Rome, serving as choirmaster under Alexander VI and Leo
X. He was ordained in 1519 and went on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem where he said his first Mass. He spent his final
years as prior of León cathedral.
The first edition of his Cancionero (1496) contained
eight plays, his lyric poetry, and an introduction on Span-
ish poetry. Subsequent editions (1507, 1509) printed two
other plays each, and 68 of his musical compositions have
survived as well. Three of his early dramatic pieces are re-
ligious representaciones (compare the SACRA RAPPRESEN-
TAZIONEof Italy), written for particular days (Christmas,
Good Friday, and Easter); the rest are dramatic secular
pastoral plays, carefully plotted and frequently comic.
They are written in octosyllabic verse in various stanzaic
forms and are accompanied by music and dancing, with
which almost all of them end. The best show the influence
of Italian pastoral drama, for example, Egloga de Plácida y
Vitoriano, first produced in Rome in 1512 and containing
a character, the hag Eritea, based on Celestina (see CE-
LESTINA, LA). Encina popularized a type of peasant speech
for his comic characters that was often imitated by his
successors; called sayagués and supposedly originating in
the village of Sayago, near Salamanca, it was in fact an ar-
tificial comic invention employed by Encina simply to
characterize his comic shepherds and give the impresssion
of local color.
Encomium Moriae See PRAISE OF FOLLY, THE
Enderlein, Gaspar (1560–1633) German metalworker
Enderlein was born in Basle but became a master in
Nuremberg in 1586. He was profoundly influenced by the
work of François BRIOT, whose Temperantia Dish provided
the model for Enderlein’s own Temperantia Dish. An ac-
companying ewer was modeled upon the Mars Dish by
Briot and the Suzannah Dish, also probably by Briot.
English College Theological college established (1575)
in Rome by William ALLEN, under the auspices of Pope
GREGORY XIII, for the training of Roman Catholic clergy.
From 1578 it was closely identified with the mission to re-
convert England to Catholicism. Shortly afterward the
seminary was placed under the direction of the JESUITS,
who ran it for nearly 200 years.
English language The Renaissance period saw English
evolve from the stage known as Middle English to that
known as Early Modern English. Middle English was
characterized by a number of dialects; the language of
CHAUCER, a late 14th-century Londoner, was very different
from that of his anonymous northwestern contemporary
who wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the 15th
century pressure towards a standard form of English
began to emerge. This pressure was partly administrative,
as English supplanted French and Latin in official records,
and partly social or educational. As an instance of the lat-
ter, members of the Norfolk Paston family who had spent
time in London or at the universities began to use word
forms characteristic of London dialect rather than of their
native county.
Printing was a major factor in the standardization of
the language. CAXTONcomplained of the troublesome va-
riety of English dialects and told the story of a north-
countryman who ordered “eggys” in a Kentish hostelry,
only to be chided by the hostess for speaking French; an-
other customer intervened to explain that he wanted
“eyren,” then still the usual word for “eggs” in the south-
east. A century later Thomas Puttenham in his Arte of Eng-
lish poesie (1589) stipulated a famous model for correct
English: “the usuall speech of the Court, and that of Lon-
don and the shires lying about London within 1x. myles,
and not much above.” It was this standard that generally
prevailed among educated persons.
The superior status of Latin as an ancient, learned,
and international language meant that English was at first
discounted as a medium of educated discourse. Sixteenth-
century writers, while acknowledging Chaucer’s great-
ness, saw that his language had become obsolete within
150 years and feared to entrust their profoundest thoughts
to such an impermanent and insular vehicle. Even in the
early 17th century Sir Francis Kynaston tried to guarantee
Chaucer’s standing by publishing a Latin version of the
latter’s Troilus and Criseyde (1635). Among the first edu-
cationists to defend the vernacular was Richard Mulcaster,
whose Elementarie (1582) contains a spirited defense of
English as “a tung of it self both depe in conceit, and frank
in deliverie”; in his opinion, no language “is better able to
utter all arguments, either with more pith, or greater
planesse than our English tung is.” The latter point was
amply proved by the many translations made in the pe-
riod, in particular those of the Bible, which invested the
vernacular with both dignity and authority.
To establish a standard English, attention needed to
be paid to three main areas: ORTHOGRAPHY, syntax, and vo-
cabulary. Spelling reformers considered that the system
should be overhauled to enable the written language to re-
flect more accurately the sounds of contemporary speech;
to this end John Hart even suggested in his Orthographie
(1569) that new symbols should be introduced into the al-
phabet. In the field of syntax several innovations that had
arisen in the Middle English period generally supplanted
older usages. One important one was the use of the auxil-
iary verb “do” to form negative or interrogative sentences;
SHAKESPEAREexhibits both kinds of question within a few
lines: “Do you busy yourself with that?” (new) and “Spake
you with him?” (obsolescent) (King Lear I ii). Another
change, which manifested itself around 1600, was the use
of “its” instead of “his” for the neuter form of the genitive
or possessive pronoun.EEnngglliisshh llaanngguuaaggee 1 16611