Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviatedEModE[1] orEMnE), also known asEarly New English (ENE), and colloquiallyShakespeare's English,Shakespearean English, orKing James' English, is the stage of theEnglish language from the beginning of theTudor period to the EnglishInterregnum andRestoration, or from the transition fromMiddle English, in the late 15th century, to the transition toModern English, in the mid-to-late 17th century.[2]
Before and after the accession ofJames I to the English throne in 1603, the emerging English standard began to influence the spoken and writtenMiddle Scots of Scotland.
The grammatical and orthographical conventions of literary English in the late 16th century and the 17th century are still very influential on modernStandard English. Most modern readers of English can understand texts written in the late phase of Early Modern English, such as theKing James Bible and the works ofWilliam Shakespeare, and they have greatly influenced Modern English.
Texts from the earlier phase of Early Modern English, such as the late-15th-centuryLe Morte d'Arthur (1485) and the mid-16th-centuryGorboduc (1561), may present more difficulties but are still closer to Modern English grammar, lexicon and phonology than are 14th-century Middle English texts, such as the works ofGeoffrey Chaucer.
The change fromMiddle English to Early Modern English affected much more than just vocabulary and pronunciation.[1]
Middle English underwent significant change over time and contained large dialectical variations. Early Modern English, on the other hand, became more standardised and developed an established canon of literature that survives today.
1476 –William Caxton started printing inWestminster; however, the language that he used reflected the variety of styles and dialects used by the authors who originally wrote the material.
1485 – Caxton publishedThomas Malory'sLe Morte d'Arthur, the first print bestseller in English. Malory's language, while archaic in some respects, was clearly Early Modern and was possibly a Yorkshire or Midlands dialect.
1491 or 1492 –Richard Pynson started printing in London; his style tended to preferChancery Standard, the form of English used by the government.
1539 – Publication of theGreat Bible, the first officially authorised Bible in English. Edited byMyles Coverdale, it was largely from the work of Tyndale. It was read to congregations regularly in churches, which familiarised much of the population of England with a standard form of the language.
1549 – Publication of thefirst edition of theBook of Common Prayer in English, under the supervision ofThomas Cranmer (revised in1552,1559,1604, and1662), which standardised much of the wording of church services. Some have argued that since attendance at prayer book services was required by law for many years, the repetitive use of its language helped to standardise Modern English even more than theKing James Bible (1611) did.[3]
Title page ofGorboduc (printed 1565).The Tragedie of Gorbodvc, whereof three Actes were wrytten by Thomas Nortone, and the two laste by Thomas Sackuyle. Sett forthe as the same was shewed before the Qvenes most excellent Maiestie, in her highnes Court of Whitehall, the .xviii. day of January, Anno Domini .1561. By the Gentlemen of Thynner Temple in London.
1560 – TheGeneva Bible was published. The New Testament was completed in 1557 by English Reformed exiles on the continent during the reign of Mary, and the complete Bible three years later, after Elizabeth succeeded the throne. This version was favoured by thePuritans andPilgrims due to its more vigorous and forceful language. Its popularity and proliferation (due in large part to its copious notes) over the following decades sparked the production of theKing James Bible to counter it.
1582 – TheRheims and Douai Bible was completed, and theNew Testament was released inRheims,France, in 1582. It was the first complete English translation of the Bible that was officially sponsored and carried out by theCatholic Church (earlier translations into English, especially of the Psalms and Gospels, existed as far back as the 9th century, but it was the first Catholic English translation of the full Bible). Though the Old Testament was already complete, it was not published until 1609–1610, when it was released in two volumes. While it did not make a large impact on the English language at large, it certainly played a role in the development of English, especially in heavily Catholic English-speaking areas.
1607 – The first successful permanent English colony in the New World,Jamestown, is established inVirginia. Early vocabulary specific toAmerican English comes from indigenous languages (such asmoose,racoon).
1611 – TheKing James Version was published, largely based on Tyndale's translation. It remained the standard Bible in theChurch of England into the latter half of the twentieth century.
