Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation
woot_whoo
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We're (I'd imagine) all fairly familiar with Shakespeare's plays as performed in standard English RP, but most people know that Received Pronunciation is very much a later construct. In fact, various clues (such as the rhyme schemes of some early modern plays) suggest that pronunciation in Shakespearean London would have been very different from any accent we'd recognise today. Although we can't know for sure how Elizabethan and Jacobean English sounded (and varied regionally), it's likely we'd barely understand native speakers of 16th and 17th century English.
Anyway, the modern Globe Theatre prides itself on attempting to recreate the playing conditions of the 16th century. Linguistic experts were brought on board to try and reproduce speech patterns as closely as possible for select Shakespearean performances. This has led them to uncover (for audiences) several puns and other plays on words which are obscured or lost using modern pronunciation. Here's a short video of some examples of Shakespearean texts read according to how these scholars estimate the language of Shakespeare to have sounded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
What do you think? Could you (or would you) sit through a performance in an approximation of period accents, or would you find the bard's work insufferable in what is believed to be closer to early modern English?
Anyway, the modern Globe Theatre prides itself on attempting to recreate the playing conditions of the 16th century. Linguistic experts were brought on board to try and reproduce speech patterns as closely as possible for select Shakespearean performances. This has led them to uncover (for audiences) several puns and other plays on words which are obscured or lost using modern pronunciation. Here's a short video of some examples of Shakespearean texts read according to how these scholars estimate the language of Shakespeare to have sounded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
What do you think? Could you (or would you) sit through a performance in an approximation of period accents, or would you find the bard's work insufferable in what is believed to be closer to early modern English?
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Interesting. Would take a bit of getting used to...but yes I think I could sit through a performance. I would certainly try.
I'd like to see it too - there almost sounds to be an Irish lilt in it to me. One thing that isn't addressed, though, is where this kind of accent this may be from. Obviously with Shakespeare we can tentatively assume that he might have had a Warwickshire accent, or even utilised a London accent when writing his plays (or when they were written down/compiled by his contemporaries, since we don't have the original manuscripts) but I can't imagine aristocratic Elizabethans speaking in the accent of the chaps in the video. I assume we're hearing the language of the London playhouses here rather than the courtly performances. I wonder if the actors changed their diction when playing in front of private, upper class audiences (especially when playing upper class characters!)...