CHAPTER 8. THE LANGUAGE-LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH

AND TRANSITION PERIOD (1350-1500)

The period 1350-1500 was marked by the final triumph of the vernacular, and the development of a standard usage in English. After 1370 a growing tendency to prefer the usage of London to that of other dialects may be traced in literature, while the use of French rapidly declines. The period ends with the standardizing of the written language and

spelling resultant upon the setting up of Caxton's press at Westminster in 1476, but by no means generally current.

Growing Importance of the Vernacular. From 1350 on, English began to replace French and Latin as the official language of the country. The Proclamation of Henry III. in 1258, issued in English, French, and Latin, was a foreshadowing of what was to come. In 1362 Edward III. opened Parliament with an English speech, and decreed that the arguments and judgments in the law courts should be in English. The first English Petition to Parliament dates from 1386, the first Private Records date from 1375, the earliest English Wills from 1387, and the first statutes of Guilds from 1389, and in the course of the 15th century English came generally into use for public and private documents of all kinds. As regards the schools, John of Trevisa was able to say in 1385 that "in alle be gramere scoles of Engeland children levep Frensche and construep and lernep an Englische." After 1350 the literary practice of writing in Latin and French also decreased. Gower turned from these to English, and Chaucer's English set the fashion for 15th-century poets, while Wyclif's Bible (1381 and 1388) and his use of English for learned prose works influenced the 15th-century prose-writers both in their choice of a medium and in their usage of it.

Earl Rivers presenting his Book to Edward IV. (From "The Dictes and Sayeings of the Philosophers," printed by Caxton in 1477-)

Standard English.—The London dialect began to take rank as a standard towards the end of the 14th century. The causes contributing to this were: (i) the predominating importance of London as the capital, the seat of the court and government, and centre of trade and commerce, which made London English the natural language of affairs; (ii) the position of London, which made the dialect a natural medium of communication between north and south; originally Southern (as seen. in William I.'s charter to the city in 1066), it had already begun to adopt Midland characteristics in 1258 (cf. Proclamation of Henry III.), and by 1400 was more nearly approximated to Midland; (iii) the literary influence of Chaucer, and that of Gower and Wyclif, whose usage approximated to that of London. The language of Chaucer's poetry is more conservative than the spoken or the official London English of his day, but may owe its more southerly features, in part, to the usage of the Court.

2

Characteristics of Late Middle English.—(i) Spelling. Fifteenth-century spelling, as normalized by Caxton, formed the basis of modern spelling, and exhibits various modern features. Thus final -e, which had become silent in the north by about 1350, and in the south before 1450, was already beginning to mark vowel length, except after v or c, as in life, rope, beside live, once. Similarly, double consonants, which no longer signified consonant length, began to be used to mark vowel shortness. Other anticipations of modern spelling are seen in the occasional employment by Caxton of ea, ie to distinguish open and close e, as in great, friend, chief. It is unfortunate that Caxton adhered to the conservative spelling of his age, and did not attempt to represent the new changes in pronunciation which characterize the 15th century such as that of older è to i, or ō to u, found already in Middle English, or deed, moon (Mod. Eng.). Learned spellings occur in Gower, who adopted some of the new etymological spellings affected by French writers of the 14th century, such as debte, doubte, conceipt, deceipt, for Middle English dette, doute, conceite, etc. Such spellings were common in the 15th and 16th centuries, and Caxton has debt and doubt. (ii) Inflection. The inflections of nouns and adjectives were reduced to the modern stage through the unaccented -e becoming mute. The four principal stemforms of strong verbs were regularly reduced to three or two in the 15th century, and many strong verbs changed their class or became weak. (iii) In syntax modern periphrastic constructions became more prevalent, and the more lucid style and logical word-order suggest the influence of French. (iv) The vocabulary, as before, shows a number of French borrowings, mainly in the Continental form from 1400 on. (v) Lowland Scots was a distinct literary language in the 15th and 16th centuries,

1 Gower, though a native of Kent, deviates little from the contemporary London usage. Wyclif's writings show his northern origin, but represent in the main the Oxford usage, perhaps modified by that of London. Cf. Wyld, Hist. of Modern English, pp. 56 ff., for a detailed investigation of both writers. The less educated spellings of the 15th century show that most of the important vowel changes which affected the standard pronunciation of the next two centuries were in existence before 1450 as features of class or regional dialect, though not always in their final form. Cf. the recent researches of Zachrisson and Wyld.

the first example of it being Barbour's Brus (1375). Scottish literature of the 15th century is especially characterized by the use of aureate terms of Latin or French origin, which anticipated and passed into the inkhorn terms of the 16th century.

