The Elizabethan Canuck: Linguistic Proof of
Shakespeare’s Canadian Ancestry
By Mabel Leaf and Elizabeth Furst
Published 2012.

While debates over the authorial unity of Shakespeare’s œuvre have long since been consigned to the periphery of linguistic debate, work continues on the more useful topic of the sociolinguistic markers present in his plays. By close analysis of his use of the lexical item “ay,” this volume shows that the language used to compose Shakespearean poetry and drama is not, in fact, Elizabethan UK English but is instead Canadian English. Comparison between “ay” and similar sociolinguistic features in modern spoken corpora such as the “like” in Fife English in Scotland and “quoi” in Northern French add further weight to this case.

Also available in the Uncommon Literary Wisdom Series from Psammeticus Press:

• The Brummie Bard: Phonetic and Syntactic Views on Burns’ Englishness

• The Wonder of Wonderbras: Feminist Literature, Fire Safety and Increasing Support

• The Coleridge Companion to Drug-Free Living

• Noam Chomsky and the Triumph of Linguistic Capitalism

• Don Quixote: Early Defender of Onshore Wind Turbines

• Lord Byron’s Manual on Abstinence and Pacifism