Early Modern English

Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModE or EMnE), also known as Early New English (ENE), and colloquially Shakespeare's English, Shakespearean English, or King James' English, is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle English, in the late 15th century, to the transition to Modern English, in the mid-to-late 17th century.

Before and after the accession of James I to the English throne in 1603, the emerging English standard began to influence the spoken and written Middle 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 modern Standard English. Most modern readers of English can understand texts written in the late phase of early modern English, such as the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare, and they have greatly influenced Modern English.

Texts from the earlier phase of early modern English, such as the late-15th-century Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) and the mid-16th-century Gorboduc (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 of Geoffrey Chaucer.

[[King James Version of Psalm 23|thumb]]

History

English Renaissance

Transition from Middle English

The change from Middle English to early modern English affected much more than just vocabulary and pronunciation.

1491 or 1492 – Richard Pynson started printing in London; his style tended to prefer Chancery Standard, the form of English used by the government.

Henry VIII

1509 – Pynson became the king's official printer.
From 1525 – Publication of William Tyndale's Bible translation, which was initially banned.
1539 – Publication of the Great Bible, the first officially authorised Bible in English. Edited by Myles 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 the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer in English, under the supervision of Thomas Cranmer (revised in 1552, 1559, 1604, and 1662), 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 the King James Bible (1611) did.
1557 – Publication of Tottel's Miscellany.

Elizabethan English

thumb|Title page of [[Gorboduc (play)|Gorboduc (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.]]

;Elizabethan era (1558–1603)

1560 – The Geneva 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 the Puritans and Pilgrims 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 the King James Bible to counter it.
1582 – The Rheims and Douai Bible was completed, and the New Testament was released in Rheims, France, in 1582. It was the first complete English translation of the Bible that was officially sponsored and carried out by the Catholic 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.
Christopher Marlowe,
1592 – The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
– Shakespeare's plays written

17th century

Jacobean and Caroline eras

Jacobean era (1603–1625)

1609 – Shakespeare's sonnets published
Other playwrights:
Ben Jonson
Thomas Dekker
Beaumont and Fletcher (Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher)
John Webster
1607 – The first successful permanent English colony in the New World, Jamestown, is established in Virginia. Early vocabulary specific to American English comes from indigenous languages (such as moose, racoon).
1611 – The King James Version of the Bible was published. It was largely based on the Bishops' Bible translation and revision of 1602. The "Authorised Version" as it is called in the U.K. remained the standard Bible in the Church of England until the 1769 Oxford edition supplanted it with updated modern English spelling and grammar.
1623 – Shakespeare's First Folio published

Caroline era and English Civil War (1625–1649)

1630–1651 – William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony, wrote his journal. It will become Of Plymouth Plantation, one of the earliest texts written in the American Colonies.
1647 – Publication of the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio

Interregnum and Restoration

The English Civil War and the Interregnum were times of social and political upheaval and instability.

The dates for Restoration 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, the annus 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.

1651 – Publication of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.
1660–1669 – Samuel Pepys wrote his diary, which will become an important eyewitness account of the Restoration Era.
1662 – New edition of the Book of Common Prayer, largely based on the 1549 and subsequent editions. It long remained a standard work in English.
1667 – Publication of Paradise Lost by John Milton and of Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden.

Development to Modern English

The 17th-century port towns and their forms of speech gained influence over the old county 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 the Georgian era in 1714, but English orthography remained somewhat fluid until the publication of Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, in 1755.

The Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1730 made English, instead of Law French and Latin, the obligatory language for use in the courts of England and in the court of exchequer in Scotland. It was later extended to Wales, and seven years later a similar act was passed in Ireland, the Administration of Justice (Language) Act (Ireland) 1737.

The towering importance of William Shakespeare over the other Elizabethan authors was the result of his reception during the 17th and the 18th centuries, which directly contributes to the development of Standard English. Shakespeare's plays are therefore still familiar and comprehensible 400 years after they were written, but the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, which had been written only 200 years earlier, are considerably more difficult for the average modern reader.

Orthography

thumb|upright=0.9|right|[[Shakespeare's writings are universally associated with early modern English.]]

The orthography of early modern English is recognisably similar to that of today, but spelling was unstable. Early Modern and Modern English both retain various orthographical conventions that predate the Great Vowel Shift.