TheEnglish Civil War and theInterregnum were times of social and political upheaval and instability.The dates forRestoration literature are a matter of convention and differ markedly from genre to genre. In drama, the "Restoration" may last until 1700, but in poetry, it may last only until 1666, theannus mirabilis (year of wonders), and in prose lasts until 1688. With the increasing tensions over succession and the corresponding rise in journalism and periodicals, or until possibly 1700, when those periodicals grew more stabilised.
The 17th-centuryport towns and their forms of speech gained influence over the oldcounty towns. From around the 1690s onwards, England experienced a new period of internal peace and relative stability, which encouraged the arts including literature. Modern English can be taken to have emerged fully by the beginning of theGeorgian era in 1714, butEnglish orthography remained somewhat fluid until the publication of Johnson'sA Dictionary of the English Language, in 1755.
The towering importance ofWilliam Shakespeare over the other Elizabethan authors was the result of hisreception during the 17th and the 18th centuries, which directly contributes to the development ofStandard English.[citation needed]Shakespeare's plays are therefore still familiar and comprehensible 400 years after they were written,[5] but the works ofGeoffrey Chaucer andWilliam Langland, which had been written only 200 years earlier, are considerably more difficult for the average modern reader.
Shakespeare's writings are universally associated with Early Modern English.
Theorthography of Early Modern English is recognisably similar tothat of today, but spelling was unstable. Early Modern and Modern English both retain various orthographical conventions that predate theGreat Vowel Shift.
Early Modern English spelling was broadly similar to that encounteredin Middle English. Some of the changes that occurred were based on etymology (as with thesilent⟨b⟩ that was added to words likedebt,doubt andsubtle). Many spellings had still not been standardised. For example,he was spelled as bothhe andhee in the same sentence in Shakespeare's plays and elsewhere.
Certain key orthographic features of Early Modern English spelling have not been retained:
The letter⟨S⟩ had two distinctlowercase forms:⟨s⟩ (shorts), as is still used today, and⟨ſ⟩ (longs). The shorts was always used at the end of a word and often elsewhere. The longs, if used, could appear anywhere except at the end of a word. The double lowercaseS was written variously⟨ſſ⟩,⟨ſs⟩ or⟨ß⟩ (the lastligature is still used in Germanß).[6] That is similar to the alternation between medial (σ) and final lowercasesigma (ς) in Greek.
⟨u⟩ and⟨v⟩ were not considered two distinct letters then but as still different forms of the same letter. Typographically,⟨v⟩ was frequent at the start of a word and⟨u⟩ elsewhere:[7] hencevnmoued (for modernunmoved) andloue (forlove). The modern convention of using⟨u⟩ for the vowel sounds and⟨v⟩ for the consonant appears to have been introduced in the 1630s.[8] Also,⟨w⟩ was frequently represented by⟨vv⟩.
Similarly,⟨i⟩ and⟨j⟩ were also still considered not as two distinct letters, but as different forms of the same letter: henceioy forjoy andiust forjust. Again, the custom of using⟨i⟩ as a vowel and⟨j⟩ as a consonant began in the 1630s.[8]
The letter⟨þ⟩ (thorn) was still in use during the Early Modern English period but was increasingly limited to handwritten texts. In Early Modern English printing,⟨þ⟩ was represented by the Latin⟨Y⟩ (seeYe olde), which appeared similar to thorn in blackletter typeface⟨𝖞⟩. Thorn had become nearly totally disused by the late Early Modern English period, the last vestiges of the letter being its ligatures,ye (thee),yt (that),yu (thou), which were still seen occasionally in the 1611King James Version and in Shakespeare's Folios.[9]
Asilent⟨e⟩ was often appended to words, as inſpeake andcowarde. The lastconsonant was sometimes doubled when the⟨e⟩ was added: hencemanne (forman) andrunne (forrun).
