Keith Johnson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Language Education at the University of Lancaster, UK. He is the author of The History of Early English (2016) and Shakespeare’s English (2013).

• Part 1: Till 1950 1. The seventeenth century: 'true sublimity... but puffy style' 2. 'Retrieving original purity': the eighteenth century 3. Measuring and classifying: the nineteenth century 4. Making Shakespeare difficult: the early twentieth century Part 2: 1950 On 5. From oxcart to computer: lexical studies 6. 'A richness of variant forms': grammar 7. Shakespearean 'rules of use': pragmatics 8. Original pronounciation: 'pronounced out of Ireland'? 9. 'Multifarious liberty and gay individualism': Shakespeare in print 10. Verse and prose: changing a 'sorry bed' 11. Rhetoric: 'maggot ostentation'? 12. Where the future lies References

Keith Johnson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Language Education at the University of Lancaster, UK. He is the author of The History of Early English (2016) and Shakespeare’s English (2013).

• Part 1: Till 1950 1. The seventeenth century: 'true sublimity... but puffy style' 2. 'Retrieving original purity': the eighteenth century 3. Measuring and classifying: the nineteenth century 4. Making Shakespeare difficult: the early twentieth century Part 2: 1950 On 5. From oxcart to computer: lexical studies 6. 'A richness of variant forms': grammar 7. Shakespearean 'rules of use': pragmatics 8. Original pronounciation: 'pronounced out of Ireland'? 9. 'Multifarious liberty and gay individualism': Shakespeare in print 10. Verse and prose: changing a 'sorry bed' 11. Rhetoric: 'maggot ostentation'? 12. Where the future lies References

Keith Johnson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Language Education at the University of Lancaster, UK. He is the author of The History of Early English (2016) and Shakespeare’s English (2013).

• Part 1: Till 1950 1. The seventeenth century: 'true sublimity... but puffy style' 2. 'Retrieving original purity': the eighteenth century 3. Measuring and classifying: the nineteenth century 4. Making Shakespeare difficult: the early twentieth century Part 2: 1950 On 5. From oxcart to computer: lexical studies 6. 'A richness of variant forms': grammar 7. Shakespearean 'rules of use': pragmatics 8. Original pronounciation: 'pronounced out of Ireland'? 9. 'Multifarious liberty and gay individualism': Shakespeare in print 10. Verse and prose: changing a 'sorry bed' 11. Rhetoric: 'maggot ostentation'? 12. Where the future lies References