Tuesday, August 20, 2013

meaning - "What would you with the king?" -From the book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves"



In the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, in order to show how punctuation changes meaning and can be used for jokes, it says:





Instead of “What would you with the king?” you can have someone say in Marlowe’s Edward II, “What? Would you? With the king?"




I understand the innuendo but I don't understand the sentence in bold. It sounds like there is a word missing? Or is it grammatically correct and I'm missing something here? Thanks


Answer



"What would you with the king?" is an archaic construct (but of course common in Marlowe's time), meaning "what do you want with the king?", or "what is your reason for wanting to talk to the king?"


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