
Opening of Romeo and Juliet Recited in the Accent of Shakespeare’s Time [video] - hellofunk
https://laughingsquid.com/romeo-juliet-recited-in-original-shakespeare-accent/
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robotmay
I do really wish more Shakespeare was performed in an original accent, as
there's an awful lot of rhymes and jokes that don't work in modern
pronunciation. Like "hour to hour" being pronounced like "whore to whore",
which suddenly makes that line quite a bit funnier.

Here's another video of the same bloke that I've seen in the past:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s)

I do like that he mentioned being asked to perform using his native Welsh
accent in the OP's video. Shakespeare was after all the playright for people
of every standing, and it feels a bit daft to posh it all up.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _I do really wish more Shakespeare was performed in an original accent, as
> there 's an awful lot of rhymes and jokes that don't work in modern
> pronunciation. Like "hour to hour" being pronounced like "whore to whore",
> which suddenly makes that line quite a bit funnier._

Things like this, among others, continue to convince me that reading
Shakespeare plays in high school is largely a waste of time. Unless you have
an excellent teacher, who explains the puns, the historical context, and other
things, it's about as useful as looking at storyboards of a movie instead of
watching the movie itself.

~~~
delecti
In addition, I think it's absurd for your first exposure to any of the plays
to be reading it; so much of the dialog only makes sense when being spoken.
The homework assignments should never be "read Act I", it should be "watch the
first 45 minutes of movie version <blah>". Even a disengaged viewer will get
more out of watching it than having their first experience be reading it.

~~~
sandworm101
At my highschool we read all of Shakespeare plays. Not one paragraph a class.
Not one play a year. We did a play in a week or two. We also had reading lists
for summer and Christmas breaks. We were expected to read constantly. Reading
is good. Forcing kids to read something they don't like, or perhaps do not
fully understand, is good for them. Being able to sit down and read a hundred
pages is the more useful thing anyone can get from school. And it is the thing
that is least taught in modern schools.

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
_Being able to sit down and read a hundred pages is the more useful thing
anyone can get from school._

I strongly disagree. A solid base in mathematics, critical thinking, and the
ability to say "I'm not getting anything out of this, I should switch to
something else" are far more important.

~~~
JackFr
> critical thinking

is virtually useless if you don't actually know anything. One of the best ways
to learn new things is by reading.

~~~
always_good
I don't think so. Reading is just consumption. You don't have to do any
critical thinking, just have an imagination. Though even that's optional.

Critical thinking comes from problem solving, something a book certainly
lacks.

~~~
mirimir
You can't solve problems without knowing stuff. At least, unless you want to
reinvent necessary background.

Yes, one can read without doing any critical thinking. But scientific and
technical literature invite it. And indeed, require it for real comprehension.
Good fiction, too.

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openasocket
I remember reading on some listicle website that the original English accent
used by the commoners in that time period was much closer to the modern
American accent. Something about how the accents of colonies tend to become
fixed in time. And a quick google for "original english accent american" turns
up a few links supporting that idea. I'm trying to reconcile that with this
here. Is this performance based on newer, more nuanced evidence? Or maybe this
is more specifically the accent of Londoners, while the average rural
Englishman would be closer to the American accent? Or perhaps what he was
speaking really is very close to the modern American accent and I just have a
tin ear (definitely shouldn't rule that out!)?

Moreover, I'm curious how one finds evidence to support what historic accents
were like. It's not like it shows up in writing, after all. Is it by studying
all the accents of the neighbors and trying to extrapolate? Maybe someone
stumbled across a 17th century pronunciation guide? robotmay on here commented
that some of the puns and rhymes only work in this sort of accent, which is a
particularly clever way of gathering evidence.

~~~
BjoernKW
Well, it's not entirely unlike a general American accent. First of all, it's
rhotic. Then, some of the vowels sound more American than their contemporary
English / British counterparts.

Apart from a few dropped h's, which could be attributed to London, where
Shakespeare spent much of his life, it's not unlikely that colonists in North
America sounded pretty much like this. It's been more than 400 years since
then and languages change over time, sometimes drastically so.

One way to research accents is by examining language in poems, (if these exist
for the time and language), rhymes in particular. Another is by analogy and
extrapolation. Writing systems and their development over time can help, too,
if there's some sort of phoneme-grapheme mapping in the language at hand.

~~~
sorokod
I believe that there is a well documented dynamic for geographically spread
languages where the periphery changes slower then the core.

~~~
gerbilly
It's true of Québec French compared to the mainland pronunciation.

We still speak an offshoot of 18th century French. [1]

[1] In fact contemporary commenters in the 18th century used to say how
indistinguishable Canadian French was compared to the French spoken in France.

~~~
titanix2
Last time I heard people from Québec I was astonished by one of them speaking
with such a strong accent that it seemed a foreigner language if I didn't make
conscious effort to listen to her. I wonder when will the two variants will
diverge enough to be considered different languages.

Do you have have a source for [1]? I want to know from were the commenters
where from.

~~~
gerbilly
They aren't different languages, they are both French, just with different
accents.

There are some expressions (locutions) that differ in France and in Québec,
but I don't believe this makes the two mutually incomprehensible.

