PLAY, PLAYS AND PLAYERS -- Slang in the 17th Century
Jonathon Green
Lexicographer
The 17th century represents a great efflorescence of slang; moving from the criminal cant that represented the recorded form at the start of the century to what has been termed 'the first dictionary of Slang', The New Dictionary of the Canting Crew by the otherwise anonymous B.E., Gent[leman] at its end. This latter, despite its name is the first to include England's equivalent of what France terms l'argot commun: the slang of the law-abiding mass. Slang's development was influenced by a range of factors: the playhouse, both at the start and end of the century, ballads enjoyed by the populace and collected by such as Pepys, the growth of slang in such general writers as the 'Water Poet', John Taylor, and against the background of the Civil War, a form of scabrous journalism embodied in a number of royalist news sheets. The intention of this talk will be to look at all these contributory aspects, and to focus particularly on the last.