Thou, Thee, Thy: Shakespeare and Modern English
Many people find reading Shakespeare difficult. Students in particular dread units on “Romeo and Juliet” or “Julius Caesar” in their English classes. Sometimes, Shakespeare seems to have been writing in an entirely different kind of English from what we speak today. Some might go as far as claiming that he writes in “old” English.
Old English and Middle English are both older forms of English that can be difficult or impossible for speakers of Modern English to read. Shakespeare didn’t write in Old English or Middle English though.
However difficult we might find his plays, we can read them. Because Shakespeare wrote in Modern English. Just like us!
What’s the difference?
Okay, okay. Shakespeare didn’t write just like us of course. Shakespeare’s English was different from ours, just like the English we speak is a bit different from that spoken a generation ago. What matters here is how different Shakespeare’s English was from the English we speak every day.
Old English is the oldest form of English. It was spoken in Britain from the middle of the 5th century to around the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066. The Normans brought their French language with them when they conquered parts of Britain. After that, French began influencing English. These changes resulted in what we call Middle English, which lasted until Modern English arrived around 1450.
Shakespeare was born in 1564.
Linguists have designated these different periods of English, but there are no clear cut lines when English suddenly jumped from one period to another. Instead, changes were gradually happening throughout history. Even today, English remains in flux, with new words being added or fading from existence. We also construct sentences differently over time. For example, today we use English differently in texts than we would while speaking aloud. This happens now, and it also happened in the past. No English speaker of any time period was conscious of the language suddenly entering a new period, but in retrospect, linguists can investigate when changes happened.
We can even designate more specific periods than just Old, Middle, and Modern English. The English that Shakespeare wrote in is called Early Modern English by linguists. To give an idea of the differences in language between these periods, here is the first line of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9 in the Bible as written in four different periods:
- Old English: Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum
- Middle English: Oure fadir that art in heuenes
- Early Modern English: Our father which art in heaven
- Present-day Modern English: Our Father in heaven (per the New Revised Standard Version, published in 1989)
From these examples, it’s easy to tell that Shakespeare’s writing, though at times difficult for modern readers, is far from being as indecipherable as Old or Middle English.
How do linguists decide these periods?
We have terms like Old, Middle, and Modern English because English changes over time. As is clear from the Bible verse above, Old English is nearly impossible for anyone to read today unless they study it as a foreign language. But, if English is always changing, what changes do linguists look for when deciding when a new period of English has begun?
The short answer is: just about anything. It depends what changes are happening in the language.
When it comes to Old English versus Middle English, linguists have looked at the way vocabulary words and sentence structure changed over time. When looking at the difference between Middle English and Early Modern English, there were a number of changes in pronunciation. You can look at the example of “Oure fadir that art in heuenes” versus “Our father which art in heaven” and see that they look similar when written. Though many of the words are different, side by side, you can tell what they’re meant to be. What might not be obvious at first glance is the difference in how those two phrases sounded when spoken.
The difference between the Early Modern English of Shakespeare’s time and our English today has to do with words that were lost or changed meaning.
For anyone even a little familiar with Shakespeare, this will make a lot of sense when you think about why Shakespeare’s works can be difficult for us today. Words like “thou” and “thy” appear frequently in Shakespeare, but we don’t use them anymore unless we’re purposefully trying to sound like, well, probably Shakespeare.
“Thou” was a second person pronoun used by Early Modern (and earlier) English speakers. It was singular. “You” did exist in Shakespeare’s time as a different second person pronoun, but it had a different meaning than it does today. It was a more formal word than “thou” that was used to show politeness. Today, we only use “you” when speaking to someone in the second person. English both lost “thou” and changed the meaning of “you” over time.
Shakespeare’s lasting influence
Many of the differences between Early Modern and today’s English are vocabulary, and Shakespeare himself is responsible for over a thousand words that we have today.
When we read his works, it’s easy to take many of these familiar words for granted without realizing that what we’re reading is their first recorded use. To us, they’re familiar.
Here’s a few of the words that Shakespeare invented or created a new meaning for:
- Swagger
- Hint
- Negotiate
- Generous
- Gossip
- And the list goes on!
Modern English or not, reading Shakespeare can be challenging. Still, we have him to thank for much of the language that we use every day, and that alone makes his works worth reading.
