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Originally Posted by Lurker
I've read Gawain in translation and bits of the Canterbury Tales. I wouldn't say it's a diffuse mess but of course different areas had different dialects.
You're talking crap. What do you mean clouded? The beauty of the language is part of what's great about Shakespeare.
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The point I was making is that with earlier English literature there isn't the notion of a 'standardised' English; Shakespeare comes to represent the Standarisation of English. It's not that he personally was responsible for it, it's that Canterbury Tales is one form of English that wasn't necessarily the same form of English spoken in, say, Yorkshire or Devon.
The notion of dialect requires the notion of a standardised form of a language which didn't exist prior to Shakespeare epoch, so far as I understand (and please bear in mind, I'm not a linguist by any means).
I have the further problem that I don't really like Shakespeare, but that's neither here nor there.