Re: USAGE: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Welcome back to the land of checked email, Sally. :)

It wasn't the impersonal construction - that I had a handle on. It was
the specific form of the third-person used: "methinks", with -s, in
the same sentence as "doth", with -th.  It was that particular
juxtaposition that jumped out at me, as a sort of microcosm of
Shakespeare's works which are chock full of both 3p sg forms,
peacefully coexisting.  I deduced that English as she was spoke by
m'lud bard was in transition from -th to -s.  Or, as I found out on
this thread, from -th some places and -s other places, to -s
everywhere.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>