The great vowel shift

bake, make, dame

a: eɪ
mouse, louse
u: au
mice, lice
i: ai
GVS caused
ME long vowels to be pronounced with a greater elevation of the
tongue.
All the seven ME long vowels became closer in quality, and those
already as close as they could be became diphthongs.
The seven long vowels of Middle English
The changes happened very slowly, over several centuries from say
1350 to 1700, not necessarily in any particular sequence.
The changes of these ME vowel sounds under GVS can be summarized
as follows with exmaples.
ɔ: > o: > ou > ɘʊ
The half open /ɔ: / sound ME goat and hope became a close /o:/ sound.
The /o:/ later evolved into the diphthong /ou/, which has since become
/ɘʊ/ as used now.
o: > u: > ɘʊ > au
ME /o:/ because /u:/ sound in words like hu:s and mu:s
M.E /u:/ evolved into a diphthong – probably /ɘʊ/ at first and by the
17th century reached its present day quality /au/ as in house
a: > ɛ: > e: > eɪ
ME /a:/ in bake and dame became closer, to /ɛ:/ and then if got further
close and became /e:/ and later got diphthongized to modern /eɪ/
e: > i:
Middle English /e:/ used in meet, green and deed had become /i:/ as
we hear it now
i: > ɘɪ: > aɪ
M.E /i:/ in mice, five became diphthongized to /ɘɪ/ and then to /aɪ/