A Brief History Of English PDF

A B rie f H ist o ry o f En g lish Contents 2.1 The Linguistic Histoiy o f English 12 2.1.1 Old English (c450-cll50) 13 2.1.2 Middle English (cll50-cl500) 20...

A B rie f H ist o ry o f En g lish Contents 2.1 The Linguistic Histoiy o f English 12 2.1.1 Old English (c450-cll50) 13 2.1.2 Middle English (cll50-cl500) 20 2.1.3 Early M odem English (cl500-cl700) 24 2.1.4 M odem English (cl700-present) 28 2.2 English Around the W o rld 30 2.3 English in the 21st Centuiy 34 2.4 Exercises 36 2.5 Bibliography 37 Abstra c t This chapter provides a b rief overview o f the history o f the Eng- lish language from its very beginnings to the present day. W e will travel through the different periods o f the English lan- guage and take a look at the status o f the English language around the w orld today. 12 A B rief H is t o r y o f E n g l is h 2.1 1 Th e Linguistic H istory of English Why Study the History W hy include the histoiy o f the English language in an introductory of English? work on English linguistics? W hy should w e bother to deal with the state o f the English language many centuries ago, as i f modern English was not complicated enough already? The answer is that the history o f the English language can provide explanations for many features “ Tim e changes all things: th ere is no and irregularities o f contemporary Eng- re ason w h y language should escape this lish, e.g. the origins o f the common plural universa l law.” marker -s or many o f the irregular verbs in (Ferdinand de Saussure) contemporary English. Taking a look at the history o f English also reminds us that English has only been around for a comparatively short time and is historically related to a number o f other languages. Language Change W e have seen in the previous chapter that, following Saussure, linguistics is now commonly divided into synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics. Diachronic linguistics, or historical lin- guistics, is the study o f language change. It is concerned with both the description and explanation o f such change. Linguists general- ly agree that all livin g languages are constantly changing as the needs o f the people who use them change as well. The mechanisms and motivations o f linguistic change are still under discussion and by no means completely understood. Trad- itionally, historical linguistics distinguishes between two main types o f change: change due to internal factors, which refers to language change that occurs in isolation, and change that results from external factors, which is largely caused by contact with other languages and, among other things, can result in the bor- ro w in g o f linguistic features, e.g. in the adoption o f foreign vocab- ulary. Language change affects all linguistic levels o f a language. Periods Reflecting the changes the English language has undergone dur- ing its roughly 1500 years o f existence, the history o f English is commonly divided into fou r m ain periods, namely Old English (OE), also referred to as Anglo-Saxon, M iddle English (ME), Early M odern English (EModE) and M o d e m English (ModE), which includes so-called Present Day English (PDE). The periods are dis- tinguished on the basis o f historical events as w ell as characteristic linguistic developments. The dividing lines, however, are some- what fuzzy as languages change rather gradually than abruptly.  O ld E n g l ish (c 4 5 0 - c ll 5 0 ) IB | Fig- 2.1 period historical landmarks key linguistic features Pre-English Celts Celtic language spoken (before c450 AD) some Celtic traces, esp. in place names Romans (43-410) Latin becomes the official language a few Latin traces from this period through Celtic transmission Old English Germanic tribes arrive (Angles, mostly Germanic word-stock (C450-C1150) Saxons, Jutes and Frisians) from fully inflected the middle of the fifth century inflections begin to be levelled Middle English Norman Conquest in 1066 enormous influx of French vocabulary (cll50 -cl500) levelled inflections Great Vowel Shift starts Early Modern English introduction of printing into Great Vowel Shift (cl500-cl700) England by William Caxton standardisation and régularisation in 1476 large-scale borrowing from Latin, Greek, French and other European languages spread of English around the world starts (colonisation) Modern English almost no inflections (d700-present) Present Day English English as a global language borrowing from many languages world-wide (cl900-present) The periods o f the English language Old English (c450-cll50) |2.1.1 Archaeological evidence shows that humans had lived in what w e Pre-English now refer to as the British Isles long before the Germanic tribes that later became the English people arrived. Unfortunately, we do not know much about the languages spoken in England before English. This is mainly due to the lack o f written records. The only groups about whose languages we have some definite knowledge are the Celts and the Romans. 14 A B rief H is t o r y of E n g lish The Celts The spread o f the Celts across the British Isles and thus the spread o f Celtic customs and the languages they spoke took place several centuries BC. These customs and languages survived Roman rule in Britain from 43-410 AD at least partly, probably owing to a certain degree o f social as w ell as geographical separation from the Romans. The Celtic influence on the English language, however, is very small, as the Celts were defeated and/or pushed back into the northern and western parts o f Great Britain when the Germanic tribes invaded England in the fifth century AD (cf. 2.1.2). Traces o f Celtic influence due to language contact with English survive almost exclusively in place names. Such place names are more common in the North and the West than in the East and Southeast. Some names o f settlements such as L ondon and Leeds most likely go back to Celtic designations, but the majority o f place names that can be traced back to Celtic origins are names connect- ed with hills and rivers. Celtic words referring to hills can be found in place names like Bredon in Worcestershire (cf. Welsh bre ‘hill’) or Pendle in Lancashire (cf. Welsh pen ‘top’). The name Tha mes goes back to a Celtic river name, and one o f the various Celtic words for ‘w ater’ survives in the name o f the river Usk (cf. Scottish Gaelic uisge and Irish uisce ‘w ater’ as in uisge/uisce beatha ‘water o f life’, i.e. the first element uisge/uisce is the origin o f ModE whisk (e )y ). The Romans The Romans first arrived in Britain in 55 BC under Julius Caesar, but permanent settlement did not take place until nearly a hun- dred years later. The full-scale Roman invasion o f the island started in 43 AD and resulted in Roman occupation. Latin became the offi- cial language during the time o f Roman rule but was not used extensively by the native population and did not replace the Celtic language in Britain. Roman occupation o f Britain ended with the withdrawal o f the last o f the Roman legions in the year 410 AD, quite some time before the Germanic tribes arrived on the island, i.e. there was no direct contact at this time. Latin influence on Eng- lish from this period is thus veiy slight as it had to be transmitted through Celtic and was limited by the same factors as Celtic influ- ence itself. One o f the few Latin elements that have come into Eng- lish in this way is OE ceaster, which represents Latin castra ‘camp’ and is a common designation in Old English for a settlement. The English town o f Chester thus owes its name to Roman influence. There were, however, two periods o f more extensive influence o f Latin on Old English: firstly, the transmission o f elements from  O l d E n g l i s h ( c 4 5 0 - c l l 50) 15 Latin into the Germanic dialects before the Germanic tribes left the Continent for Britain, and secondly, an enormous influence due to the systematic Christianisation o f Britain by Roman missionaries starting in the year 597. The history o f English started in the area now called England in Origins of English the middle o f the fifth century, when a number o f Germanic tribes, namely the Jutes, Saxons, Angles and at least a part o f the Frisians, invaded Britain, settled in the South and the East and brought their Germanic dialects with them. They gradually expanded their set- tlement, and by doing so the English-speaking territory, until by about 800 they occupied all but the Scottish highlands in the north, the Welsh highlands in the west and the western tip o f Cornwall, which all remained Celtic-speaking. The Venerable Bede (c672-735), priest and scholar, describes the events in his H istoria ecclesiastica gentis A n gloru m (‘Ecclesiastical History o f the English People’, written in Latin and completed in 731) as follows: In the year of our Lord 449 [...] the nation of the Angles, or Saxons, being invited by the aforesaid king [Vortigern] arrived in Britain with three long ships [...] they engaged with the enemy, who were come from the north to give battle, and obtained the victory; [...] a more considerable fle et was quick ly sent over, bringing a still greater number of men, which, being added to the former, made up an invincible army [...] Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany - Saxons, Angles and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West-Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight. From the Saxons [...] came the East- Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the West Saxons. From the Angles [...] are descended the East-Angles, the Midland-Angles, Mercians, all the race of the N orthumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of English. Excerpt from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History o f the English L anguage (shortened from Crystal 2002:164) Resulting from the dialect divisions o f the invading tribes and the Dialects of Old English different languages they came in contact with, there was linguistic variation in English right from the very beginning. Three main dialect areas can thus be distinguished for Old English: West S axon (southern and southwestern England), Kentish (southeastern Eng- land) and A n g li a n , which is commonly subdivided into M ercia n (cen- 16 A B r ief H is t o r y of E n g l is h tral England south o f the river Humber) and N orthu m bria n (England north o f the river Humber and southeastern Scotland). The Old English texts which have survived come from all o f the above dialect areas. However, most o f the preserved Old English material is written in the West Saxon dialect, reflecting the rise o f the West Saxon kingdom and the resulting position o f the dialect as a kind o f literary standard after 900. Fig. 2.2 The origins and distribution o f the main dialects o f Old English (Crystal 2002:174) The Names English and The Germanic invaders called the Celtic inhabitants wealas ‘for- England eigners’, from which the name W e lsh is derived. In turn the Celts referred to their Germanic conquerors as S axons, a practice fol- lowed by the early Latin writers calling them S axones and S axonia. Soon, however, A n g li (for the people) and A n g lia (for the country) were also in use to refer to the West Germanic tribes generally. OE Engle ‘Angles’ derives from this usage and the Old English writers called their language Englisc (the spelling represents the sound ///, represented by in ModE En glish ) from the beginning. The name En gla lond ‘land o f the Angles’ (Engla is genitive plural o f Engle ) for the country does not appear until around 1000 AD.  O ld E n g lis h (c4 5 0 - c1150) 17 Genetically, English is thus a Germanic language that is a mem- English, a Germanic ber o f the Indo-European family o f languages and related to other Language Germanic languages on the Continent. Close relatives are other members o f the W est Germanic branch o f the Germanic lan- guages, e.g. Frisian, Dutch and German, as we can see in the tradi- tional branch diagram (or tree diagram): Fig. 2.3 Indo-European Indo-Iranian A n atolian Tocharian | Alban ian Hellenic | Italic Germ anic Arm enian Balto-Slavonic H ittite - Lycian i r Indie "] O scan-Um brian Latin East N o rth Lydian Ossetic Baltic Slavonic - French I Icelandic Sanskrit Pashtu Lithuanian _ J _____ - Italian G othic N orw e gia n - H indi Farsi Latvian - i r - Spanish - Danish W est South - Bengali Kurdish O ld Prussian - 1 Provençal Swedish M arath i - O ld Persian - O ld Church Belarusian Portuguese Avestan Polish - Slavonic - Russian Catalan Czech - Serbian Ukrainian Rumanian H igh Low Slovak _ Croatian G erm an - I Polabian - Bulgarian Yiddish Sorbian - 1 - M acedonian D utch L Slovenian Flemish English Afrikaans The Indo-European language fam ily (Fennell 2001:22) The first attestations o f Old English, written in alphabetic script First Written Records using the letters o f the Roman alphabet, date from around the year 700. Some older Old English runic inscriptions were written in the futhorc (or futharc) alphabet, named after the first elements o f the names o f its first six letters. The Latin alphabet was not designed to represent certain sounds used in Old English and had to be supple- mented by a number o f runes from the futhorc, namely the runes thorn , wynn < p> , ash , eth and yogh. It is due to these characters and other major changes the language has undergone in the course o f its history that an Old English text is not immedi- ately accessible to speakers o f Modern English without additional knowledge. 18 A B r ief H is t o r y o f E n g l is h Fig. 2.4 I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 II 12 13 14 IS 16 The futhorc runic alphabet (Moessner 2003:4) riwKkx m w ttT H f f u ^ o r c y w h n i j j p x s 17 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 nnnrxxH m m * t b e m I o o e d a a * j r « g k k Old English Literature There is a considerable though not abundant corpus o f Old English literature in both verse and prose that has been preserved. The most important single work o f poetry is Beowulf, a heroic poem o f about 3,000 lines, but Old English poetry is also represented by a number o f shorter pieces, such as The S ea fa rer, the war poem The Ba ttle o f M a ldon and Christian poetry written by Caedmon and Cynewulf to name but a few. In addition to verse, Old English developed a tradition o f prose literature rather early, mostly on behalf o f the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the Great (871-899). He is responsible for the translation o f a number o f books into Old Eng- lish from Latin, including Bede’s H istoria ecclesiastica gentis A ngloru m , and initiated the compilation o f the Anglo- S axon Chronicle (or Anglo- S axon Chronicles) , a record o f the most important events o f English history that was continued for more than two centuries after his death. Other rather well-preserved examples o f Old English prose are texts written in the context o f the Benedictine Reform, particu- larly the works o f an abbot called Aelfric (c955-cl010). Some Linguistic Charac Despite the dialect distinctions o f Old English mentioned above, teristics of Old English there are a number o f characteristic linguistic features shared by all major varieties o f Old English. Vocabulary From a modern perspective, one o f the most striking features o f Old English is the very limited number o f words derived from Latin and the absence o f borrowings from French, the latter o f which make up a large part o f the vocabulary o f Modern English. The vo- cabulary o f Old English is almost exclusively o f West Germanic origin - with the exception o f a few borrowings from Celtic and Latin, and some Scandinavian influence on vocabulary and place names from 787 AD onwards - but more than 80 per cent o f those words have since disappeared from the language. The surviving W est Germanic words, however, form the core o f the Modern Eng-  O ld E n g l ish ( c 4 5 0 - d l 5 0 ) 19 lish vocabulary and occur frequently in everyday speech. They express basic concepts, such as child (OE d id ) o r to drin k (OE drinca n ) , and constitute a large part o f Modern English function words, i.e. auxiliaries, conjunctions, determiners, prepositions, pronouns and the like (cf. 4.1). Old English was an inflected language like Latin or Modern Morphology and Syntax German, which means that the grammatical function o f words in a sentence was indicated largely by means o f inflection, most com- monly in the form o f endings. As a result, the word order in Old English is rather free. Fully inflected languages like this are called synthetic, as opposed to analytic languages (cf. 2.1.2). Nouns in Old English not only employed inflection to indicate number (singular/plural) but also case and gender. As in Modern German, four cases are distinguished: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. According to the regular pattern o f endings used to indicate these distinctions, the Old English nouns can be grouped together in declensions, which can be traced back to an earlier form o f Germanic. Over one-third o f the Old English nouns belonged to the so-called declension o f masculine a-stems while about a quarter each were feminine o-stems and neuter a-stems (cf. table below). Old English distinguishes masculine, feminine and neuter and has so-called grammatical gender, which means that the gender o f Old English nouns does not correspond to biological sex. For example, inanimate objects can thus be feminine (e.g. OE giefii ‘gift’) and masculine (e.g. OE stä n ‘stone’, the so-called macron above the a indicating a long vowel), whereas the designations for female persons can be neuter (e.g. OE w i f ‘ w ife’ and m xgden ‘girl’). This system can still be found in contemporary German, where das M ädchen ‘girl’ is neuter and der S tein ‘stone’ is masculine. | Fig- 2.5 Old English masc. a-stem stan 'stone’, neut. a-stem sap ‘ship’ and fem. o-stem giefu ‘gift’ Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Nominative stän stän-as scip scip-u gief-u gief-a Genitive stän-es stän-a scip-es scip-a gief-e gief-a Dative stän-e stän-um scip-e scip-um gief-e gief-um Accusative stän stän-as scip scip-u gief-e gief-a Examples illustrating selected Old English nominal declensions  A B r ief H is t o r y o f E n g l is h The Old English adjective had even more distinctions than the noun, partly preserving a fifth case (instru m enta l ) and distinguish- ing two separate types o f declension referred to as weak and strong. The Old English personal pronoun and the demonstrative pro- noun, among other things the precursor o f the definite article the, were fully inflected as well. The Old English verbal system formally distinguished only two simple tenses, the present and the preterite (or past). The system was divided into strong and weak verbs, on the basis o f the for- mation o f the