This paper addresses the question of what it means for English, in particular, to have a Renaissance. This question arises because English, unlike most other languages, is a composite of many source languages and forever redefining itself. Somewhere between Chaucer in the 14th century and Milton in the 17th, depending on whose definition you accept, the English Renaissance occurred. The same language, however, was not spoken at the end of that period as at the beginning. More occurred here than a literary Renaissance. Any point chosen in this period would show language changes accompanied by strains in cultural and political identity.
    My paper looks at specific language changes of the period and their causes, both external and internal. I argue that these changes are an integral part of England’s Renaissance and gave it a different character from the Renaissance in other countries. Compare, for example, the English Renaissance to the French Renaissance. One need not do a detailed study of language change in order to study the French Renaissance.
    People’s identities were at stake in the way English was changed and redefined. In examining the English Renaissance from a linguist’s viewpoint, I look at these changes and ask what, exactly, "Renaissance" meant to those who were experiencing language change.