Pronouncing English as Shakespeare Did

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.8 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2015

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue." —HAMLET (3:2:1–2) When Shakespeare wrote his lines, and actors first spoke them, how did they say the words—and what does that tell us? Rebecca Sheir, host of the Shakespeare Unlimited series, talks "original pronunciation" (OP) with Shakespearean actor Ben Crystal and his father, linguist David Crystal, one of the world's foremost researchers on how English was spoken in Shakespeare's time. Filled with lively banter as well as familiar lines spoken in OP, the conversation offers a different perspective on the plays, from the puns and rhymes hidden by modern pronunciation to added meanings and the opportunity for quicker speech. Ben Crystal is a Shakespearean actor who has appeared through Great Britain and the United States. David Crystal, Ben Crystal's father, is a linguist, editor, lecturer, and author of more than 100 books, including "The Stories of English," "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language," and "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language." ---------------- From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. Written and produced for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. Edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. We had help from Esther French at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Geoff Oliver at the Sound Company in London, and Jonathan Charry at WAMU radio in Washington, DC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore,
0:04.9	the Folgers director. This podcast is called Speak the Speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you.
0:11.6	It's about a trend that's become popular among some performers of Shakespeare,
0:15.6	the movement towards so-called original pronunciation, or O.P. For short,
0:21.5	O.P. practitioners try to pronounce the words in Shakespeare's plays the way they would have been
0:26.4	spoken in the Elizabethan period. There are those, principally people in theater marketing,
0:32.2	who will tell you that O.P. brings audiences closer to Shakespeare's original meaning.
0:38.1	Whatever the veracity of that claim, there are some things that are true about OP.
0:43.0	For one, it's a fascinating challenge for actors.
0:46.3	Second, it's an academic pursuit that has been given an interesting boost in recent years,
0:51.1	as technology has enabled researchers to understand better how the English
0:56.0	language was likely spoken in the 1600s. To talk about these two elements of the OP experience,
1:03.4	we've brought together a father and son team who are uniquely qualified to discuss it. Ben
1:09.1	Crystal is a Shakespearean actor who has appeared throughout Great
1:12.4	Britain and the United States. David Crystal is Ben's father. He's a linguist, writer, editor,
1:18.4	and lecturer known for his many books, including the stories of English and the Cambridge
1:23.3	Encyclopedia of Language. Since the 1960s, he's been one of the world's foremost researchers on the way English was spoken in Shakespeare's time. Ben and David are interviewed by Rebecca Shear.
1:37.4	David, there's something you mentioned in an article you wrote that I want to ask you about first. You were writing about the most significant early researchers in this field, and you said
1:46.2	they were all careful to stress the tentative nature of many of their findings.
1:51.0	Now, you and Ben have been much less tentative.
1:53.9	Why is that?
1:55.2	I think it's because the first people who started to study original pronunciation was over a century ago. We're talking about
	...

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