A History of the English Language - A Companion Site

Chapter 7: Early Modern English: 1500-1700

In England the Renaissance and Early Modern English began a little before 1500. The Renaissance is a time of freedom of ideas; for language that means freedom in creating and borrowing words. During the Renaissance, English continues to become more analytic. By 1700, the Great Vowel Shift is more or less complete and spelling relatively uniform; 1700 is therefore considered the end of this period even though that date, like 1500, is somewhat debatable.

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Useful Links

General

The University of Toronto has an extensive list of links to many other Early Modern English pages.

An outline of dates is available at Creighton University.

Sheffield-Hallam University has another list of links at its Early Modern Literary Studies site.

Printing

The University of Duisburg-Essen site has nice images of early printed pages.

Sounds

The Renfaire has a page on proper Elizabethan accent.

Grammar

Tufts hosts a copy of a comparative grammar of Early Modern English, written in 1870 and the University of Duisburg-Essen has material on Shakespearean grammar.

Texts

The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia has many texts, both Early Modern and Modern English.

The University of Pennsylvania hosts a similar library.

Shakespeare

This annotated list of links on the Shakespeare authorship debate resides at Palomar College.

The University of Virginia eText archive hosts a collection of prompt books used by early performers of Shakespeare's plays.

The Internet Shakespeare Editions has high quality facsimilies of Shakespeare's Folios and Quartos available for viewing online.