I doubt it could have been Old English, because that's pretty much a different language (incidentally, containing pretty much all the funny verb endings we've been talking about, although I suspect with Anglo-Saxon peculiarities). Nor real Middle English - I've just checked, and Faust was only written at the end or after the Middle English period... But even so, when did you last read Shakespeare? Or indeed, any 19th century book? I mean, I opened Mark Twain recently (not one of his two famous works), and that's pretty tough on the brain - all the colloquial language is different, a lot of phrasal verbs don't mean the same thing...

Okay, I suppose that infodump serves only to once again demonstrate how fascinated I am by language. I don't suppose you'd be interested in the convoluted evolution of the Dutch language?