I thought I'd pose to you a question that has occurred to me many times over the years. Has anyone studied the ways in which words are obviously intended to be pronounced differently from their printed forms in early modern texts? I don't mean by this the Crystals and their "original" pronunciation claims, but rather cases where, for instance, meter obviously requires contraction or elision, even thought the printing doesn't indicate this. For one particularly prominent example, "evil" very often appears in contexts where it must be a monosyllable, but how was it actually pronounced? Omitting the "i" ("ev'l") is no help, since the result is practically unpronounceable. My hunch has always been that it was pronounced "ill," but I've never seen anyone comment on this. A similar case is the monosyllable for "spirit," which could be either "sprite," "sprit," or "spreet" (I've always favored the first).

Assuming anyone else finds this interesting, I'd welcome thoughts or references.

Wishing you health.

Hannibal

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