In ur Grammar, Verbing ur Nouns
August 2008
In Elizabethan grammar, he said, 'it was common to place words in the order in which they came uppermost in the mind' - and then fit the syntax around that mental excitement. […]
…an adjective is made a verb when in The Winter's Tale heavy thoughts are said to 'thick my blood'. A pronoun is made into a noun when Olivia in Twelfth Night is called 'the cruellest she alive'. Prospero turns adverb to noun when he speaks so wonderfully of 'the dark backward' of past time; Edgar turns noun to verb when he makes the link with Lear: 'He childed as I fathered.' As Abbott says, in Elizabethan English 'You can "happy" your friend, "malice" or "foot" your enemy, or "fall" axe on his head.' Richard II is not merely deposed (that's Latinate paraphrase): he is unkinged.
— Literary Review - Philip Davis on Shakespeare and Neurology
Christina commented: