Editing Between you and I (section)

==Use in literature ==
"Between you and I" occurs in act 3, scene 2, of ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'', in a letter written in prose by [[Antonio (The Merchant of Venice)|Antonio]], the titular character, to his friend Bassanio:<ref>{{cite book|last=Bryant|first=Joseph Allen|title=Shakespeare & the Uses of Comedy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r0hguXIh15oC&pg=PA89|year=1986|publisher=UP of Kentucky|location=Lexington|isbn=9780813130958|page=89}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Kahn|first=Coppelia|editor=Harold Bloom|title=William Shakespeare's the Merchant of Venice|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yMppHzBFYFAC&pg=PA22|year=2010|publisher=Infobase|isbn=9781438134352|pages=19–29|chapter=The Cuckoo's Note: Male Friendship and Cuckoldry in ''The Merchant of Venice''}}</ref> "Sweet Bassanio, ... all debts are cleared between you and I if I might but see you at my death."<ref>{{cite book|last=Shakespeare|first=William|editor1-first=Gary|editor1-last=Taylor|editor2-first=Stanley|editor2-last= Wells|title=The Complete Works|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eOr2kQEACAAJ|year=1994|publisher=Clarendon|location=Oxford|isbn=9780198182849|pages=425–51}}</ref>

Writer and critic [[Henry Hitchings]] points to usage in [[William Congreve]]'s ''[[The Double Dealer]]'' (1693) and in [[Mark Twain]]'s letters.<ref name="Hitchings">{{cite book|last=Hitchings|first=Henry|title=The Language Wars: A History of Proper English|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780374183295|url-access=registration|year=2011|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux|isbn=9781429995030|pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780374183295/page/187 187]–88}}</ref> [[Otto Jespersen]] found similar examples ("pronouns or nouns plus ''I'' after a preposition", in Robert J. Menner's words) in [[Ben Jonson]], [[John Bunyan]], [[Charles Dickens]], and [[Graham Greene]], and Menner adds [[Noah Webster]], [[Samuel Pepys]], [[Thomas Middleton]], and others.<ref name=menner/> Writer Constance Hale notes that [[Ernest Hemingway]] frequently used pronouns this way: "Gertrude Stein and me are just like brothers."<ref>{{cite book|last=Hale|first=Constance|title=Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=onIbVNzLwXcC&pg=PT67|year=2001|publisher=Crown|isbn=9780767908924|page=67}}</ref>

Various critics have commented on Shakespeare's line. American writer [[Russell Baker]], in his "Observer" column in ''[[The New York Times]]'', considered it a grammatical error—"grammatically, of course, Shakespeare was wrong". He said Shakespeare probably "slipped accidentally": "My guess is that he was writing along rapidly, maybe at the end of the day when he was tired, was wishing he'd never come up with this ''Merchant of Venice'' idea, and eager to get over to the Mermaid Tavern for a beer with Jonson and Burbage".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/06/opinion/observer-a-slip-of-the-quill.html|title=Observer: A Slip of the Quill|last=Baker|first=Russell|date=6 July 1988|work=[[The New York Times]]|accessdate=25 July 2014}}</ref> Menner, in a 1937 article in ''[[American Speech]]'', says that "it is evident that the phrase ''you and I'' was often felt to be grammatically indivisible, perhaps of frequency, and that we "cannot even be sure that 'between you and I' was originally hypercorrect in the Elizabethan age"; Menner does not say whether he believes the usage to be correct or incorrect.<ref name=menner/>

Others do not accuse Shakespeare of grammatical incorrectness: sociologist [[Robert Nisbet]] criticizes "word snobs" who condemn the phrase,<ref>{{cite book|last=Nisbet|first=Robert A.|title=Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nIbX3rw-BqkC&pg=PA270|year=1983|publisher=Harvard UP|location=Cambridge|isbn=9780674700666|page=270}}</ref> and lexicographer and [[Oxford English Dictionary|OED]] editor [[Robert Burchfield]] states that what is incorrect for us was not necessarily incorrect for Shakespeare: "grammatical assumptions were different then",<ref name="Garner"/> a view shared by philologist and grammarian [[Henry Sweet]].<ref name="Sweet">{{cite book|last=Sweet|first=Henry|authorlink=Henry Sweet|title=A Short Historical English Grammar|url=https://archive.org/details/ashorthistorica00sweegoog|year=1892|publisher=Clarendon|location=Oxford|page=[https://archive.org/details/ashorthistorica00sweegoog/page/n121 104]}}</ref> However, [[Bryan A. Garner]], who writes on usage and (especially legal) language, writes that even if the phrase was not incorrect for Shakespeare, it is and should be considered incorrect today, and cites linguist [[Randolph Quirk]]: "It is true that Shakespeare used both ['between you and I' as well as 'between you and me'], but that did not make it any more correct".<ref name="Garner"/>