The distinction between strong and weak adjective forms, already greatly simplified by the Middle English loss of the final n, completely disappeared with the further loss of [ǝ] from the end of words. The loss of final [ǝ] also eliminated the distinction between plural and singular adjectives. Although the letter e, which represented the schwa vowel in spelling, continued to be written in many words, often haphazardly, adjectives no longer had grammatical categories of number or definiteness. The Modern English adjective thus came to be invariable in form. The only words that still agree in number with the nouns they modify are the demonstratives this–these and that–those.
Adjectives and adverbs continued to form comparatives with -er and superla- tives with -est, but increasingly they used analytical comparison with mo(e) or more and with most, which had occurred as early as Old English times. The form mo(e), from Old English mā, continued in use through the early Modern English period, as in Robert Greene’s A Maiden’s Dream (1591): “No foreign wit could Hatton’s overgo: Yet to a friend wise, simple, and no mo.” It even lasted into the nineteenth century in Byron’s Childe Harold (1812): “Ye . . . Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.” The homophonous and synonymous mo’ of African-American English has a different origin but is similar in use.
The present stylistic objection to affixing -er and -est to polysyllables had some- what less force in the early Modern English period, when forms like eminenter, impudentest, and beautifullest are not particularly hard to find, nor, for that matter, are monosyllables with more and most, like more near, more fast, most poor, and most foul. As was true in earlier times also, a good many instances of double comparison like more fitter, more better, more fairer, most worst, most stillest, and (probably the best-known example) most unkindest occur in early Modern English. Comparison could be made with the ending or with the modifying word or, for emphasis, with both.
Many adverbs that now must end in -ly did not require the suffix in early Modern English times. The works of Shakespeare furnish many typical examples: grievous sick, indifferent cold, wondrous strange, and passing [‘surpassingly’] fair. Note also the use of sure in the following citations, which some nowadays would condemn as “bad English”: “If she come in, shee’l sure speake to my wife” (Othello); “And sure deare friends my thankes are too deare a halfepeny” (Hamlet); “Sure the Gods doe this yeere connive at us” (Winter’s Tale).