English had no standardised spellings until the latter 17th century or so. Before then, people wrote what they
heard, and reading aloud or moving their lips was how everyone--not merely children & morons--read.
Reading visually (recognising words as
shapes) which every educated person does these days wasn't how the vast majority of (if not all ) people read. It requires standard spellings, which didn't exist. There are many medieval manuscripts in which the same word can have three different spellings on the same page. The text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for instance, can have multiple spellings of Gawain within a few lines. The elipsis below represents one 'fit' (stanza/verse/'unit' of poetry) that I left out, but the bolded words are both the name '
Gawain'.
After þe sesoun of somer wyth þe soft wyndez
Quen Zeferus syflez hymself on sedez and erbez,
Wela wynne is þe wort þat waxes þeroute,
When þe donkande dewe dropez of þe leuez,
To bide a blysful blusch of þe bry3t sunne.
Bot þen hy3es heruest, and hardenes hym sone,
Warnez hym for þe wynter to wax ful rype;
He dryues wyth dro3t þe dust for to ryse,
Fro þe face of þe folde to fly3e ful hy3e;
Wroþe wynde of þe welkyn wrastelez with þe sunne,
Þe leuez lancen fro þe lynde and ly3ten on þe grounde,
And al grayes þe gres þat grene watz ere;
Þenne al rypez and rotez þat ros vpon fyrst,
And þus 3irnez þe 3ere in 3isterdayez mony,
And wynter wyndez a3ayn, as þe worlde askez,
no fage,
Til Me3elmas mone
Wat3 cumen wyth wynter wage;
Þen þenkkez Gawan ful sone
Of his anious uyage.
[...]
Sir Doddinaual de Sauage, þe duk of Clarence,
Launcelot, and Lyonel, and Lucan þe gode,
Sir Boos, and Sir Byduer, big men boþe,
And mony oþer menskful, with Mador de la Port.
Alle þis compayny of court com þe kyng nerre
For to counseyl þe kny3t, with care at her hert.
Þere watz much derue doel driuen in þe sale
Þat so worþé as Wawan schulde wende on þat ernde,
To dry3e a delful dynt, and dele no more
wyth bronde.
Þe kny3t mad ay god chere,
And sayde, 'Quat schuld I wonde?
Of destinés derf and dere
What may mon do bot fonde?'
Once you learn the unfamiliar letters
þ &
3 and a couple of others not in this passage, and learn different pronounciation conventions, it's easier than you'd think to read & understand middle english, once you know the trick: The trick is to read it aloud and listen to yourself as you do so; that's how the contemporary scribe expected people to read. Do that, and baffling passages like
After þe sesoun of somer wyth þe soft wyndez suddenly turn into
After the season of summer with its soft winds. The only tricky part is the word "þe", (pronounced 'thay' with a hard th sound, like thomeone with a lithp ith thpeaking the word "say"), and that's only because it's a multi-purpose preposition that has several different meanings, some of which have different modern forms.