preterite. Strong verbs were characterized by alter- ations o f their root vowel, known as ablaut (or apophony, or (vowel) gradation, or vowel alternation). They are divided into seven classes, for the most part according to the typical sequence o f root vowels that appear in the infinitive, the first and third per- son preterite singular, the preterite plural and the past participle: e.g. drifa n ‘to drive’, d r a f drifon, (ge) drifen (strong verbs class I). Many Modern English “irregular” verbs still show an alternation o f their root vowel, e.g. drive, drove, driven. W eak verbs are subdivided into three different classes but all have in common that they form their preterite and past participle by adding an ending called a dental suffix (cf. 3.1.2), e.g. hiera n ‘to hear’ has a preterite hierde and a past participle (gejhfered (weak verbs class 1). The dental suffix is the ori- gin o f the Modern English “regular” past tense marker -ed. Pronunciation The consonants o f Old English were similar to the consonants o f Modern English as the consonant system has not undergone any major structural changes in the history o f English. As far as vowels are concerned, the situation is completely different. Particularly the long vowels have undergone considerable change from Old English to Modern English, e.g. OE mona > ModE moon and OE stan > ModE stone (cf. Fig. 2.11).. 2 1.2 M iddle English (cll50-cl500) The Norman Conquest In the year 1066, the troops o f W illiam the Conqueror, Duke o f Normandy, invaded Britain. This invasion is known as the Norman Conquest. King Harold and almost the entire British nobility were killed at the Battle o f Hastings, and W illiam was crowned King o f England in the same year. His reign not only brought about funda- mental changes in society, religion and politics, it also had the greatest effect on the English language o f all events in the course  M id d le E n g lish (c1150- c 1500) 21 o f its history. The Normans became the ruling class in England. Accordingly, French, strictly speaking the Norman French dialect, became the preferred language o f the upper class and at the so- called Anglo-Norman Court. More and more speakers o f English descent gradually acquired at least some knowledge o f French resulting in a very strong influence o f French on the English lan- guage, despite the fact that the everyday language o f the masses remained English at all times. These influences were clearly visible by about 1150, which is why this date is often given as the approxi- mate dividing line between Old English and Middle English. W ritten sources from the early Middle English period are scarce, Middle English Literature as English had low prestige and most administrative and religious material was written in French or Latin. On the whole, however, a relatively large corpus o f Middle English literature from a variety o f different dialects survives, especially from after 1250. A large pro- portion o f the surviving literature was composed in verse. The most important single author o f the period was G eoffrey Chaucer (cl 342-1400), poet and composer o f a collection o f 24 stories called the C a nterbury Tales, probably the most influential and most widely read Middle English text. | Fig. 2.6 The Canterbury Tales. fm " w m S im tytt finm f 4 J#*Mr p * m tt t? » ifk shwt« cucfj* m &&tt& Cfouy 4fit f tj» |&. RNmIii s&ttt Stesdji - ------------------------ _ m t v m o e y x * to® t ik flumes»». ^. m tfa iWhrtt i S a ifa O f m t f i P & ' « -> « »inf ¿birffi tti*f£bj m cfotipe S&XKU n t t i k t tk 9 ^ fa * tn 22 A B r ief H is t o r y o f E n g l is h Some Characteristic French influence and other developments towards the end o f the Linguistic Features of Old English period led to some marked differences between Old Middle English English and Middle English. One o f the most striking features o f Middle English is the easily Vocabulary observable immense influence o f French on the English vocabu- laiy. Several centuries o f intimate language contact led to the transference o f an enormous number o f words o f French origin to English until the end o f the Middle English period. Many thou- sands o f words from all spheres o f life were adopted, including gov ern m ent, religion, a rt, justice, f a sh io n , a rm y, n a vy, litera ture and poet. Estimates claim that between 30 and 40 per cent o f the Modern English vocabulary is o f French origin. But whatever the exact fig- ure, there can be no doubt that the majority o f these words entered the English language during Middle English times, replacing many inherited Germanic words. Fig. 2.7 | Comparison o f Mod- animal cow, ox sheep deer swine, sow em English terms fo r meat beef mutton venison