Stephan Olbertz wrote: > To clarify a bit: the book I mentioned got quite good > reviews and I just wondered if it is really the bible > of Elizabethan English. My continental and maybe wrong > impression has been that a word Shakespeare didn't > write didn't exist.
Erm, Spenser's English is quite different from Shakespeare's English :) I am sure that Spenser used words you won't find in Shakespeare's plays. Other examples that come to mind are Nashe, Greene, ... and - of course - Sidney. Ooops, I forgot Lyly. It is a common misbelief that Elizabethan (including early Jacobean) literature is Shakespeare and nothing else. By far the most popular play on the Elizabethan stage was Kid's Spanish Tragedy. A book about the pronunciation of "Shakespeare's English" most probably refers to the English of Shakespeare's time.... Rainer PS Rhymes like move/love sound quite strange today :)
