Shakespeare in Southern works Shockingly Well
I love Shakespeare. Aside from writing when English was at it zenith, his characters are so rich and well developed, that one of them (at least!) is going through what you are right now. They're incredibly relatable, but most folks don't seem to realize that since it's in "Old English". That's another misconception, by the way. Actual Old English is Beowulf and stuff like that. Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe, Bacon, and even the King James Bible, are well into the "Early Modern English" period, and thus very easy to read and understand even if you have to concentrate a little harder than normal. Folks seemed to have a WAY bigger vocabulary back then, which is something we've lost as we text emojis and other hieroglyphics back and forth to communicate. My theory is that American Southern is extremely similar to Shakespearean English because that style of writing has been preserved throughout the "Bible Belt" by King James Bible readers, a