It's not as if France has one single pure accent that everyone can understand.
How about the St Denis accent for example? To say nothing of all these
accents.[0]

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egrfsn2CU8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egrfsn2CU8E).

~~~
bradknowles
In addition, while I lived in Brussels, I did some volunteer work with the
English-speaking theatrical groups (American Theater Company, English Comedy
Club, and Irish Theatre Group), who had all gotten together and purchased an
old beer factory for set production and rehearsal space, as well as a small
stage location across the courtyard.

For one particular production, the volunteer lighting designer was also a
professional lighting designer for Francophone theater, and was with the
touring version of the French Language "Lion King" production. He explained to
me that he was volunteering with our group because he wanted an opportunity to
practice his English.

I got drafted in to be his assistant [0], and we talked a bit about what the
world is like for professional theater company members in the French-language
world.

One striking thing he told me was that there was a rule that regardless of how
different places in the world might speak French on the street or elsewhere in
their lives, when it came to how French was spoken on the stage, they insisted
that it must be the official Parisian style as regulated by Le Académie
française.

So, here was a Belgian, who spoke French in the Bruxellois style, but he was
also able to speak it in the Parisian style, and he knew and understood the
difference and why there was a difference. And he could explain it to me, a
"dumb American in Brussels".

[0] Turned out that he was due to travel to Canada shortly for the opening of
the "Lion King" there, and wouldn't be in town for the actual production. So,
I got to learn how to operate a simple analog lighting board.

------
dmreedy
The fantastic featured bit on the accenting aside, in the full video he breaks
down a possible model for the way Shakespeare played with iambic pentameter.
He turns it almost in to sheet music; you know the time signature by way of
the meter, and any difference between the expected notes (syllables) and
actual notes are almost as on to rests; pauses in the music that the actors
may fill with other means of communication. But fascinatingly, _instructed_
pauses, communicated by the _writer_ , rather than the director or the actor.
I find this absolutely fascinating; the amount of extra information and nuance
and immense complexity that a few simple rules and constraints over a system
can generate. If we take this model to be true, suddenly the communication
becomes that much clearer, and that much more concise, both between the writer
and his players, and the players and their audience, and the by proxy again
the writer.

What an excellent presentation.

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craftyguy
Since he obviously existed before audio recording technology, how do we know
this is the accent of Shakespeare's time? Did someone from that era write down
some phonetic pronunciations of their words, or was some technique used to
arrive at this conclusion?

~~~
robotresearcher
There are clues to pronunciation in the text such as words that should rhyme,
or that should be homophones so that puns work.

You can also get clues from forks of the population, such as the Boston accent
that forked from mainly British emigrants around Shakespeare's time, and have
evolved somewhat independently since. The distinctive things modern British
and Bostonian have in common could date back from the time of the fork, for
example.

Also we have a rough changelog of incoming pronunciation changes as
communication with e.g. France increased. Back out those changes and the
accent sounds more like the rural/remote parts of the UK still does, but they
would have been mixed up in a metropolis like London.

Also a healthy dose of imagination and artistic license :)

~~~
stan_rogers
There are also contemporaneous or nearly-contemporaneous pronunciation guides.
Like poetry of the era, they work with rhyming words, so they're just another
part of the puzzle. It's not often that the word being "pronounced" (a new
coinage or import, or something uncommon or technical) is of any interest, but
it's often the only clue that the example words given as rhymes _should_
rhyme.

------
noir-york
For more check out
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s)
where there is an explanation of how original pronunciation was rediscovered.

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sudosteph
That actor's charisma modifier is off the charts. A true pleasure to watch.

I'd never considered his point about how accent also impacts the flow of
speech and potential speed so noticeably. Speed of speaking always drove me
crazy when trying to learn Spanish, and I never got nearly as profecient at
understanding spoken spanish as I did with French. Maybe if I had studied
Spanish with a different accent from a different era I would have stood a
chance! But it's crazy to think that plays which are 3 hours today were 2
hours in the past (though speech is likely not the only factor there). I don't
have the patience for 3 hour plays, and Shakespeare never stuck with me from
school, but after this I'm curious to watch a full production in the original
accent.

~~~
drspacemonkey
I've seen Ben Crystal do some other Original Pronunciation Shakespeare videos.
It's his specialty, and I would love to see one of his "original practice"
productions live one day.

Here's a couple more of his videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M)

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darkerside
Is there any published video of full Shakespeare productions in the original
pronunciation? I'm curious how appealing it is over the course of a couple of
hours. Also wonder about critical and popular reception of those performances.

~~~
aezell
I would suspect that like any production, it takes a bit for the audience's
ears to adjust and then it likely goes largely unnoticed. As for critical
reception, Crystal uses some of this linguistic approach to make very specific
creative choices. I would imagine audiences and critics respond more to those
choices than they do the linguistic reasons that led to them.

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beloch
As a Canadian, original pronunciation made me think of a Newfoundland accent.
_Strongly_. I wonder if British theaters will start recruiting more newfies?

~~~
philwelch
That's not wholly surprising. Newfoundland was colonized by the English in
1610, right in the middle of Shakespeare's life.

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tomxor
That's pretty much exactly a strong English west-country accent - spoken a
little more gruffly (not sure if that's supposed to be dramatic effect or
authenticity), and I say that with the authority of growing up and living in
that region and hearing it in all range of strengths and subtle variations.

I wonder how it was determined that would have been the accent.

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anonymouslee
Almost entirely not the same:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114733/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114733/)

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duxup
The Shakespeare accent reminds me of the accent that low level sailors are
given in age of sail type films.

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exabrial
The second: A pirate

EDIT: Someone said it in the video haha

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HarrietJones
I see Shakespeare is from Winterfell.

~~~
BjoernKW
That'd be a Yorkshire accent. The closest this comes to in terms of modern
accents is West Country, which both geographically and linguistically probably
is as far away from Yorkshire as you can get.

~~~
adamc
Makes me think of the moles in Redwall (animated version).

