It was printing that slowly established all the rules we insist on
today - at Willie's time things were still pretty flexible (and most
people still illiterate) and he is reputed to have spelled his own
name in sixteen different ways at various points over his life. Of
course, he also invented a significant proportion of the language
itself. It is the beginnings of modern English.
I saw the coronation speech of Henry V (1413), less than 200 years
before Shakespeare and it is almost completely unintelligible unless
you are familiar with Middle English.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 06/06/2010, at 9:42 AM, Joel Wilcox wrote:
> That is amusing! I'm currently looking at a facsimile of
> Shakespeare's first folio where "Love's Labour's Lost" is written
> "Loues Labour's lost" -- my recollection is that the possessive
> apostrophe is often omitted in Elizabethan English, whereas the
> apostrophe to indicate an ellipsis is often included, though not
> always. As Ben Franklin discovered a couple centuries later,
> printers/typesetters in England drank throughout the day, but I
> don't think that explains away all of the peculiarities. But one
> can make do without a good many apostrophes if necessary (though I
> am not advocating that).
--
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