The sound that became Modern English/ʌ/ was often written⟨o⟩ (as inson): henceſommer,plombe (for modernsummer,plumb).[10]
The final syllable of words likepublic was variously spelt but came to be standardised as-ick. The modern spellings with-ic did not come into use until the mid-18th century.[11]
The phonology of Early Modern English is reconstructed from a variety of sources, including phonetic descriptions by orthoepists, spellings, and usage in poetry.[13]
Most consonant sounds of Early Modern English have survived into present-day English; however, there are still a few notable differences in pronunciation:
Many initialconsonant clusters which have disappeared in the modern day were still fully pronounced. These include/wrkngnhw/. All but/hw/ havefully reduced in the 16th and 17th centuries.[14]
/wr/ as inwrite was the first to disappear, merging into/r/ in the first half of the 17th century.[15]
/kn/ as inknife evolved into a variety of pronunciations including[tn,n̥], some of which remained into the 18th century until it merged with/n/.[16][17]
Similarly,/gn/ as ingnat evolved into[ŋn] or merged into/kn/ or/n/.[17][18]
/hw/, spelled⟨wh⟩ such as inwhat,where andwhale, were still pronounced[ʍ]ⓘ, rather than[w]ⓘ. That means, for example, thatwine andwhine werestill pronounced differently, unlike in most varieties of English today. A merger into/w/ had started by 1700, but did not become common until the late 18th century.[19]
Much variation existed in words with postvocalic/x/, likenight,thought, anddaughter, written⟨gh⟩. In Middle English, this phoneme had allophones[x~ç]. While[ç] dropped entirely via[h],[x] either dropped via the same path or became[f]. The most conservative dialects retained the original allophones until the 1630s, butgh-dropping dialects had already started appearing in Middle English.[20]
Would andshould had started losing/l/ in weak forms by the 1640s,[21] but may have persisted several decades longer in theBritish American colonies.[22] While the⟨l⟩ incould is unetymological, having descended fromOld Englishcūþe, both its spelling and its pronunciation were affected by analogy withwould andshould, showing/l/ in its strong forms.[23]
The modern phoneme/ʒ/ was not documented as occurring until the mid-17th century, when it formed from coalescence of the sequence/zj/.[24] The wordvision was pronounced[ˈvɪzjən] prior to the change.[25]
Early Modern English wasrhotic, as postvocalic/r/ was not lost until the late 1700s.[26] It was a trill[r] or tap[ɾ] word-initially and an approximant[ɹ] finally, butDobson andLass disagree on which was the intervocalic allophone based on different sources.[27][28]
In Early Modern English, the precise nature of the light and darkvariants of thel consonant, respectively[l]ⓘ and[ɫ]ⓘ, remains unclear.
Word-final⟨ng⟩, as insing, was still pronounced[ŋɡ] until the late 16th century, when it began tocoalesce into the usual modern pronunciation,[ŋ]. Coalescence happened at morpheme boundaries in the 17th century, except in inflected adjectives, giving us modern "si/ŋ/er" and "stro/ŋg/er". However, coalescence happened earlier in unstressed-ing and the nasal further changed to/n/, becoming more and more common until the end of the 17th century.[29] The original pronunciation[ŋɡ] is preserved in parts of England, in dialects such asBrummie,Mancunian and Scouse.
H-dropping at the start of words was common. In loanwords taken fromLatin, Greek, or anyRomance language, a writtenh was increasingly pronounced from the 17th to 18th centuries, e.g. inhumble,host, and Britishherb.[30]
The following information primarily comes from studies of theGreat Vowel Shift;[31][32] see the related chart.
The modern Englishphoneme/aɪ/ⓘ, as inglide,rhyme andeye, was[əi], and was reduced word-finally. Early Modern rhymes indicate that[əi] was similar to the vowel that was used at the end of words likehappy,melody andbusy.
/ɛ/ⓘ, as infed,elm andhen, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today, sometimes approaching[ɪ]ⓘ (which is still in the wordpretty).[33]
/eɪ/ⓘ, as inname,case andsake, was a longmonophthong. It shifted from[æː]ⓘ to[ɛː]ⓘ and finally to[eː]ⓘ. Earlier in Early Modern English,mat andmate were near-homophones, with a longer vowel in the second word. Thus,Shakespeare rhymed words likehaste,taste andwaste withlast andshade withsad.[34] The more open pronunciation remains in someNorthern England English and rarely in Irish English. During the 17th century, the phoneme variablymerged with the phoneme[ɛi]ⓘ as inday,weigh, and the merger survived into standard forms of Modern English, though a few dialects kept these vowels distinct at least to the 20th century (seepane–pain merger).
