What is 'your' in Elizabethan English?

Answer 1

"My" and "mine" alternated in Shakespearean English the way the forms of the indefinite article "a" and "an" do in contemporary English, with "mine" appearing before words that began with a vowel sound, and "my" elsewhere. Here are a few examples from As You Like It:

"My heart is heauie, and mine age is weake"

"Beleeue it my Lord, in mine owne direct knowledge"

"Mine Honors such a Ring, My chastities the Iewell of our house"

Answer 2

Since Shakespeare's language was English, "your" is "your". E.g., "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears." Sometimes Shakespeare made use of the older pronouns for the second person singular, namely thou, thee, thy and thine when we would say you, you, your and yours. However, he tends to use these especially between lovers, or when addressing servants, children or pets. The more respectful words were the plural pronouns you, your and yours. Shakespeare does this much more than his contemporaries, and may be a sign of his Warwickshire upbringing (possibly linguistic change was slower in the country than in London.) In any event, these forms were already well on their way out, and Shakespeare's use of them was old-fashioned, even then.

In some situations, then, Shakespeare does not say "your" when he means 'your', but says 'thy' instead. E.g. "Deny thy father and refuse thy name."

Answer 3

"My".

As in "Be but sworn my love and I'll no longer be a Capulet", "He was my friend, faithful and just to me", "and now how abhorred in my imagination it is; my gorge rises at it", "Is this a dagger that I see before me, its handle toward my hand?", and so on.

It is used seven times in the first scene of Hamlet alone.

Sometimes, not always, if the word following starts with a vowel, Shakespeare uses "mine" instead, such as "These words like daggers enter in mine ears." He does that because "my ears" is hard to say.