pork animals and the cor- responding types of meat (source: OED) The above table shows designations for some animals in Modern English that are continuations o f the inherited Old English terms, whereas the names for the corresponding types o f meat are all o f French origin. This reflects the structure o f the English society in Middle English times, during which the English-speaking lower classes were responsible for hunting and taking care o f domesti- cated animals as opposed to the French-speaking upper classes that were able to afford and thus consume the produced meat. The names o f a number o f more affordable commodities accessible to the lower classes, such as m ilk or cheese, again continue the Old English terms. Morphology and Syntax The extensive changes o f the Middle English period, however, show not only in the vocabulary but also the grammar o f English. A widespread loss o f inflections took place and changed English into a more analytic language (cf. 2.1.1 and 2.1.4). This means that the English language increasingly depended on a relatively fixed  M id d le E n g lish ( c l l 5 0 - c l 5 0 0 ) 23 word order to express the relation o f words in a sentence. Middle English is thus traditionally called the period o f levelled inflec- tions. The decay o f inflections already started towards the end o f the Old English period and was probably largely due to the fact that the inherited Germanic words had the stress on the first syl- lable, which means that the vowels in the unstressed endings tended to lose their full quality. Inflectional endings o f the noun and the adjective were so much reduced that they could no longer express all the distinc- tions o f case, number and gender. The adjective lost all distinctions between weak and strong declensions and finally all traces o f inflectional markers altogether. In the nominal system, the origi- nally distinctive endings -a, -u, -e, -an, -um were first reduced to -e, pronounced as the so-called indeterm in ate vowel schwa [3 ] (cf. 3.1.2), and finally lost. Different case forms fell together in only one form, a process known as syncretism. Only one form remained for the plural and the only inflectional relic in the singular was the geni- tive in -(e)s; this means that the nominal inflection had already essentially reached its modern state. I Fig. 2.8 general singular genitive singular general plural Forms o f ME ston(e) stones ston-es ME ston(e) and ModE stone stone’s stones ModE stone The reduction o f endings o f nouns and adjectives, and the estab- lishment o f the invariable article the were among the causes responsible for the loss o f grammatical gender in Middle English. Natural gender, sometimes also referred to as logical gender, recognises the sex o f animate beings, while all inanimate objects are generally neuter. There are only veiy few exceptions such as countries and ships. The verb also exhibited the general tendency towards weakening o f endings and levelling o f inflections, but showed lesser degrees o f structural change. The main changes o f the verbal system dur- ing the Middle English period were the loss o f many strong verbs and the gradual process o f conversion from the strong to the weak conjugation found in a number o f form erly strong verbs. 24 A B r ief H is t o r y of E n g l ish The weak class o f verbs was further strengthened by the adoption o f many verbs from foreign languages, particularly from French at the time, which were for the most part included into the weak system. These processes contributed to the reduction o f the num- ber o f so-called irregular verbs in Modern English. Pronunciation W e have already mentioned above that the consonants o f Eng- lish have not changed much since Old English times and thus only a few rather minor changes took place from Old English to Middle English, such as the loss o f initial h- before 1, n and r in words like OE hrin g > ME rin g. The vowel system, on the other hand, under- went some fundamental changes, such as some instances o f lengthening and shortening in certain environments and the reduction o f /a/, /e/, /o/ and /u/ to /a/ in unstressed position, which is at least to a large extent responsible for the loss o f inflections in English (see above). 2.1.3 | Early M o d e m English (cl500-cl700) The Introduction of The beginning o f the Early Modern English period is connected Printing with the effects brought about by the introduction o f printing into England in the second half o f the fifteenth century. Printing from moveable type was invented in Germany in the middle o f the fifteenth century and brought to England by W illiam Caxton ( C 1 4 2 2 - 1 4 9 1 ) , who set “W h a t’s in a name? Tha t which w e call a rose up his printing press in Westminster in by any other word would smell as sweet.” 