Question for Eng Lit and Lang geeks

[woolymonkey]

Does anyone know if loved and proved rhymed fully in Elizabethan English?

Spider has to write a comparison of two Shakespeare sonnets (116 and 130 since you ask). 116 is the one that ends
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

It doesn't really matter, but it would be very satisfying to know, and tailor his point accordingly.

If you're wondering which sonnet is 130, it's 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'.  

Comments

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

what hippediva said - great vowel shift and all that.

As for regional dialect issue - Shakespeare came from Stratford but worked in London. Hard to know how much his personal accent converged with (contemporary) London use or not (I enjoyed an ADC production based on Henry Green, which played Shakespeare with a Brummie accent!), as the only evidence we have for his phonology is his rhyming (so debate can get a bit circular).

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm sure that for Spider's GCSE purposes, just being aware that we don't really know if it would have rhymed is more than enough--but I find this fascinating.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

Wish Spidermonkey luck for me!

Am a paid-up 'geek' on language history - in particular those bits which would (if I had time machine) allow me to go nyahnyahnyah to some of my prescriptivist old teachers/bosses.