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

I believe this is ~= thee/you.

S/He doth = informal
S/He does = formal

-eth is informal 2/3p, not 1p. E.g. Methinks thou thinketh m'lord does think so.

 - Sai

On 11/27/06, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> Just curious here - what's going on with the quote in the subject
> line?  Why "doth" but "methinks", rather than "does" or "methinketh"?
>
> Throughout Shakespeare, the usual 3p sg ending is -s, but -th also
> shows up all over the place.  Was English of the time still
> mid-transition?  Were -th and -s in free alternation, or had -th been
> relegated to certain contexts, either phonetic or semantic?  (maybe
> "high-falutin' speech used by royalty", or "poetry", etc...)  I note
> that _Hamlet_ includes examples of both "doth" and "does", "singeth"
> and "sings"...
>

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