1476. Books no longer had to be copied by (William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet II, ii, 1-2) hand and for the first time in the history o f English a great number o f identical books could be produced. Printing gave written works a much wider circulation, contributed to the standardisation o f the Eng- lish language and fostered norms o f spelling and punctuation. Early Modern English Mainly as a result o f the efficiency o f printing, more people from Literature different layers o f society got access to then more affordable w rit- ten material. Over 20,000 titles in English had appeared in Eng- land by 1640 and an enormous corpus o f Early Modern English texts has survived until today. Am ong the most important influ- ences on the development o f the English language in the Early Modern English period were the works o f W illiam Shakespeare (1564-1616) and the King James Bible o f 1611, also referred to as the Authorised Version.  Ea r l y M o der n E n g l is h (c l5 0 0 - d 7 0 0 ) 25 I F i g.2.9 A page from Shakespeare’s First Folio (published 1623) THE T R A G E D I E OF H A M L E T , Prince o f Denmark«. i / S hs Trim m. S ern a Trim a. Emm TSmmmtb mdfrtuitfct r w Where now 1« borne*, MmttUmand mj felft, Th* Bell then beating one. "SrnnmJ*. C H m. Peace,bteake thee o f t Ho’ufcw*I tools« where it tomt$«ptae. frtm. N ay aoiwtt me : Stand f t »nlold £m*. In the fame figure, like she King that"» dead. your fetfe. Mm. Tbou art a s ”bo!iet| fp eaketoit Mm. Long Hue the King. Mmu, L o o k » it not like the King> M ark« it Hmmn. m W S rT I iras, iSttrtmdof H m *. M oft like: I « hjtrowea me with fear f t wonder Mm. Mm. He. 'Barn. 11 would be fpoke too. Ftm. You com« maA citefuily vpon your haute, Q jicfliou it Hvrm*. S m.T a now fttock twdue.get the« to bed Urn. W h at art thou that *furp-ft tbit rime o f night, Fra, For thi* teleefe nwth (bankets T it bkter cold, Togetber with thaï Faire and W trhkt forme h o i iM ific k e tt In wiuth th* MaieOy o f buried Derwr.arke Halte y o * had quiet Guard t D id fomctlmet march : 8 y Heauru 1 tbarge thee (peaks. frm* N oea Moufe Rifting. Mm. I t it offended, % ru. W ell, goodntgbt. I f you do m e « Hrnmit and i m ». Set.it ftalket away. Mmuitm, the Rtuais o f my Watch.bid them make haft. Hm. Stays fpeake; fjxake ¡ I Charge thee.fpeake, (m m HmmU md MmetMm - t*mt*Ch0. ftm. Ithtnkelhes.etbera. Stand: w h o a there? M m. T n gone,and w ill not wsfwtrr. Hm. ¿ w > d * to this grwiod. Bm*. H ow now H trjtu ? You ncm ble St look pale : M m , And U ig t-m en to th « Dane. 1* not thit fomfthing m ote then Paattóe ? firm. Gkm y e « good night. W h « think* you ©n’t t Mm, 0 fu w ti honefl S old ier,«h o bath telieuJ yoti? Hm. ftefbte m y G o d jlo B g h e o o ttW tb c rfc «« f t «. tm*mtk ht’a my plate: gin* y o « goodm pht. W ithou t the fenfible and trat «astuch Exit frm, O í a w e ow n* eye». M m. Holla Tlmnmit. Mm. iiknmBke thtlChig) %m. Say,what it Hmm mthmi Hm. As thou art to thy fclfe, Hm. A p c te e tf him, Such w a ttó « very Armour he h a do «, 1m. Welcome Hmmu, welcome good Mmttftm W hen th'Anibitiom N o t « c> combatted t M m , Whit,ha’i thi» thing appeal'd again« to oigh». So frown'd he once, when in.n angry pailt Mm » ! h*uc(tewuotbifg- He fmot the fleddcd Polla* on the I «. M m. Hmmk (aiet.’tit bat ourFamafie, 'Tiafttange. And will sot lee btleefe take hold o f him him. Thu» twice beforc^rtd iuft at tlda dead houte, Tuoehing tbit dreaded figh t, t K ite feeoc o f * «. W ith M in u llfttlk e.liM h h e gone b y oor W a w b. Therefore 1 hm* inrreattd him »long Hm.In what particular thought to worktl know not i With n , to watch the minutet erf1ihtt N igh t, But in the groffe and fcope o f m y Opinion, That iftgainelbit Apparition come, Thirboadcs lome ftrange erruption to our State. He may tppcoue out *yrt, tnd fpeake to it- M m. G o o d now lit downe.ft tell roe h etbit k n e w » Hm. T»ib,rttfti, ’tw ill no» appeare. W h y thit fame flr iâ and moft obferaam W *«1 », im. Sitdowoe »-w hile, I So nightly toyle* the fub ieâ o f th* Land, And let * i oneeagaine »{fttie your « n e t , j Aud why fuehdayiyCaft o f Braxoo Cannon T h*« * « fa f«*tined againft out Stoty, And Forraigne Mart fot 1mpiementi o f warre : What we tw o N igh t« baut (ttt x. W iiy dith impteffe o f Ship-wiigh(),whofe fore Tatke Hm. W d t/ a we down». D o't not dtuidc the Sunday from the week*. And let it heat* 'Bmmmdt fpeake o f U »* W h at might be toward, that thil fweaty haft Um», ta ft flig h to f* «, Doth mak* the N igh t ioynt-Labouret with the day t When yond fame S t a m t h «'* W eft ward from the P ole W h o i»‘t that tan ioftwow me> H*