De analogia anglicani sermonis liber grammaticus

Introduction

Michela Compagnoni

De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis Liber Grammaticus, a Latin grammar of English preserved in a unique manuscript copy in the Royal Manuscript Collection of the British Library,[1] was written in Latin in 1612 by Thomas Tonkis.[2] Tonkis was born about 1580 in Wolverhampton, son to John Tonkis, who in 1592 was appointed Public Preacher of Shrewsbury, where the family moved in 1583. In 1591, Thomas Tonkis was enrolled at Shrewsbury School, one of the most notable schools in all England, already numbering among its most eminent graduates such prominent figures as Fulke Greville and Philip Sidney. Upon leaving Shrewsbury, Tonkis entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1597, was admitted scholar in 1599, and earned his BA in 1600. In 1602 he was elected minor fellow and was granted an MA two years later, thus becoming a major fellow the same year. In the years preceding his death, Tonkis was appointed supervisor of the grammar school in Wolverhampton, where he died in or after 1615.

More than as a linguist and grammarian, Tonkis is best known as the author of two academic plays, both written and probably performed at Cambridge, as also testified by the fact that there is no mention of his grammar in the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and there are only passing references in some of the other records of his life and works. The most famous of Tonkis’s two plays is Albumazar (1615), a satire on astrology and an adaptation of Giambattista della Porta’s L’astrologo (printed in Venice in 1606), entered in the Stationers’ Register on 28 April 1615 and printed twice in 1615 by Nicholas Okes for Walter Burre (it was attributed to Tonkis on the title page of these two 1615 editions). The play was reprinted in 1634 and 1668, as well as numerous times in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Albumazar was apparently first performed in English by the members of Trinity College on 9 March 1614 in Trinity College Hall, which was designed for theatrical use as well as for dining, and it appears that Tonkis was recalled from Wolverhampton to write and direct it. Among the spectators were King James I, Prince Charles, and various courtiers, a prestigious party who was entertained by a different play every evening during the days they converged on the university. Tonkis’s Albumazar retained its dramatic attractiveness throughout the eighteenth century, being staged at Drury Lane in 1744, 1747 and 1748, before being adapted and performed – also at Drury Lane – by actor David Garrick on 19 October 1773, in a new version that was published in the same year.

In 1668, on the occasion of a revival of Tonkis’s play at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Albumazar was improperly identified as the model for Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (1610) by poet and playwright John Dryden, who accordingly structured his prologue on a discussion of Jonson’s noble poetic appropriations. This would have only been explained by the idea, first suggested by Samuel Pegge, that this play might have been written earlier than 1614, when it would have been revised before being performed for the first time. In any case, if the connection with Jonsons’s play seems to have no foundation, Albumazar’s long-recognised indebtedness to della Porta’s L’astrologo is clearly displayed by the same plot, characters, and most of the scenes that the two comedies share. Tonkis’s ability as playwright and adapter are, however, testified by a few relevant changes beyond minor ones such as renaming several characters and referencing topical issues of the time.

Tonkis’s second academic play was probably also performed in Cambridge and was entered into the Stationers’ register on 23 February 1607 as “A Commedie called Lingua,” to be published in the same year in an anonymous printing entitled Lingua, or The combat of the tongue, and the five senses for superiority A pleasant comoedie. This second play – initially falsely attributed to Antony Brewer (fl. 1630-1655) but identified as a Tonkis play by John Harington early in the seventeenth century – was reprinted in 1617, 1622, 1632 and 1657, and such was Lingua’s popularity at the time that it was soon translated into German (in 1613 by Johannes Rhenanus as Speculum Aestheticum) and Dutch (in 1648 by Lambert van den Bosch). The date of composition of this farcical presentation of a struggle between personifications of the tongue and the five senses (all of which are identified by their Latin names) has long been disputed: G. C. Moore Smith claims that Lingua was composed in 1602 because it might include a homage to Queen Elizabeth; F. G. Fleay suggests that it formed part of Cromwell’s entertainment for King James I at Hinchinbrook on 27-29 April 1603; and Frederick Boas argues that Lingua displays two clear parallels with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which would set its date of composition in late 1606-early 1607. The latter suggestion is based on the fact that there seems to be clear a clear correspondence of ideas and phraseology in a passage on sleep in Act 5, Scene 10 of Lingua and lines 2.2.38-40 in Macbeth, after the assassination of Duncan; furthermore, there is a remarkable resemblance between a long episode in which Lingua rises in her sleep and walks with the scene of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking in Shakespeare’s play (5.1) Finally, other ascriptions to Tonkis include a later, doubtful play entitled Pathomachia, or, The Battle of Affections (1630), the manuscript of which at the Bodleian Library identifies the play as Love’s Load-Stone. The play appears to be from about 1616 and contains two references to “Madame Lingua”.

