Bob,

I appreciate your interest.  The best single source I have found is G. A.
Padley, Grammatical Theory in Western Europe 1500-1700.  The picture that
unfolds is that the study of practical grammar and literature fell on hard
times in the late middle ages.  The excessive theorizing of grammarians
of the period is satirized by Erasmus in Praise of Folly, Chapter 25.
Erasmus visited England around 1500 and was a friend of John Colet, the
founder of St. Paul's school in London.  Erasmus, Colet, Lily and
others produced a simplified approach to grammar, just an exposition of
the eight parts of speech and their syntax in Latin.  Lily's grammar as it
came to be called was the basic text book in "grammar school" in
Shakespeare's day and for a century or so thereafter.  In Merry Wives of
Windsor, Shakespeare has an affectionate portrait of a school boy reciting
the forms of HIC, HAEC, HOC in a way that echoes Lily's book directly (Act
IV.1). The point of studying Lily and all that grammar was eventually to
read the Latin classics, especially Ovid's Metamorphoses, the source of
the Pyramus and Thisbe farce in Midsummer's Night Dream.  Henry VIII and
his successors issued decrees requiring the use of Lily's grammar in all
the schools in the realm because of the damage being done to students'
"tender wits" by diverse grammatical doctrines.  The evidence suggests
that the reform in teaching grammar had something to do with the rebirth
of English literature.

David





On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Robert Einarsson wrote:

> David's post below has some really interesting detail about the
> historical progress of grammar teaching.
>
> David, any chance we can have a few titles/references on the
> changing situation of grammar in the schools in these early
> periods?
>
> From:                   David D Mulroy <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject:                Re: Deep thoughts
> To:                     [log in to unmask]
>
> > I think that you are mistaken about Shakespeare.  He and the other
> > authors of the English Renaissance benefited from a return
> > to basic grammar that had been decreed by Henry VIII. In the fifteenth
> > century, grammatical instruction in the schools had suffered because
> > scholars were preoccupied with theoretical or speculative grammars that
> > raised some of the same philosophical issues as contemporary linguists
> > address.
> >
> > Shakespeare's  basic textbook was Lily's grammar.  It is true that this is
> > aimed at Latin but it is based on grammatical concepts that are easily
> > transferred to English and have to be if they are to be understood. As a
> > Latinist, I can assure you that English speakers do not and cannot learn
> > about sentence subjects, prepositional phrases, participles, the passive
> > voice, or appositives in Latin without understanding what they they refer
> > to in English.  Shakespeare seems to me to be the clearest imaginable
> > example of author who benefits from a deep, conscious understanding of
> > grammar.  I suppose you could say that you he and the other masters of the
> > 17th century show that you don't need to STUDY ENGLISH grammar, but that's
> > only if you start Latin in the first grade, approach it with a grammatical
> > syllabus, and make it the main subject studied.
> >
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Sincerely, Robert Einarsson
> please visit me at
> www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/einarssonb
>
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