September 12, 2001

be + intransitive verb

When reading Shakespeare, I come across the structure be + come a lot, as in The Merchant of Venice, when Antonio said, "...the wind is come about" or in Launcelot's speech, "Father, I am glad you are come." Would you please cast some light on it?

In this archaic grammatical construction, a form of the verb be is used as an auxiliary with the past participle of an intransitive verb. Grammarians call this the "resultative form," because it refers to a state resulting from a previous action. In Old English, these constructions commonly occurred with intransitive verbs relating to motion or change; examples of such verbs are: come, go, rise, set, fall, arrive, depart, grow. These constructions are in the "perfect tense," which describes an action or state completed prior to some point of reference in time. It expresses the state reached, rather than the action of reaching it.

Now, of course, auxiliary have has replaced auxiliary be in these types of sentences: for example, "Father, I am glad you have come." The use of have arose slightly later than the use of be in most of these cases, and for a time, the two forms co-existed. In fact, the resultative form was still being used in the 19th century: "I am lately arrived thence...she was now returned...she was become morose" (Charlotte Brontë).

An Historical Syntax of the English Language says that the change from the type "he is arrived" to "he has arrived" may have been partly due to the identical pronunciation of is and has, reflected in the contracted spelling 's, found even in Shakespeare's time: "I'm glad he's come" (The Taming of the Shrew).

The "passive" is a different grammatical construction consisting of a form of the verb be followed by the past participle of a transitive verb. ("He is loved" is an example of the passive.) The resultative form was criticized by 18th- and 19th-century grammarians based on its seeming similarity to the passive form, and so the following usages were called errors: "The obligation was ceased" (Hume); "This mareschal, upon some discontent, was entered into a conspiracy against his master" (Addison). The grammarian William Cobbett, writing in 1841, summed up the criticism with this example: "The noble Earl, on returning to town, found that the noble Countesse was eloped with his Grace." Here, Cobbett points out, "was eloped" means that somebody had eloped the Countess, whereas the Countess was really the doer of the action.

Carol