A history of the English Language

185.
General Characteristics of the Period.
As we survey the period of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—the period of 
early Modern English—we recognize certain general characteristics, some of which are 
exemplified in the foregoing discussion, while others concern the larger spirit of the age 
in linguistic matters. These may be stated in the form of a brief summary as a conclusion 
to the present chapter. 
First, a conscious interest in the English language and an attention to its problems are 
now widely manifested. The fifteenth century had witnessed sporadic attempts by 
individual writers to embellish their style with “aureate terms.” These attempts show in a 
way a desire to improve the language, at least along certain limited lines. But in the 
sixteenth century we meet with a considerable body of literature—books and pamphlets, 
prefaces and incidental observations—defending the language against those who were 
disposed to compare it unfavorably to Latin or other modern tongues, patriotically 
recognizing its position as the national speech, and urging its fitness for learned and 
literary use. At the same time it is considered worthy of cultivation, and to be looked after 
in the education of the young. Whereas a century or two before, the upper classes seemed 
more interested in having their children acquire a correct French accent and sometimes 
sent them abroad for the purpose, we now find Elyot urging that noblemen’s sons should 
be brought up by those who “speke none englisshe but that which is cleane, polite, 
perfectly and articulately pronounced, omittinge no lettre or sillable,” and observing that 
he knew some children of noble birth who had “attained corrupte and foule 
pronunciation”
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through the lack of such precautions. Numerous books attempt to 
describe the proper pronunciation of English, sometimes for foreigners but often 
presumably for those whose native dialect did not conform to the standard of London and 
the court. Along with this regard for English as an object of pride and cultivation went 
the desire to improve it in various ways—particularly to enlarge its vocabulary and to 
regulate its spelling. All of these efforts point clearly to a new attitude toward English, an 
attitude that makes it an object of conscious and in many ways fruitful consideration. 
In the second place, we attain in this period to something in the nature of a standard, 
something moreover that is recognizably “modern.” The effect of the Great Vowel Shift 
was to bring the pronunciation within measurable distance of that which prevails today. 
The influence of the printing press and the efforts of spelling reformers had resulted in a 
form of written English that
56 
The Governour, 
chap. 5. 
The renaissance, 1500-1650 233

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offers little difficulty to the modern reader. And the many new words added by the 
methods already discussed had given us a vocabulary that has on the whole survived. 
Moreover, in the writings of Spenser and Shakespeare, and their contemporaries 
generally, we are aware of the existence of a standard literary language free from the 
variations of local dialect. Although Sir Walter Raleigh might speak with a broad 
Devonshire pronunciation,
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and for all we know Spenser and Shakespeare may have 
carried with them through life traces in their speech of their Lancashire and 
Warwickshire ancestry, yet when they wrote they wrote a common English without 
dialectal idiosyncrasies. This, as Puttenham (1589) reminds us, was to be the speech of 
London and the court. It is not without significance that he adds, “herein we are already 
ruled by th’ English Dictionaries and other bookes written by learned men, and therefore 
it needeth none other direction in that behalfe.” However subject to the variability 
characteristic of a language not yet completely settled, the written language in the latter 
part of the sixteenth century is fully entitled to be called Standard English. The 
regularization of spellings in this written standard can be seen as early as the mid-
fifteenth century in the official documents of Chancery.
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Thirdly, English in the Renaissance, at least as we see it in books, was much more 
plastic than now. People felt freer to mold it to their wills. Words had not always 
distributed themselves into rigid grammatical categories. Adjectives appear as adverbs or 
nouns or verbs, nouns appear as verbs—in fact, any part of speech as almost any other