Caxton, William

William Caxton (?1422–1491) is famous in English history for his revolutionary contribution in starting the first printing press in England in 1476. Whereas the previous manuscript culture naturally reflected regional and cultural diversity, the uniformity of the new print format brought with it the expectation of a standard in usage. Caxton thus found himself having to make many decisions about what was linguistically “correct,” a new notion. In the Prologue to his Eneydos (ca. 1490), he complained with a note of exasperation, “Certaynely it is harde to playse every man bycause of dyversitie and chaunge of langage.”

Caxton also contributed to the bourgeois standard notion of “language which is fit to print.” As the entry on the medieval period shows, language now regarded as coarse and obscene thrived in common sayings and even in names. Although he made no overt comment about the propriety of coarse language in print, Caxton certainly had bowdlerizing tendencies. In the earlier Winchester manuscript of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur , the sufferings of Lancelot in “The Fair Maid of Astolat” are graphically described: “the blood burst out, nigh a pint at once, that at last he sank down upon his arse, and so swooned down, pale and deadly” (1947, III, 1074). In Caxton’s version arse is edited out, and the decent synonym buttocks takes its place. This was a practice to be repeated many times over the centuries.