Aureate terms were used by both English and Scottish Chaucerians, but particularly the latter in attempted imitation of Chaucer's "swete rethorique," their purpose being to "illuminate the vernacular with "fresch anamalit termes celicall" such as degout, defundand, cebsitude, dulcorate, facundious, pulchritude, sugratifen, etc. Thus Dunbar praises the "aureate tongis" of Homer and Cicero, and also of Gower and Lydgate, who have "illumynate and faire our-gilt our speche" with " goldyn pennis " (Goldyn Targe, 253-278).

SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

ATKINS, J. W. H.: The Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. III., ch. xx., 1909).—DIBELIUS, W.: John Capgrave und die englische Schriftsprache (Berlin, 1899).DŎLLE, H.: Zur Sprache Londons vor Chaucer (Halle, 1913).-MORSBACH, L.: Ueber den Ursprung der neuenglischen Schriftsprache (Heilbronn, 1888); Mittelenglische Grammatik (1896).—RÖMSTEDT, H.: Die englische Schriftsprache bei Caxton (Göttingen, 1881).-WYLD: History of Modern Colloquial English.— ZACHRISSON: Pronunciation of English Vowels, 1400-1700 (Göteborg, 1913). (See reading lists under previous sections.)

SECTION II

THE FULL TIDE OF THE RENAISSANCE

CHAPTER I. GENERAL VIEW

MEDIEVAL England came to an inglorious end in the Wars of the Roses, which, depriving the country of peace, security, and a settled court life, were largely responsible for the dearth of literature in the 15th century. Modern England received

its baptism of fire in the Puritan revolution. Between these two cataclysms lies England of the golden age, the age of heroes and Titans, of More and Tyndale, of Drake and Raleigh, of Bacon and Shakespeare. The national spirit which had burst for a moment into flame under Edward III. and then died down, now shone with a strong and steady light, kindling as always the fire of literary genius-this time unsurpassed by anything in the history of the world.

But it was a soft south wind which bade the spices flow from out the Tudor garden. The return of peace, after a long period of strife, and the rise of a strong central government, circled by a brilliant court, prepared the soil; the renewal of contact with Italy, still as in the days of Chaucer the home of Renaissance culture, brought back the spring once more. Chaucer's great contemporaries, indeed, had been succeeded by less inspired and more artificial writers. The star of Petrarch was still in the ascendant, but Petrarchism had become a mannerism in his Italian and French followers. Yet their very preciosity made them attractive models for English court poets; their two chief instruments, the sonnet and the pastoral, being perfectly adapted to refined passion or delicate flattery; and if Boccaccio begat Chaucer, Ariosto begat Spenser. Moreover, in some directions the Renais

Tract of Good Living and Dying (1503).

(British Museum.)

sance swept along with stronger tide than ever. The re-discovery of the classics, which first set the movement on its way, had since then profoundly influenced the educational system of Europe, and the "New Learning," or Humanism, as it was called to distinguish it from the old scholasticism, reached its heyday at the time of Henry VIII., its supreme exponent, Erasmus, being the admiring friend of the English humanists, More, Colet, and Fisher. Humanism affected the vernacular literatures chiefly in the domain of prose. The models it studied were from the silver age of Latin literature, and it therefore led to affectation; the euphuism of Lyly and his predecessors was but one example of a craze that affected every language in Europe. Yet its net results were good it brought order and precision into chaos; and the

prose of modern litera ture learnt to pace be

fore it began to walk.MA

Humanism, again, played an important part in the development, of English drama. It is not without significance that John Heywood, writer of interludes, was related by marriage to Sir Thomas More. Moreover, the classical-revival on the Continent gave birth to a neo-Latin drama, mostly written for schools and univer

sities, of which "the Christian Terence," ie. Terentian comedies on the Prodigal Son theme, was a notable example. Early in the 16th century this fashion reached our shores, and it gave birth to a flourishing Latin university drama, which in turn exercised a marked influence upon the native drama, more especially in the work of the "university wits" who were Shakespeare's immediate predecessors and teachers.

But Humanism was itself the parent of another movement, which was to runcounter to much of the Renaissance spirit. Almost entirely responsible for the literature of Tudor England, the influence of the Renaissance was largely confined to the court and the universities, It was the Reformation which left the deeper mark upon the national character. The two movements at first went hand in hand, and seemed to find a common embodiment in the person of Henry VIII., while an early reformer like Bale was even prepared to use the drama for propaganda

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