4.What I'm here calling for simplicity's sake "Shakespearean English" is also used by many other and later writers, especially poets. In the following lines by Gerard Manley Hopkins,

               Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
               How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou ______
               Defeat, thwart me?

  1. didst
  2. dost
  3. art

1 is WRONG because the sequence of tenses is wrong. "How would you do something worse than you do (or are doing)" is the sequence needed in modern English.

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