Thomas Tonkis and Early English Grammars

As is well known, when Tonkis wrote his De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis in 1612, Latin still had great prestige as the international lingua franca of learning. However, English had been restored as a major literary language in England and a process of standardization of the written form had been established: thanks to – among other things – the translation of the Bible and of many classical texts, to a growth in national feeling and conscious efforts to create a vernacular literature, to the rise of social and occupational groups with little or no Latin, English had undergone major changes that led to an increase in its linguistic prestige.

In an age of such linguistic fervour, when growing awareness of language functioning and meaning was spreading alongside anxiety for a language that was still perceived as in need of “fixing”, writing grammars and reference texts became a way to demonstrate – both theoretically and practically – that English was not inferior to classical languages or to other prestigious vernaculars such Italian and French. Grammars were mostly intended either as an aid for English students who wished to study their mother tongue to be able to master Latin and access great Latin authors, or – as for Tonkis’s and other grammars included in the Early Modern English Grammars Archive (EMEGA) – for foreign learners of English, who could be presumed already to know Latin and were thus familiar with the categories of Latin grammar to which the English grammars written before 1650 were indebted. Early grammars differed from their eighteenth-century counterparts in that they were not overtly prescriptive but described English grammar using Latin-derived categories for the recognition and classification of forms. When we talk about “early English grammars”, we are referring to a small group of grammars published in England in the early modern period comprising four grammars published in the sixteenth century and thirty-two in the seventeenth, a modest number in comparison with to the over 200 grammars that appeared in the eighteenth century.

Unlike such grammarians as John Hart, Thomas Smith, John Cheke, Richard Mulcaster and, to some extent, William Bullokar, Tonkis shows no interest in advocating a spelling reform and mostly focuses on morphology, and phonology to a lesser degree, to show the regularities of English to his countrymen and to teach his language to his international students. The De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis shows interesting parallels with the only two pre-1600 grammars of English, that is, Bullokar’s Pamphlet for Grammar (1586) and Paul Greaves’s Grammatica Anglicana (1594). The connection with Bullokar’s work is primarily in terms of the general layout and the common source for naming categories, William Lily’s grammar (published between 1540-1542). As for Greaves, there are a few examples that seem to come from Tonkis and especially a few similarities in content, such as the common inclusion of personal pronouns and demonstratives within the category demonstrativa. On the other hand, there is no indication that the authors of grammars that were published soon after Tonkis’s, namely Alexander Hume (Of the Orthography of the British Tongue, 1617) and Alexander Gill (Logonomia Anglica, 1619 and 1621), were aware of Tonkis’s work.

A major exception to Tonkis’s seeming lack of popularity arises when it comes to Ben Jonson’s treatise on The English Grammar (1640)[3], entire parts of which virtually coincide with Tonkis’s De Analogia. The two authors are associated by a number of biographical and literary elements, most notably their relationship with King James I and his court, possibly through a common acquaintance, Patrick Young, a Scottish scholar and royal librarian to King James VI and I, and King Charles I. There is ample internal evidence for the hypothesis of Jonson plagiarising Tonkis’s grammar, starting with the fact that the opening passage of Tonkis’s first chapter – “Literae nobis sunt quatuor et viginti” – is identical to Jonson’s “In our language we use this twenty and four letters”. Other striking resemblances clearly appear in the initial passage of Jonson’s phonology section, – which seems to be a literal translation of Tonkis’s Latin even employing the same examples – in a very similar passage on articles, in the numerous instances of identical exemplification with which Jonson explains grammar rules, and especially in the complete inclusion of Tonkis’s section De Compositione as a marginal addition to Jonson’s chapter “The Notation of a Word” (Chapter VIII).