/iː/ⓘ (typically spelled⟨ee⟩ or⟨ie⟩) as insee,bee andmeet, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today, but it had not yetmerged with the phoneme represented by the spellings⟨ea⟩ or⟨ei⟩ (and perhaps⟨ie⟩, particularly withfiend,field andfriend), as ineast,meal andfeat, which were pronounced with[eː]ⓘ or[ɛ̝ː].[35][34]> However, words likebreath,dead andhead may have already split off towards/ɛ/ⓘ).
/ɪ/ⓘ, as inbib,pin andthick, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today.
/oʊ/ⓘ, as instone,bode andyolk, was[oː]ⓘ or[o̞ː]ⓘ. The phoneme was probably just beginning the process of merging with the phoneme[ow], as ingrow,know andmow, without yet achieving today'scomplete merger. The old pronunciation remains in some dialects, such as inYorkshire,East Anglia, andScotland.
/ɒ/ⓘ, as inrod,top andpot, was[ɒ] or[ɔ]ⓘ, much like the corresponding RP sound.
/ɔː/ⓘ, as intaut,taught andlaw was more open than in contemporary RP, being[ɔː] or[ɑː]ⓘ (and thus being closer to Welsh and General American/ɔː/)
/ɔɪ/ⓘ, as inboy,choice andtoy, is even less clear than other vowels. In the late 16th century, the similar but distinct phonemes/ɔi/,/ʊi/ and/əi/ all existed. By the late 17th century, they all merged.[36] Because those phonemes were in such a state of flux during the whole Early Modern period (with evidence of rhyming occurring among them as well as with the precursor to/aɪ/), scholars[37] often assume only the most neutral possibility for the pronunciation of/ɔɪ/ as well as its similar phonemes in Early Modern English:[əɪ] (which, if accurate, would constitute an early instance of theline–loin merger since/aɪ/ had not yet fully developed in English).
/ʌ/ⓘ (as indrum,enough andlove) and/ʊ/ⓘ (as incould,full,put) had not yetsplit and so were both pronounced in the vicinity of[ʊ]ⓘ.
/uː/ⓘ occurred not only in words likefood,moon andstool, but also all other words spelled with⟨oo⟩ likeblood,cook andfoot. However, the vowel for some of those words was shortened at an early stage: either beginning or already in the process of approximating the Early Modern English[ʊ]ⓘ. That phonological split among the⟨oo⟩ words was a catalyst for the laterfoot–strut split and is called "early shortening" byJohn C. Wells.[38] The⟨oo⟩ words that came to be pronounced with the shortened vowel[ʊ]ⓘ included, for example,good andblood. They, like other words with /ʊ/, were subsequently subject to thefoot–strut split and many of them, likedrum andlove, came to be pronounced with the vowel[ɤ]ⓘ and eventually/ʌ/ⓘ. However, the words with a shortened vowel also seem to have included, at least in some pronunciations such as Shakespeare's and at certain stages, some words that are pronounced with the original non-shortened vowel/uː/ⓘ in Present-Day English - e.g.brood,doom andnoon. For example,doom andcome rhyme in Shakespeare's writing for this reason.[39]
/ɪw/ or/iw/[40] occurred in words spelled withew orue such asdue anddew. In most dialects of Modern English, it became/juː/ and/uː/ byyod-dropping and sodo,dew anddue are now perfect homophones in most American pronunciations, but a distinction between the two phonemes remains in other versions of English. There is, however, an additional complication in dialects withyod-coalescence (such asAustralian English and younger RP), in whichdew anddue/dʒuː/ (homophonous withjew) are distinguished fromdo/duː/ purely by the initial consonant, without any vowel distinction.
The difference between the transcription of the EME diphthong offsets with ⟨jw⟩, as opposed to the usual modern English transcription with ⟨ɪ̯ʊ̯⟩ is not meaningful in any way. The precise EME realizations are not known, and they vary even in modern English.
