A History of English Language

The renaissance, 1500-1650 235
good colloquial English was so close that this latitude appears also in the written
language. Where one might say have wrote or have written with equal propriety, 59 as well
as housen or houses, shoon or shoes, one must often have been in doubt over which to
use. One heard service also pronounced sarvice, and the same variation occurred in a
number of other words (certain—sartin, concern—consarn, divert—divart, clerk—clark,
smert—smart, etc.). These and many other matters were still unsettled at the close of the
period. Their settlement, as we shall see, was one of the chief concerns of the next age.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Good brief discussions of the language in this period will be found in Henry Bradley’s article,
“Shakespeare’s English,” in Shakespeare’s England (2 vols., Oxford, 1916), II, 539–74, and
J.W.H.Atkins’ chapter, “The Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare,” in the Cambridge Hist.
of English Lit., III, 499–530. A fuller and more recent account is by Charles Barber, Early
Modern English (rev. ed., Edinburgh, 1997), J.L.Moore, Tudor-Stuart Views on the Growth,
Status, and Destiny of the English Language (Halle, 1910), gathers together the most important
contemporary pronouncements. On issues discussed in this chapter and the next, see Vivian
Salmon, The Study of Language in 17th-Century England (Amsterdam, 1979). Convenient
facsimile reprints of many of the sources cited in these two chapters have been published by the
Scolar Press in its series English Linguistics, 1500–1800 (365 vols., Menston, UK, 1967–1972).
An admirable introduction to the problem of recognition which the vernacular languages faced
in France and Italy, necessary as a background to the problem in England, is Pierre Villey, Les
Sources italiennes de la “Deffense et Illustration de la Langue Françoise” de Joachim du
Bellay (Paris, 1908). The situation in France is treated fully by F.Brunot, Histoire de la langue
française, 2 (Paris, 1922), 1–91. Du Bellay’s Deffence may be read in an English translation by
Gladys M.Turquet (New York, 1940). Other treatments of the struggle of the vernacular for
recognition in Italy are Robert A.Hall, Jr., The Italian Questione della Lingua, An Interpretative
Essay (Chapel Hill, NC, 1942) and J.A.Symonds’ chapter, “The Purists,” in his Renaissance in
Italy, vol. 2. Mulcaster’s Elementaire is edited by E.T.Campagnac (Oxford, 1925), and his
views are discussed by Richard F.Jones, “Richard Mulcaster’s View of the English Language,”
Washington Univ. Studies, Humanistic Ser., 13 (1926), 267–303. For a comprehensive
treatment, see the same author’s The Triumph of the English Language: A Survey of Opinions
Concerning the Vernacular from the Introduction of Printing to the Restoration (Stanford,
1953). On late Middle English and Renaissance prose style, see Janel M.Mueller, The Native
Tongue and the Word: Developments in English Prose Style 1380–1580 (Chicago, 1984).
Elizabethan translations are well treated in F.O.Matthiessen, Translation, An Elizabethan Art
(Cambridge, MA., 1931), and H.B.Lathrop, Translations from the Classics into English from
Caxton to Chapman, 1477–1620 (Madison, WI, 1933). As an example of the new words
introduced by individual writers the student may consult an excellent monograph by Joseph
Delcourt, Essai sur la langue de Sir Thomas More d’après ses
59
Gray’s Elegy (1751) was originally published with the title An Elegy Wrote in a Country
Churchyard.