Request for variant subtag fr 16th-c 17th-c

[Michael Everson]

At 17:11 -0500 2006-12-14, CE Whitehead wrote:
>>It goes back before Elizabeth's reign, and afterwards too: the usual label
>>is Early Modern English.
>Thanks,  I guess I've heard the term "Early Modern English" but I've 
>generally used the term "Elizabethan English" also the term Tudor, 
>but have never used the two terms quite interchangeably.
>
>You know I must admit that mostly I skim the list of tags because of 
>a shortage of time,
>but I've found
>"Type: grandfathered
>Tag: en-GB-oed
>Description: English, Oxford English Dictionary spelling
>Added: 2003-07-09"
>
>but not Early Modern English yet.

We do not need to distinguish Early Modern English from English.

See this text by Spenser: 
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/queene1.html#Canto%20I.

  It's in Early Modern English. Any educated English speaker can read 
it. It would be easier for many if the spelling were modernized, but 
apart from some syntax and vocabulary, it's English.

Why should we want a tag for it? One line reads

"His Lady sad to see his sore constraint,"

Every word no different from modern English, the syntax just poetic.

Another line reads:

"Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,"

All modern, though "maske" has an extra silent -e, and "whilome" is a 
lexical item extinct in all modern English dialects.

I don't know what value there would be in marking this as anything but "en".
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com