At the beginning of the Early Modern English period there were three non-open and non-schwa short vowels before/r/ in thesyllable coda:/e/,/i/ and/u/ (roughly equivalent to modern/ɛ/,/ɪ/ and/ʊ/;/ʌ/ had not yet developed). InLondon English they gradually merged into a phoneme that became modern/ɜːr/, known as theNURSE mergers. While⟨ur⟩ spellings for⟨ir⟩ words exist in the 1500s, these are descended from Old English words with the segments/yr/ and/ri/ suggesting that they may not be part of the merger. The earliest native speaker to comment on mergers between the classes isJohn Wallis in 1653, showing a near merger of/ur/ and/ir/, with "turn" and "burn" having the vowel of "dull", and "virtue" with a slightly closer or unrounded vowel. However, a smaller number of speakers merge/ir/ and/er/ instead. The full three-wayNURSE mergers only completed in England around 1800.[41]
Nature was pronounced approximately as[ˈnɛːtəɹ][33] and may have rhymed withletter or, early on, evenlatter.One may have been pronouncedown, with bothone andother using the era's longGOAT vowel, rather than today'sSTRUT vowels.[33]Tongue derived from the sound oftong and rhymed withsong.[34]
Early Modern English had two second-person personal pronouns:thou, the informal singular pronoun, andye, the plural (both formal and informal) pronoun and the formal singular pronoun.
"Thou" and "ye" were both common in the early 16th century (they can be seen, for example, in the disputes overTyndale's translation of the Bible in the 1520s and the 1530s) but by 1650, "thou" seems old-fashioned or literary. It has effectively completely disappeared from ModernStandard English.
The translators of theKing James Version of the Bible (begun 1604 and published 1611, while Shakespeare was at the height of his popularity) had a particular reason for keeping the informal "thou/thee/thy/thine/thyself" forms that were slowly beginning to fall out of spoken use, as it enabled them to match theHebrew andAncient Greek distinction between second person singular ("thou") and plural ("ye"). It was not to denote reverence but only to denote the singular (in theKing James Version, God addresses individual people and even Satan as "thou"). Over the centuries, however, the very fact that "thou" was dropping out of normal use gave it a special aura and so it gradually and ironically came to be used to express reverence in hymns and in prayers.[citation needed]
Like other personal pronouns,thou andye have different forms dependent on theirgrammatical case; specifically, the objective form ofthou isthee, its possessive forms arethy andthine, and its reflexive or emphatic form isthyself. The objective form ofye wasyou, its possessive forms areyour andyours and its reflexive or emphatic forms areyourself andyourselves. The older forms "mine" and "thine" had become "my" and "thy" before words beginning with a consonant other thanh, and "mine" and "thine" were retained before words beginning with a vowel or anh, as inmine eyes orthine hand.
^abThe genitivesmy,mine,thy, andthine are used aspossessive adjectives before a noun, or as possessive pronouns without a noun. All four forms are used as possessive adjectives:mine andthine are used before nouns beginning in avowel sound, or before nouns beginning in the letterh, which was usually silent (e.g.thine eyes andmine heart, which was pronounced asmine art) andmy andthy before consonants (thy mother,my love). However, onlymine andthine are used as possessive pronouns, as init is thine andthey were mine (not *they were my).
^Ye had fallen out of use by c. 1600, being replaced by the original obliqueyou.
^abFrom the earlyEarly Modern English period up until the 17th century,his was the possessive of the third-person neuterit as well as of the third-person masculinehe. Genitiveit appears once in the 1611King James Bible (Leviticus 25:5) asgroweth of it owne accord.
During the Early Modern period, the verb inflections became simplified as they evolved towards their modern forms:
The third-person singular present lost its alternate inflections:-eth and-th became obsolete, and-s survived. (Both forms can be seen together in Shakespeare: "With her, thathateth thee andhates us all".)[42]
The plural present form became uninflected. Present plurals had been marked with-en and singulars with-th or-s (-th and-s survived the longest, especially with the singular use ofis,hath anddoth).[43] Marked present plurals were rare throughout the Early Modern period and-en was probably used only as a stylistic affectation to indicate rural or old-fashioned speech.[44]
The second-person singular indicative was marked in both the present and past tenses with-st or-est (for example, in the past tense,walkedst orgav'st).[45] Since the indicative past was not and still is not otherwise marked for person or number,[46] the loss ofthou made the past subjunctive indistinguishable from the indicative past for all verbs exceptto be.
