If they did talk in Early Modern English, when did they stop talking like that and start talking in the manner that we talk today?
I asked a related question a little while back ago which got a great answer from /u/bloodswan: When I hear Chaucer spoken in Middle English, it almost sounds more like Dutch than English. But though Shakespeare is closer in time to Chaucer than the present, his English is much easier to understand. What happened to English in between, and why? Hope that might help answer your question!
Additionally, did the early English speakers find it as easy to speak as we do today? Especially Victorian times in which the upper classes spoke in a very formal, somewhat dramatic way.