Running Blanchard's Bank after her father's death was fulfilling for Anastasia but, even so, she felt there was something missing from her life. Problems with the branch in York, decided Stacy. She would go herself. But the November weather turned severe and, with her retinue, she sought refuge at Pontisford Hall. It was a nightmare! The Hall was in a parlous state, and the man she thought to be the butler turned out to be Matthew, Lord Radley. He was quite as forceful and autocratic as herself, and the sparks that flew during her enforced stay had repercussions that quite appalled her….

This study investigates the functions, meanings, and varieties of forms of address in Shakespeare s dramatic work. New categories of Shakespearean vocatives are developed and the grammar of vocatives is investigated in, above, and below the clause, following morpho-syntactic, semantic, lexicographical, pragmatic, social and contextual criteria. Going beyond the conventional paradigm of power and solidarity and with recourse to Shakespearean drama as both text and performance, the study sees vocatives as foregrounded experiential, interpersonal and textual markers. Shakespeare s vocatives construe, both quantitatively and qualitatively, habitus and identity. They illustrate relationships or messages. They reflect Early Modern, Shakespearean, and intra- or inter-textual contexts. Theoretically and methodologically, the study is interdisciplinary. It draws on approaches from (historical) pragmatics, stylistics, Hallidayean grammar, corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, socio-historical linguistics, sociology, and theatre semiotics. This study contributes, thus, not only to Shakespeare studies, but also to literary linguistics and literary criticism.