Early modern grammar:
Choice II: the second person
pronoun
Distribution
of thou in PDE
§
old
poetry
§
addresses
to God
o seems formal
o misleading to apply this in
EmodE
in
OE:
§
ðú
singular, gé plural
o reflects NUMBER
ME
(< French)
§
Y
o to superiors,
o reciprocal for upper
classes/courtly,
o to strangers and/or where
social power in doubt
§
T
o to inferiors
o reciprocal between lower
classes
§
function
of STATUS
Examples
of who might use T (Adamson)
§
king
to subject
o though Shakespeare’s often
use Y to noble subjects
§
courtesy?
§
pragmatics:
powerful supporters
§
husband
to wife
§
parent
to child
§
master
to servant
§
servant
to servant
§
intimate
to intimate
Examples
of who might use Y (Adamson)
§
subject
to monarch
§
wife
to husband
§
child
to parent
§
servant
to master
§
upper
class to upper class
§
stranger
to stranger
Through
EmodE
§
u/c
reciprocal use of Y ->
§
standard
use of Y
o “the neutral term of
singular address”
§
leaves
T “increasingly marked by affectivity”
o asymmetrical social
relations
o heightened emotional tone
§
anger,
intimacy
§
Adamson:
Hotspur and his wife (“exasperation and affection”)
So
eventually, T “more often responsive to
§
emotional
tone
§
topic
o than to social factors”
(Lass)
o i.e., unstable
A
shift from Y to T “turns addressee into
o inferior
o intimate” (Lass)
o sometimes hard to tell: in MM,
Duke calls Escalus you and Angelo thou (from Adamson)
§
reminding
Angelo that he’s lower born and owes his place to the Duke’s favour?
§
as
a stage direction signalling confidentiality, physical closeness; as a marker
of intimacy
A
shift from T to Y “turns addressee into a
o superior (respect)
o stranger (coldness) (Lass)
o sometimes hard to tell: when
the Duke shifts back to you
§
is
he back into public announcement mode? supporting Angelo’s dignity in his new
position?
§
or
signalling coldness because Angelo was reluctant to accept the commission?
Shakespeare’s
sonnets: thou -> you -> thou
Main
sources and/or further reading
Lass,
Roger. “Phonology and morphology.” Volume III of The
Cambridge History of the English
Language.
1999.
Adamson,
Sylvia. “Understanding Shakespeare’s grammar: studies in small words.” Reading
Shakespeare’s
dramatic language: a guide. Ed. Sylvia Adamson, Lynette Hunter, Lynne Magnusson, Ann Thompson
and Katie Wales. London: Arden, 2001.
Magnusson,
Lynne. “A pragmatics for interpreting Shakespeare’s
sonnets 1-20. Methods of historical pragmatics,
ed. Susan M. Fitzmaurice and Irma Taavitsainen. Mouton de Gruyter: forthcoming.