Jonson’s grammar of English was published posthumously in 1640, three years after Jonson’s death and long after Tonkis’s manuscript had been composed; however, research has shown that its first draft was probably written no later than 1623, when it was destroyed by fire alongside all the items listed by Jonson in the poem entitled “An Execration upon Vulcan” (1623), and not before 1616: the fact that The English Grammar is not included in the 1616 Folio probably means that it had not been composed or completed by that time. Although hypotheses of a common source have been put forward by Albert B. Cook, there seems to have been no common English source available at the time, argues Ian Michael. Both versions of Jonson’s grammar (the burnt draft, and the one later published in the Works and probably composed between 1623 and 1628) were almost certainly composed not too long after Tonkis’s De Analogia, written in 1612, which might have given Jonson the chance to see Tonkis’s manuscript and weave parts of it into his own grammar. This might be especially the case also in light of the fact that critics have long proved that Jonson’s English Grammar heavily draws also upon the works of other grammarians, namely Richard Mulcaster (unacknowledged by Jonson), Thomas Smith and Peter Ramus.

De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis: Multilingual Practice and Structure

Unlike Tonkis’s dramatic works, De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis has been mostly neglected by critics, to the point that the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography does not even mention it and that De Analogia is generally ignored in works on early modern English grammar-writing. Although it remained mostly unknown for centuries, the value of Tonkis’s work as a grammarian and its role within the history of early modern English has, however, been partially rediscovered and acknowledged in recent years.

Tonkis’s grammar is a clear example of multilingual practice in early modern England, an instance of the kind of language contact that was spreading at the time in a country where different language traditions – each with its own status and historical background – still coexisted and where many people mastered more than one language: whereas the main body of De Analogia is written in Latin, examples are in English (the invented ones, the ones taken from contemporary grammars, and the ones that are translations or adaptations from the classics, mostly Virgil) and there are numerous references to ancient Greek and to other vernaculars, mostly French but also Italian, Spanish and German in a few cases. The fact that Tonkis wrote in Latin, the language of the scholarly community, and not in the language of his countrymen like other late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century grammarians – such as Bullokar (Pamphlet for Grammar, 1586), Thomas Granger (Syntagma Grammaticum, 1616) or Thomas Wise (Animadversions Upon Lily’s Grammar, 1625) – probably meant that it was aimed for foreign readers who mastered Latin and wished to learn English through Latin-based grammatical categories.

The manuscript opens with a dedication to Frederick V, Elector Palatine (1596-1632), who was in England in the autumn of 1612 to celebrate his marriage to King James’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, due in February 1613. Since Frederick was highly educated, spoke French fluently and was an accomplished Latinist, Tonkis’s multilingual grammar must have been a welcome gift to a foreign ruler, which further testifies to the international nature of this work meant to ‘export’ and reclaim the prestige of the English language.

Apart from the dedication to the Elector Palatine, De Analogia has no paratextual material, so – in contrast with other grammars of the time – we have no preface or dedicatory letter, in which authors conventionally explain the motives, theoretical bases and aimed readers of their work. The only hint at Tonkis’s idea of grammar can be gained from the title of the volume, De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis Liber Grammaticus: here, the Latin word analogia can be translated with the present-day meaning of the English word “analogy” in linguistics, that is, “the use of apparent linguistic parallels as a basis for the creation or remodelling of words, inflections, or constructions; spec. […] a process in which linguistic forms arise or are adapted on the basis of regularities in the forms of parallel examples already in existence, omitting the formative steps through which these models originally arose” (OED, II.6.b.). Therefore, grammar for Tonkis basically involves derivational and inflectional morphology, and accordingly his treaty does not include sections on pronunciation, syntax or prosody. As will be clear from the following table of contents, Chapter One deals with orthography and phonetics, while Chapters Two to Six with morphology – both inflectional (Ch. 2, 3, 5, 6) and derivational (Ch. 4). The parts on adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions are not marked as “chapters” per se and mostly consist of long lists of words. Finally, the last three sections are devoted respectively to substitution or the act of using one grammatical form in place of another (Enellage partium); to etymology, by which Tonkis means strategies to adapt Latin and French orthography in English lexical borrowings; and to compounding, here meant as the positioning of words and modifiers to form new lexical units.

