Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part 1 THE RHETORIC OF POLITENESS
- Part II ELOQUENT RELATIONS IN LETTERS
- Chapter 3 Scripting social relations in Erasmus and Day
- Chapter 4 Reading courtly and administrative letters
- Chapter 5 Linguistic stratification, merchant discourse, and social change
- Part III A PROSAICS OF CONVERSATION
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 5 - Linguistic stratification, merchant discourse, and social change
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part 1 THE RHETORIC OF POLITENESS
- Part II ELOQUENT RELATIONS IN LETTERS
- Chapter 3 Scripting social relations in Erasmus and Day
- Chapter 4 Reading courtly and administrative letters
- Chapter 5 Linguistic stratification, merchant discourse, and social change
- Part III A PROSAICS OF CONVERSATION
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In The English Secretary, Angel Day seems to map out a full range of interaction styles, offering a letter suited to every situation and purpose. Nonetheless, he writes for those in the upper ranges of English society and hence the social relationships and interactions he maps out give only a very partial perspective on the complex and dynamic social reality of early modern England. Two other sixteenth-century handbooks in English respond explicitly to the communication needs of other social groups: William Fulwood's The Enimie of Idlenesse, the first letter-writing manual in English, appeared in 1568 and was suficiently popular to run through nine further editions by 1621; and John Browne's The Marchants Avizo, which has been described as the first business-writing manual in English, appeared in 1590 and had gone through three further editions by 1640. Dedicating his handbook not to a nobleman but to “Master Anthonie Radcliffe, Master of the worshipfull Companie of the Merchant Tailors of London” (p. 3, sig. A2), Fulwood is explicit about the social group he addresses as “equals” – that is, “merchants, burgesses, citizens, &c.” (p. 11, sig. B2). John Browne, himself a leading member of the Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers, a group also holding the key civic offices in that city, dedicates his volume to “Maister Thomas Aldworth Marchant of the Citie of Bristowe: and to all the Worshipfull companie of the Marchants of the saide Citie” (sig. A2).
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- Information
- Shakespeare and Social DialogueDramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters, pp. 114 - 138Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999