Produced by David McClamrock
DIALOGUE OF COMFORT AGAINST TRIBULATION
by St. Thomas More
with modifications to obsolete language by Monica Stevens
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PUBLISHED 1951 BY SHEED AND WARD, LTD. 110/111 FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.4 AND SHEED AND WARD, INC. 830 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, 3
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NOTE
This edition of the Dialogue of Comfort has been transcribed from the 1557 version as it appears in Everyman's Library. The Everyman edition is heartily recommended to readers who would like to taste the dialogue in its original form.
The first plan was to change only the spelling. It soon became evident that the punctuation would have to be changed to follow present usage. The longest sentences were then broken up into two or three, and certain others were rearranged into a word order more like that of today. Nothing was omitted, however, and nothing was added except relative pronouns, parts of "to be," and other such neutral connectives. Finally, obsolete words were changed to more familiar equivalents except when they were entirely clear and too good to lose. Thus "wot" became "know" but "gigglot" and "galp up the ghost" were retained. Words that have come to have a quite different meaning for us, such as "fond" and "lust" were replaced by less ambiguous ones—wherever possible, by ones that More himself used elsewhere.