Caput primum: De literis (Chapter One: On Letters)

              De diphtongis (On Diphthongs)

Caput secundum: De articulis (Chapter Two: On Articles)

         Articulorum declinatio (Declension of Articles)

Caput tetium: De variatione nominum (Chapter Three: On the Variations of Nouns)

         De genere (On Gender)

         De numero (On Number)

Caput quartum: De nominum analogia (Chapter Four: On the Analogy of Nouns)

              De adiectivis (On Adjectives)

              De substantivis (On Nouns)

              De verbalibus (On Verbals)

              De analogia adverbiorum (On the Analogy of Adverbs)

              De gradibus comparationis (On the Degrees of Comparison)

De deminutivis (On Diminutives)

Caput quintum: De pronomine (Chapter Five: On Pronouns)

Caput sextum: De verbo (Chapter Six: On Verbs)

Adverbia (Adverbs)

De coniunctione (On Conjunctions)

De praepositione (On Prepositions)

Enellage partium (Enallage of Parts)

De etymologia (On Etymology)

De compositione (On Composition)[4]

References

Algeo, John. 1985. “The Earliest English Grammars.” In Historical and Editorial Studies in Medieval and Early Modern English for Johan Gerritsen, edited by Mary-Jo Arn, Hanneke Wirtjes, and Hans Jansen, 191–207. Groningen, Wolters: Noordhoff.

Algeo, John. 2009. The Origins and Development of the English Language (6th edition). ‎ Boston: Wadsworth Publishing.

Barber, Charles, Joan C. Beal, and Philip A. Shaw, eds. 2009. The English Language: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Boas, F. S. 1909. “‘Macbeth’ and ‘Lingua’”. The Modern Language Review 4 (4): 517-20.

Cook, Albert B. 1982. “The De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis of Thomas Tonkis”. Leeds Studies in English 13: 125-77.

Dobson, E. J. 1957. English Pronunciation 1500 to 1700 (2 voll.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fleay, F. G. 1885. Annals of Plays Acted at Cambridge During Shakespeare’s Lifetime.

Matthew, H. C. G., and Brian Harrison, eds. 2004. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (vol. 54). Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Michael, Ian. 1970. English Grammatical Categories and the Tradition to 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moore Smith, G. C. 1923. College Plays Performed in the University of Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nevalainen, Terttu. 2006. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press.

Pegge, Samuel. 1756. “Strictures on the Play of Albumazar”. The Gentleman’s Magazine 26: 223-25.

Russo, Giuliana. 2005. “Thomas Tomkis’s De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis Liber Grammaticus (1612): Early Records of Connected Speech Features”. In Historical Linguistic Studies of Spoken English: Papers read at the 11th Italian Conference on the History of the English Language (Pisa 5-7 June 2003), edited by Antonio Bertacca, 75-82. Pisa: Edizioni Plus.

Russo, Giuliana. 2020b. “Latin and English Grammars 1500-1850: A Peculiar Story of Language Contact”. Le forme e la storia 13 (1), 203-18. Soveria Mannelli (CZ): Rubbettino Editore.

Russo, Giuliana. 2020a. The De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis Liber Grammaticus (1612) by Thomas Tonkis: A Transcription of the Original Manuscript with an Introduction, Notes and Comments. Canterano (RM): Aracne Editrice.

Tonkis, Thomas. 1944. Albumazar. Edited by Hugh Gilchrist Dick. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

[1] See “Note to the Text” for further details on the manuscript.

[2] Tonkis’s surname is frequently spelt either “Tomkis” or “Tomkys”. However, I chose to spell it with an n in this edition because the manuscript clearly reads “Auctore Thoma Tonkisio” (the n possibly being a correction of a previous m).

[3] The original manuscript was destroyed by fire in 1623 and the second version, probably compiled between 1623 and 1628, became the basis for that published in the Works of 1640.

[4] The manuscript does not provide a table of contents, which is however included in Russo’s edition of Tonkis’s De Analogia (45).

This edition of De Analogia Anglicani Sermonis Liber Grammaticus by Thomas Tonkis is based on the only existing manuscript copy preserved at the British Library in the Royal Manuscript Collection (Royal MS 12 F XVIII). The manuscript is a folio consisting of fifteen leaves issued in 1612, for the most part neat and clear. The main Latin text and rules are written in an Italian hand, while the English examples are written in a secretary hand (though not always consistently throughout the manuscript). The last five pages (from f.13v on) are written in the same hybrid hand as the marginal and interlinear glosses. There is no printed copy of Tonkis’s De Analogia, and the first critical and annotated edition was published by Giuliana Russo in 2020. Quotations of Virgil’s works are from The Latin Library (https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/).