Henry V certainly spoke late Norman French at court as an everyday
language and Latin as a formal language. The speeches he made to the
hoi polloi would have sounded nothing like Shakespeare's versions at
all but would have been in late Southern Middle English. Shakespeare
is modern in comparison.
Here's Chaucer writing a few decades before Henry's reign in the guise
of a Miller - a symple gnof -
They seyde, "The man is wood, my leeve brother";
And every wight gan laughen at this stryf
Thus swyved was this carpenteris wyf,
For al his kepyng and his jalousye;
And Absolon hath kist hir nether ye;
And Nicholas is scalded in the towte.
This tale is doon, and God save al the rowte!
We have a fair idea of pronunciation from the rhyme and rhythm. The
style is deliberately crude - demotic English of the time.
Or as Henry might have said at Harfleur -
"Onis moore in ilke brache...."
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 08/06/2010, at 9:48 AM, Joel Wilcox wrote:
> I'm sure I've seen a great hairy fellow do something of that nature,
> but I think it was Gaunt's great set-piece in Richard II ("this
> sceptered isle, this earth of majesty ..."). This guy would have
> sooner played Falstaff as Hal.
>
> I'm sure it "reads" more intelligibly to the modern native English
> speaker than it sounds. Of course, we're guessing at the sound of
> English from those periods.
--
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