We all know words like thou and thee from our time studying Shakespeare in school, but what’s the actual difference between these archaic forms and the modern you, and when would Shakespeare have actually used thou, thee, thy or thine?
First, a quick grammar recap. The words in question here are all pronouns, specifically second person pronouns. They’re all used to refer to the addressee or addressees in a conversation. In English, many of our pronouns are different depending on if the person being referenced is doing an action, or having it done to them. For instance, ‘I saw my friend’ vs ‘My friend saw me.’ We also have different pronouns for referring to one person or multiple people. For instance, I is singular, it just refers to yourself, but we is plural, it refers to yourself and at least one other person.
Historically, English had four of these second person pronouns. The singular forms, referring to a single addressee, were thou (when doing an action) and thee (when receiving), and the plural forms were ye and you respectively. Originally, when talking to a single person, you might have said ‘Thou art late’, and ‘Ye are late’ when talking to many.
Throughout much of the last 1000 years, speakers of English saw the use of French borrowings as fashionable. This included the French use of the second person plural pronoun vous as a means of formal or respectful address. That is, the plural forms ye and you could also be used to refer to a single person respectfully, such as to a superior or stranger.
Shakespeare lived just on the edge of a major shift in the usage of these pronouns. Ye had mostly fallen out of use in most of England by the time he was writing, and thou and thee were also beginning to die out. As a result, the works of the Bard show a complex, occasionally inconsistent mix of thou, thee, you, and less commonly ye.
In Act I, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet, a fight breaks out between a group of Montagues and Capulets. The scene is a good example of the dynamics of thou and you as they would have been used historically. While the first instance uses the formal you, generally the characters use thou when speaking to a member of their own house, and you when speaking to members of the other house (or when speaking to multiple people).
GREGORY. Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o’ the collar.
SAMPSON. I strike quickly, being moved.
GREGORY. But thou art not quickly moved to strike.
SAMPSON. A dog of the mouse of Montague moves me.
GREGORY. To more is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand. Therefore if thou art moved thou runn’st away.
(Romeo and Juliet 1.1.20–25)
Gregory initially refers to Sampson using the more formal you, though subsequently uses only the informal thou. It’s not clear if this is a stylistic choice, or just an inconsistency reflecting the rapidly shifting use in wider society at the time. Later, the pair meet a pair of Montagues, and all four only use you to refer to the men from the other house, even when only addressing one person.
ABRAM. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
…
SAMPSON. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.
GREGORY. Do you quarrel, sir?
…
ABRAM. You lie.
SAMPSON. Draw, if you be men, Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.
(Romeo and Juliet 1.1.56–73)
In the last line here, we see both the plural use of you to the two Montague men, along with the informal thy (the possessive form of thou) to Sampson’s fellow Capulet Gregory.
Thy and thine, thus far only briefly mentioned, are possessive forms of thou. Thy would be used before a word beginning with a consonant (e.g. ‘thy swashing blow’), while thine would be used before a vowel (e.g. ‘thine eyes’). Thine was also used as the second person equivalent of mine or yours. For example, instead of ‘what’s mine is yours’, one might have said ‘what’s mine is thine’.
We can’t say for sure why we stopped using thou and its related forms from the 17th century onwards, however it may be because of that formality distinction. Thou was seen as informal and improper, so people shifted more and more towards always using you. This hasn’t been without challenge, however. Losing thou meant we could no longer easily distinguish between speaking to one person or many, leading to the development of new (but not widely accepted) second person plural pronouns such as you guys, youse, or the very American y’all.
Romeo and Juliet excerpts and line numbers from the full text at opensourceshakespeare.org
