Hi, welcome to this bonus episode of the History of English Podcast.

For those of you listening in real time, you'll know that the release schedule for the

podcast has been a bit slower over the past few episodes.

And I anticipate that that will continue for a while longer, partly because we've reached

a point in the overall story of English where there's a lot to talk about, and I'm still

researching and organizing the upcoming episodes.

As we reached the late 1580s, we're entering into one of the great periods of English literature,

and somebody even argue it's the greatest period.

Of course, this is the period when William Shakespeare arrived on the scene, as well as other

important playwrights like Christopher Marlow and Ben Johnson.

It was also a period when English poetry reached new heights, with the works of Edmund

Spencer, and of course, the sonnets of Shakespeare and other poets.

Meanwhile, scholars were still writing about the nature of English.

The increasing supply of books and other texts reveal greater details about the evolution

of English, and the first English dictionary was soon to be produced.

So there's a lot on our plates, and that means there's a lot more on my plate as well,

as I try to organize the narrative around these developments.

Since it may take a little bit more time for me to produce these upcoming episodes, I

thought it would be a good idea to fill in the longer gaps with a bonus episode.

As I note at the beginning of each regular episode, I do have a Patreon for the podcast,

and I usually produce a bonus episode there in between each regular episode.

Those episodes touch on many different aspects of the history of English.

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