I have read many of Shakespeare’s sonnets before, in high school and here at Temple, and studied the language used in them in detail. I have not, however, done this with as much historical knowledge about the development of the English language as I now have thanks to this class. I noticed, for example, that the syntax Shakespeare uses is very different from what a writer of modern English may employ. For example the line “With what I most enjoy contented least” in sonnet 29. Though this is likely because English had relatively recently lost the use of inflections before Shakespeare’s time, so the language’s word order was still developing.
I also was unaware before this class that ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ were considered polite terms to use when addressing a superior, while ‘you’ is considered informal and would be insulting to say to an elder or higher-ranking person. This is something present in the romance languages, but which English has since lost. I did not observe Shakespeare ever using the word you in these sonnets, though ‘thy’ ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ was used quite frequently in some, such as 135, which seemed to be addressed to a particular person.
ravenouslanguage 