A further peculiarity was the use of what grammarians call collectives, i.e., the singular noun used for the plural. We still retain this in sheep, swine, fowl, and partially in year, day; but in our older writers we meet with it in horse (Much Ado, i. 1, Hen. V. iv. 1, and in Chapman's Homer continually), pearl (Macb. ad fin.), tree, corpse, witness, business, subject, princess (Temp. i. 2), and other words.
Writers of those days—and Shakespeare more than any—were fond of using verbs in a causative sense, as fall for cause to fall, let fall, fear for make fear. In these plays we meet, in a causative sense, with cease, linger, neglect, silence, faint, perish, &c. Thus learn became teach, take give. It is only thus that "smiles his cheek in years" (L. L. L. v. 2) becomes sense.
13.
There was a peculiarity of the grammar of those days which is now confined to the vulgar, namely, that of joining a plural nominative with a singular verb, ex. gr.,
That in this spleen ridiculous appears,
To check their folly, passions solemn tears.
L. L. L. v. 2.
The rimes here and in several other places prove that this is no printer's error; and this construction is actually most frequent in Peele, Marston, and Fletcher—all University men! Editors, Mr. Dyce for example, are in the habit of taking the most unwarrantable liberty of altering this construction, except where restrained by the rimes. This practice is highly reprehensible and should be avoided; for we should give the text as it came from the poet's pen.
The origin of this structure is very simple. In the Anglo-Saxon the verbs made their plural in th, not in n, as afterwards became the usage. This plural of the verb occurs continually in the Vision of Piers Ploughman, and we find it not unfrequently even in the State Papers of the early Tudor period, in its later form; for, as in the singular, the th was gradually changed to s.
In the more artistic compositions of Chaucer and Gower, however, it is very rare. The following line in Chaucer,