Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

208 Claudia Lange & Ursula Schaefer
distribution, with only nine object ClCs out of 1,032 instances of ’tis I etc. One exceptional
example for a subject ClC featuring it is me comes from Sir George Etherege’s
play The Comical Revenge; or, Love in a Tub (1664):
(6) Dufoy: ’Tis ver couragious ting to breaké de head of your
Serviteur, is it noté? Begar you vil never keepé
De good Serviteur, had no me love you ver vel. . . .
Sir Fred: I know thou lov’st me.
Dufoy: And darefore you do beaté me, is dat de raison?
Sir Fred: Prethee forbear; I am sorry for’t.
Dufoy: Ver good satisfaction! Begar it is me dat am
Sorrié for’t.
Sir Fred: Well, well.
(Sir George Etherege, The Comical Revenge; or,
Love in a Tub (1664); ChHEDD)
Here Dufoy – “a saucy impertinent French-man, servant to Sir Frederick”, as the
stage directions say – addresses his master, Sir Frederick Frollick, and complains
bitterly in his pronounced French accent for being hit over the head by his own
master the night before:
(7) Dufoy: De matré! de matré is easie to be perceive;
Dis Bedlamé, Mad-cape, diable de matré, vas
Drunké de last night, and vor no reason, but dat
Me did advisé him go to bed, begar he did
Striké, breaké my headé, Jernie.
(Sir George Etherege, The Comical Revenge; or,
Love in a Tub (1664); ChHEDD)
Obviously, one important shibboleth in Dufoy’s ‘stage French’ is the consistent
use of me as subject pronoun; we therefore do not count this token of it is me as
a ‘natural’ example and have not included it in Table 2 above. Another instance
where French forms play a role concerns an IdCC:
(8) Sir Ja: Why do you laugh?
Y. Wild: Ha, ha, ha! It was me.
Sir Ja: You!
Pap: You, Sir!
Y. Wild: Moi . . . me. (Samuel Foote, The Lyar (1764); ChHEDD)
In this scene from Samuel Foote’s The Lyar, Young Wilding, a former Oxford student
now ready to hit the town together with his bilingual French servant Papillion, is in
conversation with Sir James Elliot and is trying to impress him. What these examples
show is that there certainly was an awareness of French as well as attitudes towards
the language which could be exploited on the stage, but they do not suffice to explain
it is me by claiming that me and the other object case pronouns in this position