Student Resources

14.2 The ‘magic e’

Look at the PDE word pairs below, distinguished only by a final e. Say the words to yourself and note what difference the final e signals regarding the pronunciation of the preceding vowel:

hat	hate	not	note
mad	made	strip	stripe

In the words taking the final e the preceding vowel is pronounced as a diphthong. It is often, in fact, pronounced in the way that we say the names of the vowels today (a, e, i, o, u). Because of this effect on the nature of the preceding vowel, modern day spelling teachers sometimes talk about the ‘magic e’. The e in EModE could be equally ‘magical’, and in fact two of the word pair examples above (mad/made and strip/stripe) were also used by Mulcaster, whose description of the e comes close to calling it magic. It is, he says, a ‘letter of maruellous vse in the writing of our tung’ because it ‘sometime altereth the vowell’. Incidentally, Mulcaster himself seems here to be indulging in ‘ignorant superfluity’ with that doubled ‘l’ in vowell – take a look at 14.2.2.

14.3 Punctuation, body parts and lunch breaks

In PDE some punctuation marks – like the comma, the semicolon, the colon and the full stop – have a ‘grammatical’ function. A full stop indicates the end of a sentence, and the others in this group are used to signal sentence divisions. Commas, for example, can mark off a phrase, so when you say Peter, the local policeman, was in the pub, or Angrily, he tore up the letter, the phrases the local policeman and angrily are marked off by the use of commas. One function of semicolons is to stand between ‘independent clauses’ (sentence-like structures) that are being joined together, as in John was in the pub; he went there every Friday evening. The passions that errant punctuation can arouse are sometimes extreme. For conservative PDE users, John was in the pub, he went there every Friday evening (where a comma is used instead of a semicolon) can lead to a form of apoplexy.

‘Grammatical punctuation’ was in the air in the Renaissance, and increasingly became the norm in Jacobean times as texts became more and more written for silent reading. John Hart compares the sentence to the body of a man. A comma, he says, ‘divides the small parts’, for example between the joints of the hands and the feet. A colon, on the other hand, divides off larger parts, for example ‘from the ankle joint to the knee’. The full stop (or ‘period’) marks off the body as a whole. His body parts are grammatical units.

But Hart has something else to say about the comma, which reveals another function for Renaissance punctuation. It is, Hart says, ‘near the time of a crochet [crotchet] in music’. In other words, it is an indication of length, telling you how long to pause. Mulcaster makes a similar point about the comma. He describes it as ‘a small crooked point, which in writing followeth some small branch of the sentence, & in reading warneth us to rest there, & to help our breath a little’. The first use he mentions – ‘in writing’ – is a grammatical function. But the second use (‘in reading’) is about pausing. Another sixteenth-century writer, George Puttenham (he was mentioned in 13.3) recognises ‘three manner of pauses’, and compares them to rests taken on a journey. The comma is a short stop for a ‘cup of beer or wine’, the colon is like a lunch break, and the full stop is where the traveller ‘taketh up his lodging’ for a night on the road. These marks, Puttenham said, were for ‘easement to the breath’, so that sounds ‘do not huddle one upon another . . . rudely’. These uses are sometimes described today as elocutionary, saying something about how the sentence is to be uttered when read aloud, or declaimed by an actor in the theatre. It was indeed a function for punctuation particularly suited for a time when texts were written to be spoken aloud, as in the theatre.

Though modern punctuation is certainly more grammatical than elocutionary, the latter is not entirely lost today. Crystal (2005: 69) tells how he attended rehearsals of The Globe Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. ‘I can affirm,’ he says, ‘that there were many discussions between director and actors over precisely how much value to attach to a comma.’

Renaissance punctuation causes particular problems for modern editors of authors like Shakespeare. Should they try to go back to the early texts where the punctuation was lighter, or should they accept that most readers (and actors) today are used to grammatical punctuation, and fit in with modern expectations?

14.4 Comparing folios

Here are the last few lines of the ‘buckrom story’ in the First and Fourth folios. What are the differences, in terms of the graphological points made in 14.2.1?

First folio

Falſt.      Their Points being broken.
Poin.      Downe fell his Hoſe.
Falſt.      Began to giue me ground: but I followed me cloſe, came in foot and hand; and with a thought, ſeuen of the eleuen I pay’d.
Prin.      O monſtrous! eleuen Buckrom men growne out of two?
Falſt.      But as the Deuill would haue it, three miſ-begotten Knaues, in Kendall Greene, came at my Back, and let driue at me; for it was ſo darke, Hal, that thou could’ſt not ſee thy Hand.
Prin.      Theſe Lyes are like the Father that begets them, groſſe as a Mountaine, open, palpable. Why thou Clay-brayn’d Guts, thou Knotty-pated Foole, thou Horſon obſeene greaſie Tallow Catch.

Fourth folio

Falſt.    Their Points being broken.
Poin.      Down fell his Hoſe.
Falſt.      Began to give me ground: but I followed me cloſe, came in foot and hand; and with a thought, ſeven of the eleven I pay’d.
Prin.      O monſtrous! eleven Buckrom men grown out of two?
Falſt.      But as the Devil would have it, three miſ-begotten Knaves, in Kendal Green, came at my Back, and let drive at me; for it was ſo dark, Hal, that thou could’ſt not ſee thy Hand.
Prin.      Theſe Lyes are like the Father that begets them, groſs as a Mountain, open, palpable. Why thou Clay-brain’d Guts, thou Knotty-pated Fool, thou Horſon obſeene greaſie Tallow Catch.

14.5 Star-crossed lovers

Here is the text of the Prologue to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

A recording of the OP reading

A recording of the RP reading

14.6 Caned for Greek pronunciation?

Dobson (1957) describes at length the work of John Cheke (1514–1557), one of the first people to show an interest in spelling reform at the time. He was a scholar working in Cambridge, where in 1540 he was made Professor of Greek. At that time, the pronunciation of Greek was based on the models provided by contemporary Greeks; it was in fact really ‘modern Greek’. Using the modern form of the language as a model was challenged by such eminent scholars as Erasmus, who argued that classical Greek should be the version taught. Cheke agreed, and used the classical forms in his classes with, he claims, a great increase in student interest and motivation. But the change incurred the wrath of the authorities, particularly the Chancellor of Cambridge University, Bishop Gardiner. In an acrimonious exchange of letters, Gardiner stands firmly on his dignity as Chancellor, and tries to ridicule Cheke. Gardiner argues that languages get better with time, so that by teaching the most modern version of Greek one is using the best version. He also looks with alarm (and some prescience) to the future, arguing that if Cheke reforms Greek, English will be next in line. Which indeed it was.

In 1542 Gardiner issued a decree forbidding use of the classical pronunciation, on pain of ‘expulsion from the Senate, loss of honours or scholarships, or caning’ (Dobson, p. 39). Cheke was forced to obey, the result being, he claimed, a fall in his class attendance from 200 to 40.

In his arguments with Gardiner, Cheke took some of his linguistic examples from English words, and certainly the debate about Greek led to the expression of views about the relationship between spelling and pronunciation, which applied as much to English as to Greek. Cheke did not write a book about spelling reform in English, but his translations, including of St Matthew’s gospel and the first chapter of St Mark’s, show elements of reform.