The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.546  Friday, 27 November 2015

 

[1] From:        Ian Steere <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         November 26, 2015 at 4:14:33 AM EST

     Subject:    Shakespeare's Sonnets 

 

[2] From:        Richard Waugaman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         November 26, 2015 at 7:12:45 AM EST

     Subject:    You and Thou in the Sonnets

 

 

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Ian Steere <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         November 26, 2015 at 4:14:33 AM EST

Subject:    Shakespeare's Sonnets

 

Many thanks to Duncan Salkeld (SHAKSPER, November 24) for sharing the thou/you information gleaned by him and MacDonald Jackson.

 

I’ve not seen Jackson’s article on the distribution of pronouns in the sonnets. However, on the information provided by Duncan, it seems to me that there is only one significant trend that may be inferred: that of an increasing use of “you” (and variants) in place of “thou” (and variants), as the poet gets older (or is more influenced by an environment with linguistic habits different from those of his birth and breeding).

 

Certainly, the clustering of second person pronoun variants is less distinctive than might appear at first sight. For example, from Duncan’s post we glean that “you” appears in the following clusters: 52, 53, 54, 55, [57- presumably omitted in error], 58, 59; then 71, 72, 75, 76. However, this presentation conceals the following batch where there the second person pronoun is not used at all: 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68. In reality, there is a string of sonnets from 52 to 86 where “you” is used rather more often than “thou” (but without enough evidence to draw other conclusions). 

 

The same phenomenon occurs in Sonnets 104-126, which, according to Jackson’s conclusions (and at least one other independent linguistic analysis), were composed later than any other grouping of poems in the quarto. By contrast Sonnets 1- 51 contain only five poems which use “you”. And in Sonnets 127-154, dated by Jackson to among the earliest, “you” appears in only one poem (where, incidentally, its use contributes to the rhyme - as it does in Sonnet 13 and the 15/16 brace).    

 

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Richard Waugaman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         November 26, 2015 at 7:12:45 AM EST

Subject:    You and Thou in the Sonnets

 

In addition, let’s not forget Penelope Freedman’s 2007 book on You and Thou in Shakespeare—

 

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Passion-Shakespeares-Pronouns-Interrogating/dp/0754658309/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448539837&sr=1-1&keywords=penelope+freedman

 

Richard Waugaman

 

 

 

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