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Shakespearean verb forms differ from modern usage in three main ways:
1. Questions and negatives could be formed without using \"do/did,\" as when Oberon asks Titania:
How long within this wood intend you stay?
(II, i, 138)
where today we would say, \"How long do you intend to stay?\" or as when Demetrius tells Helen:
I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.
(II, i, 189)
where modern usage demands, \"I do not love you, so don\'t follow me.\"
Shakespeare had the option of using forms (a) or (b), whereas contemporary usage permits only the (a) forms:
a b
What are you saying? What say you?
What did you say? What said you?
I do not love you. I love you not.
I did not love you. I loved you not.
2. A number of past participles and past tense forms are used that would be ungrammatical today. Among these are \"broke\" for \"broken\":
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
(I, i, 175)
\"forgot\" for \"forgotten\":
And--to speak truth--I have forgot our way.
(II, ii, 42)
\"afeard\" for \"afraid\":
Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?
(III, i, 25)
\"mistook\" for \"mistaken\":
And the youth mistook by me,
(III, ii, 112)
and \"writ\" for \"wrote\":
Marry, if he that writ it had played
Pyramus...
(V, i, 348)
3. Archaic verb forms sometimes occur with \"thou\" and with third person subjects:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
(III, i, 144)
Music, ho! Music such as charmeth sleep!
(IV, 1, 82)
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy\'s images,
(V, i, 24-25)
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