Early Modern English spelling was broadly similar to that encountered in Middle English. Some of the changes that occurred were based on etymology (as with the silent that was added to words like , and ). Many spellings had still not been standardised. For example, he was spelled as both and 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 had two distinct lowercase forms: (short s), as is still used today, and (long s). The short s was always used at the end of a word and often elsewhere. The long s, if used, could appear anywhere except at the end of a word. The double lowercase S was written variously , or (the last ligature is still used in German ß). That is similar to the alternation between medial (σ) and final lowercase sigma (ς) in Greek.
U| and V| were not considered two distinct letters then but as still different forms of the same letter. Typographically, was frequent at the start of a word and elsewhere: hence ' (for modern unmoved) and (for love). The modern convention of using for the vowel sounds and for the consonant appears to have been introduced in the 1630s. Also, was frequently represented by .
Similarly, I| and J| were also still considered not as two distinct letters, but as different forms of the same letter: hence ' for joy and for just. Again, the custom of using as a vowel and as a consonant began in the 1630s.
The letter (thorn) was still in use during the early modern English period but was increasingly limited to handwritten texts. In Early Modern English printing, was represented by the Latin (see Ye olde), which appeared similar to thorn in blackletter typeface <big></big>. Thorn had become nearly totally disused by the late early modern English period, the last vestiges of the letter being its ligatures, (thee), (that), (thou), which were still seen occasionally in the 1611 King James Version and in Shakespeare's Folios.
A silent was often appended to words, as in ' and '. The last consonant was sometimes doubled when the was added: hence ' (for man) and ' (for run).
The sound that became Modern English was often written (as in son): hence ', ' (for modern summer, plumb).
The final syllable of words like public 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.
was often used instead of .
The vowels represented by and (for example in meet and ') changed, and became an alternative. While the in could is unetymological, having descended from Old English , both its spelling and its pronunciation were affected by analogy with would and should, showing in its strong forms.
The modern phoneme was not documented as occurring until the mid-17th century, when it formed from coalescence of the sequence . The word vision was pronounced prior to the change.
Early Modern English was rhotic, as postvocalic was not lost until the late 1700s. It was a trill or tap word-initially and an approximant finally, but Dobson and Lass disagree on which was the intervocalic allophone based on different sources.
In Early Modern English, the precise nature of the light and dark variants of the l consonant, respectively and , remains unclear.
Word-final , as in sing, was still pronounced until the late 16th century, when it began to coalesce into the usual modern pronunciation, . Coalescence happened at morpheme boundaries in the 17th century, except in inflected adjectives, giving us modern "sier" and "stroer". However, coalescence happened earlier in unstressed -ing and the nasal further changed to , becoming more and more common until the end of the 17th century. The original pronunciation is preserved in parts of England, in dialects such as Brummie, Mancunian and Scouse.
H-dropping at the start of words was common. In loanwords taken from Latin, Greek, or any Romance language, a written h was increasingly pronounced from the 17th to 18th centuries, e.g. in humble, host, and British herb.

Vowels

{| align=center cellpadding=10px

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

|+ Monophthongs alongside studies of Early Modern English.

The modern English phoneme , as in glide, rhyme and eye, was , and was reduced word-finally. Early Modern rhymes indicate that was similar to the vowel that was used at the end of words like happy, melody and busy.
, as in now, out and ploughed, was .
, as in fed, elm and hen, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today, sometimes approaching (which is still in the word pretty).
, as in name, case and sake, was a long monophthong. It shifted from to and finally to . Earlier in early modern English, mat and mate were near-homophones, with a longer vowel in the second word. Thus, Shakespeare rhymed words like haste, taste and waste with last and shade with sad. The more open pronunciation remains in some Northern England English and rarely in Irish English. During the 17th century, the phoneme variably merged with the phoneme as in day, 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 (see pane–pain merger).
(typically spelled or ) as in see, bee and meet, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today, but it had not yet merged with the phoneme represented by the spellings or (and perhaps , particularly with fiend, field and friend), as in east, meal and feat, which were pronounced with or . However, words like breath, dead and head may have already split off towards ).
, as in bib, pin and thick, was more or less the same as the phoneme represents today.
, as in stone, bode and yolk, was or . The phoneme was probably just beginning the process of merging with the phoneme , as in grow, know and mow, without yet achieving today's complete merger. The old pronunciation remains in some dialects, such as in Yorkshire, East Anglia, and Scotland.
, as in rod, top and pot, was or , much like the corresponding RP sound.
, as in boy, choice and toy, is even less clear than other vowels. In the late 16th century, the similar but distinct phonemes , and all existed. By the late 17th century, they all merged. 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 ), scholars often assume only the most neutral possibility for the pronunciation of as well as its similar phonemes in early modern English: (which, if accurate, would constitute an early instance of the line–loin merger since had not yet fully developed in English).
(as in drum, enough and love) and (as in could, full, put) had not yet split and so were both pronounced in the vicinity of .
occurred not only in words like food, moon and stool, but also all other words spelled with like blood, cook and foot. 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 . That phonological split among the words was a catalyst for the later foot–strut split and is called "early shortening" by John C. Wells. The words that came to be pronounced with the shortened vowel included, for example, good and blood. They, like other words with /ʊ/, were subsequently subject to the foot–strut split and many of them, like drum and love, came to be pronounced with the vowel and eventually . 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 in Present-Day English - e.g. brood, doom and noon. For example, doom and come rhyme in Shakespeare's writing for this reason.

occurred in words spelled with ew or ue such as due and dew. In most dialects of Modern English, it became either , or with yod-dropping so that do, dew and due are now perfect homophones in most American pronunciations, but a distinction between the two phonemes remains in other dialects of English that did not yod-drop. There is an additional complication in dialects with yod-coalescence (such as Australian English and younger RP) where the portion of merges with preceding consonants, resulting in dew and due (homophonous with Jew) being distinguished from do by the initial consonant, without any vowel distinction.

Rhoticity

The r sound (the phoneme ) was probably always pronounced following vowel sounds, as in modern General American, West Country English, Irish English, and Scottish English.

At the beginning of the early modern English period there were three non-open and non-schwa short vowels before in the syllable coda: , and (roughly equivalent to modern , and ; had not yet developed). In London English they gradually merged into a phoneme that became modern , known as the mergers. While spellings for words exist in the 1500s, these are descended from Old English words with the segments and suggesting that they may not be part of the merger. The earliest native speaker to comment on mergers between the classes is John Wallis in 1653, showing a near merger of and , 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 and instead. The full three-way mergers only completed in England around 1800.

Specific words

Yes and yet were pronounced approximately as [jɪs] and [jɪt]. This use still exists in the idiom "to suffer fools gladly". Also, this period includes one of the earliest Russian borrowings to English (which is historically a rare occasion itself); at least as early as 1600, the word "steppe" (rus. степь) first appeared in English in William Shakespeare's comedy A 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.

Notes

References

Works cited

Primary sources cited

External links

English Paleography: Examples for the study of English handwriting from the 16th–18th centuries from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University