make mistakes, and some of Shakespeare’s lines can be read more than one way. Check key lines against your class edition and its notes.
