Neighbor Hob and neighbor Lob: English dialect speakers on the Tudor stage

Drawing on scholars like Paula Blank, Janette Dillon and Tim Machan, this article argues that, in the Tudor university and court plays of Shakespeare’s youth, the stigmatization of non-standard, dialect speakers demonstrates a cultural renegotiation of the contemporary linguistic climate. By defining the English language and the English people not against a foreign Other, but rather against the domestic, servile, and dialect-speaking Other, sixteenth-century playwrights demonstrated the threat of non-standard speaking and advocated the standardization of language through education while effecting cultural change through negative reinforcement. Keywords: Tudor drama; interludes; history of English language; dialect; university grammarians