Shakespeare used either the -ed or the -'d form as required by the meter. Horace Brock
On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 13:16:41 -0400, you wrote: >>>>Which reminds me of a question I've always wanted to ask about: in >>>>a Purcell piece (as published by Carus Verlag), the -ed of >>>>displeased has its own note. Does this mean it was actually >>>>pronounced at the time? When did the vocalic sound disappear? >> > >This thread started on the Orchestralist, and I sent a contribution >that never arrived because of an addressing error. The -ed past tense >was *always* pronounced in English until abt. the end of the 17th c., >when the modern pronunciation began to come in. Jonathan Swift >famously inveighed against the new fashion in 1711: > >"What does your lordship think of the words drudg'd, disturb'd, >rebuk'd, fledg'd, and a thousand others everywhere to be met with in >prose as well as verse? where, by leaving out a vowel to save a >syllable, we form so jarring a sound, and so difficult to utter, that >I have often wondered how it could ever obtain." > >The use of the apostrophe to indicate this pronunciation is still to >be found, especially in text intended for singing, so the use of it >by poets such as Tennyson cannot reliably be taken as a guide to the >normal pronunciation of his day. (It's sort of like the way composers >kept writing for horns "crooked" in all sorts of keys even after they >all had valves.) > >The survival of the old pronunciation in words such as blessed and >learned is interesting because these words are pronounced both ways, >with subtle differences in meaning. For that reason, you very often >see an accent on the E to clarify that the formerly universal >pronunciation is intended, and there are also the alternative >spellings "blest" and "learn'd", for use when the pronunciation and >meaning diverge: > >Blest powers, receive me! I mount on your wing. >O grave, where's thy vic'try, O death where's thy sting? > > >When I heard the learn'd astronomer, >When the proofs, the figures were arranged in columns before me _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
