Daily Life in Elizabethan England by Jeffrey L. Forgeng Page A
Authors: Jeffrey L. Forgeng
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to us today. The main differences in pronunciation were in a few of Households and the Course of Life
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the vowels: weak, for example, rhymed with break , and take sounded something like the modern-English tack. As in most modern North American accents, r ’s were always pronounced. Overall, Elizabethan English would most resemble a modern Irish or provincial English accent; the pronunciation associated with Oxford and Cambridge, the BBC, and the royal family is a comparatively recent development. There was considerable difference in pronunciation from one place to another. The dialect of London was the most influential, but there was no official form of the language, and even a gentleman might still speak his local dialect: a biographer in the 1600s noted that Sir Walter Raleigh “spoke broad Devonshire to his dying day.”5
Etiquette
In learning the language, the child would also learn the appropriate modes of address, which were more complex than they are today. For example, the word thou existed as an alternative to you. To us it sounds formal and archaic, but for the Elizabethans it was actually very informal, used to address a person’s social inferiors and very close friends. You might call your son or daughter thou, but you would never use it with strangers ( thee stood in the same relationship to thou as me to I —“Thou art a fine fellow,” but “I like thee well”).
The child would also have to learn the titles appropriate to different kinds of people. As a rule, superiors were addressed by their title and surname, inferiors by their given name. If you were speaking to someone of high rank or if you wished to address someone formally, you might call them sir or madam ; you would certainly use these terms for anyone of the rank of knight or higher. As a title, Sir designated a knight (or sometimes a priest) and was used with the first name, as in Sir John.
More general terms of respect were master and mistress. These could be simply a polite form of address, but they were particularly used by servants speaking to their employers, or by anyone speaking to a gentleman or gentlewoman. They were also used as titles, Master Johnson being a name for a gentleman, Master William a polite way of referring to a commoner. Commoners might also be called Goodman or Goodwife, especially if they were at the head of a yeomanly household. Ordinary people, especially one’s inferiors, might be called man, fellow, or woman. Sirrah was applied to inferiors and was sometimes used as an insult. A close friend might be called friend, cousin, or coz.
The child would have to learn the etiquette of actions as well as of words.
Elizabethan manners were no less structured than our own, even if their provisions seem rather alien in some respects. The English commonly kissed each other as an ordinary form of greeting, although the practice declined in the first half of the 1600s. In greeting someone of higher social status, a person was expected to make a leg —performing a kind of bow—
50
Daily Life in Elizabethan England
and remove their hat; depending on the relative ranks of the two, the hat would stay off unless the higher-ranking person invited the other to put it back (the modern military salute derives from this practice of doffing the hat). Children were expected to show great respect to their parents. Even a grown man would kneel to receive his father’s blessing and would stand mute and bareheaded before his parents. Status was also manifested in walking down the street: people of lower status were expected to give the wall —allowing others to walk closer to the buildings while they walked on the street side, closer to the gutters that ran down the middle of a street.
Naturally, learning to be polite also meant learning what was rude, and Elizabethan children could learn bad habits at this age as well as good ones. Making a fist with the thumb protruding through the fingers—a gesture sometimes called the
49
the vowels: weak, for example, rhymed with break , and take sounded something like the modern-English tack. As in most modern North American accents, r ’s were always pronounced. Overall, Elizabethan English would most resemble a modern Irish or provincial English accent; the pronunciation associated with Oxford and Cambridge, the BBC, and the royal family is a comparatively recent development. There was considerable difference in pronunciation from one place to another. The dialect of London was the most influential, but there was no official form of the language, and even a gentleman might still speak his local dialect: a biographer in the 1600s noted that Sir Walter Raleigh “spoke broad Devonshire to his dying day.”5
Etiquette
In learning the language, the child would also learn the appropriate modes of address, which were more complex than they are today. For example, the word thou existed as an alternative to you. To us it sounds formal and archaic, but for the Elizabethans it was actually very informal, used to address a person’s social inferiors and very close friends. You might call your son or daughter thou, but you would never use it with strangers ( thee stood in the same relationship to thou as me to I —“Thou art a fine fellow,” but “I like thee well”).
The child would also have to learn the titles appropriate to different kinds of people. As a rule, superiors were addressed by their title and surname, inferiors by their given name. If you were speaking to someone of high rank or if you wished to address someone formally, you might call them sir or madam ; you would certainly use these terms for anyone of the rank of knight or higher. As a title, Sir designated a knight (or sometimes a priest) and was used with the first name, as in Sir John.
More general terms of respect were master and mistress. These could be simply a polite form of address, but they were particularly used by servants speaking to their employers, or by anyone speaking to a gentleman or gentlewoman. They were also used as titles, Master Johnson being a name for a gentleman, Master William a polite way of referring to a commoner. Commoners might also be called Goodman or Goodwife, especially if they were at the head of a yeomanly household. Ordinary people, especially one’s inferiors, might be called man, fellow, or woman. Sirrah was applied to inferiors and was sometimes used as an insult. A close friend might be called friend, cousin, or coz.
The child would have to learn the etiquette of actions as well as of words.
Elizabethan manners were no less structured than our own, even if their provisions seem rather alien in some respects. The English commonly kissed each other as an ordinary form of greeting, although the practice declined in the first half of the 1600s. In greeting someone of higher social status, a person was expected to make a leg —performing a kind of bow—
50
Daily Life in Elizabethan England
and remove their hat; depending on the relative ranks of the two, the hat would stay off unless the higher-ranking person invited the other to put it back (the modern military salute derives from this practice of doffing the hat). Children were expected to show great respect to their parents. Even a grown man would kneel to receive his father’s blessing and would stand mute and bareheaded before his parents. Status was also manifested in walking down the street: people of lower status were expected to give the wall —allowing others to walk closer to the buildings while they walked on the street side, closer to the gutters that ran down the middle of a street.
Naturally, learning to be polite also meant learning what was rude, and Elizabethan children could learn bad habits at this age as well as good ones. Making a fist with the thumb protruding through the fingers—a gesture sometimes called the
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