Themodal auxiliaries cemented their distinctive syntactical characteristics during the Early Modern period. Thus, the use of modals without an infinitive became rare (as in "I must to Coventry"; "I'll none of that"). The use of modals' present participles to indicate aspect (as in "Maeyinge suffer no more the loue & deathe of Aurelio" from 1556), and of their preterite forms to indicate tense (as in "he follow'd Horace so very close, that of necessity he must fall with him") also became uncommon.[47]
Some verbs ceased to function as modals during the Early Modern period. The present form ofmust,mot, became obsolete.Dare also lost the syntactical characteristics of a modal auxiliary and evolved a new past form (dared), distinct from the modaldurst.[48]
Theperfect of the verbs had not yet been standardised to use only the auxiliary verb "to have". Some took as their auxiliary verb "to be", such as this example from theKing James Version: "But which of you... will say unto him... when heis come from the field, Go and sit down..." [Luke XVII:7]. The rules for the auxiliaries for different verbs were similar to those that are still observed in German and French (seeunaccusative verb).
The modern syntax used for theprogressive aspect ("I am walking") became dominant by the end of the Early Modern period, but other forms were also common such as the prefixa- ("I am a-walking") and the infinitive paired with "do" ("I do walk"). Moreover, theto be + -ing verb form could be used to express a passive meaning without any additional markers: "The house is building" could mean "The house is being built".[49]
A number of words that are still in common use in Modern English have undergonesemantic narrowing. The use of the verb "to suffer" in the sense of "to allow" survived into Early Modern English, as in the phrase "suffer the little children" of theKing James Version, but it has mostly been lost in Modern English.[50] This use still exists in theidiom "to suffer fools gladly". Also, this period includes one of the earliest Russian borrowings to English (which is historically a rare occasion itself[51]); at least as early as 1600, the word "steppe" (rus.степь[52]) first appeared in English inWilliam Shakespeare's comedyA Midsummer Night's Dream. It is believed that this is a possible indirect borrowing via either German or French. The substantial borrowing of Latin and sometimes Greek words for abstract concepts, begun in Middle English, continued unabated, often terms for abstract concepts not available in English.[53]
^Sacks, David (2003).Language Visible. Canada: Knopf. pp. 356–57.ISBN0-676-97487-2.
^W. W. Skeat, inPrinciples of English Etymology, claims that the substitution was encouraged by the ambiguity betweenu andn; ifsunne could just as easily be misread assunue orsuvne, it made sense to write it assonne. (Skeat,Principles of English Etymology, Second Series. Clarendon Press, 1891,page 99.)
^Fischer, A., Schneider, P., "The dramatick disappearance of the⟨-ick⟩ spelling", inText Types and Corpora, Gunter Narr Verlag, 2002, pp. 139ff.
^Stemmler, Theo.Die Entwicklung der englischen Haupttonvokale: eine Übersicht in Tabellenform [Trans: The development of the English primary-stressed-vowels: an overview in table form] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965).
^abcCrystal, David."David Crystal – Home". Archived fromthe original on 20 October 2017."Hark, hark, what shout is that?" Around the Globe 31. [based on article written for the Troilus programme, Shakespeare's Globe, August 2005: 'Saying it like it was'
Barber, Charles Laurence (1997) [1976].Early Modern English (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.ISBN978-0-7486-0835-5.Archived from the original on 9 November 2023. Retrieved31 August 2020.
Lass, Roger (1999), "3. Phonology and morphology", in Lass, Roger (ed.),The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume III: 1476–1776, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56–186,ISBN0-521-26476-6
Rissanen, Matti (1999), "4. Syntax", in Lass, Roger (ed.),The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume III: 1476–1776, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 187–331,ISBN0-521-26476-6
Salmon, Vivian (1999), "2. Orthography and punctuation", in Lass, Roger (ed.),The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume III: 1476–1776, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 13–55,ISBN0-521-26476-6
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