Let's continue: verbs and pronouns!

We are going to continue with the grammar of Early Modern English! In this new post we will deal with the characteristics of verbs and pronouns.

Let’s start with pronouns:

Although nowadays, we only hear the words “thou”, “thee”, “thy”, “thine” and “ye” in counted occasions with a elevated level of formalism, in Early Modern English this pronouns are used in bot formal and informal level. “Thou”,”thee”,”thy”,”thine” and “ye” refer to the second singular person (nowadays, “you”). You could ask: And why there are so many? The answer is simple: each one relates to a different case: “thou” is used in nominative (you), thee in objective, thy or thine are possessive pronouns.

In the next table, there’s the classification of all this pronouns with their plurals forms: “ye”, “you”, ”your”.

Here you can see these pronouns in Shakespeare’s plays:

Romeo and Juliet: “Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”

All's Well That Ends Well: “I will think of thee at court.”

Antony and Cleopatra: “When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit”

Cymbeline: “Than thine own worth prefer thee: go with me”

Antony and Cleopatra: “Pray ye, sir?”

In the third person possessive case, appears de form “its” of the pronoun “it”.

King Lear: “That nature which contemns its origin.”

Regarding verbs, there are a few numbers of important characteristics in the forms "to be" and "to do ".

-“Be” forms alongside the pronouns forms:

I be, thou bee,  

A Midnight Summer’s Dream: Be it ounce or cat or Bear

Also, the perfect of intransitive verbs of motion continued to be formed with the verb to be.

On the other hand, the only important characteristic of the verb “to do” is the disappearance of the periphrastic construction in affirmative declarative sentences:

Benedick: “I do love nothing in the world”