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Dear Squeeze and Boo,
"Shakespeare's Accent" is spellbinding.
To my astonishment it explains why Grampa always pronounced the work "film" as if it were comprised of two syllables; i.e., fil-em.
Until now, Dad's pronunciation of "fil-em" had been a perpetual source of puzzlement since he worked 30 years at Eastman Kodak and heard the word "film" -- pronounced as a single syllable -- multiple times a day.
"Shakespeare's Accent" also illustrates how "literal" interpretation of text - including biblical texts - are actually more misleading than contextualized interpretations.
How ironic that the pursuit of literal meaning results in inferior understanding, with consequent judgments, interpretations and frameworks-of-understanding that are deeply distorted by the dictum: "Every text without a context is a pretext."
Love
Daddy man
PS To learn more about the divergence between "literal" understanding and "contextualized" understand, see Wikpedia's entry on "The Book of Revelation": - http://en.wikipedia.org/
March 24, 2012
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by NPR STAFF
EnlargeEdward Gooch/Getty Images
How were William Shakespeare's words pronounced more than 400 years ago? A new recording from the British Library aims to replicate the authentic accent of Shakespeare's day. Above, a drawing of the dramatist at work in his study, by A.H. Payne, circa 1610.
"To be or not to be" may be the question, but there's another question that's been nagging Shakespeare scholars for a long time: What did Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio, Portia or Puck really sound like when Shakespeare was first performed more than four centuries ago?
The British Library has completed a new recording of 75 minutes of The Bard's most famous scenes, speeches and sonnets, all performed in the original pronunciation of Shakespeare's time.
That accent sounds a little more Edinburgh — and sometimes even more Appalachia — than you might expect. Actor Ben Crystal, director of the new recordings, joins NPR's Scott Simon to talk about the effort to perform Shakespeare's works authentically.
Interview Highlights
On the gradual shift in pronunciation and performance
"There's definitely been a change over the last 50 to 60 years of Shakespeare performance. The trend I think has been to speak the words very beautifully ... and carefully — and some might say stoically — and it's very, very different than how it would have been 400 years ago."
On how researchers study what people sounded like four centuries ago
"We've got three different types of data we can mine — one is the rhymes. Two-thirds of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets don't rhyme anymore. We know that the final couplet in ... Sonnet 116 ... you know it's:
More On Shakespeare's Words
If this be error and upon me proved,I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
"You can extrapolate those kind of rhyme schemes across the sonnets, and indeed some of the plays rhyme. That's one set of data.
"They used to spell a lot more like they used to speak, so a word like film in Mercutio's Queen Mab speech is spelled philom in the folio, and we know that's a two syllable word like phi-lom. And if you go over to Northern Ireland, and they invite you to the cinema, they'll invite you to see the 'fi-lm.' That's an Elizabethan pronunciation that's stayed with us. ...
"There were linguists at the time and they very kindly wrote books saying how they pronounced different words. And all of that data brings us to 90-95 percent right, which isn't bad for 400 years."
On how this accent feels familiar
"If there's something about this accent, rather than it being difficult or more difficult for people to understand ... it has flecks of nearly every regional U.K. English accent, and indeed American and in fact Australian, too. It's a sound that makes people — it reminds people of the accent of their home — and so they tend to listen more with their heart than their head."
On Shakespeare being for young people
"I gave a workshop at a school recently with a bunch of 13- and 14-year-old kids. And their idea of Shakespeare, having never studied it or even really read it, was that it would be difficult to understand and it wasn't for them, and I was like: No, listen, he's written a play about two 13-year-olds or 14-year-olds meeting and discovering life and love and everything for the first time. It's a play for you."
On class distinctions and changes in pronunciation
"You can't distinguish a character by putting on let's say a posh accent, for want of a better word, or a more common accent. How do you do it? The accent was pretty much the same. The accent was changing over Shakespeare's time.
When King James came to the throne after Queen Elizabeth — he was the Scottish King James VI — and everyone in court started speaking with a Scottish twang."
On connecting with the true meaning of the words
"One of the most famous sonnets ... Sonnet 116 ... everybody has [it] in their weddings because it has the word marriage in it: Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.When I started speaking this sonnet, it changed from something highfalutin and careful and about marriage and it became a real testament of love."
Audio extracts from Shakespeare's Original Pronunciationcourtesy of the British Library Board.
Related NPR Stories
'Romeo And Juliet': Just As You Misremembered It Dec. 29, 2009
Did Shakespeare Want To Suppress His Sonnets? May 20, 2009
Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays? Debate Goes On July 3, 2008
Would Life Be Better If We All Spoke Shakespeare? April 26, 2007
Robert Fusillo (arjayeff) wrote:
How much of this is rooted in subjective preference? We say 'love,' and therefore prefer to rhyme "removed" with "love." But "looved" to rhyme with "removed" is almost standard in northern Britain today -- cf. Ringo Starr. 55 years ago the Mermaid Thatre in London did a production of "Macbeth" in what was touted as "authentic 16th century pronunciation" -- it sounded quite Liverpool.
Arthur Henry Payne, was a British-German of the 19th century: perhaps he was a reincarnation of the A.H. Payne your caption credits with the engraving in 1610. One bit of carelessness makes a whole argument suspect
Arthur Henry Payne, was a British-German of the 19th century: perhaps he was a reincarnation of the A.H. Payne your caption credits with the engraving in 1610. One bit of carelessness makes a whole argument suspect
Sat Mar 24 2012 11:41:51 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
Robert Fusillo (arjayeff) wrote:
Speculation based on rhyme is often subjective. Rhyme is tricky. Why not, for instance, looved to rhyme with removed? Loove, for love, is a fairly widespread pronunciation in northern Britain today. 55 years ago the Mermaid Theatre in London did a production of Macbeth in "authentic 16th century pronunciation" -- it sounded quite Liverpool.
Did A.H. Payne, a British-German of the nineteenth century, really engrave that picture in 1610? One bit of carelessness somehow makes the dependability of the whole article suspect.
Did A.H. Payne, a British-German of the nineteenth century, really engrave that picture in 1610? One bit of carelessness somehow makes the dependability of the whole article suspect.
Sat Mar 24 2012 11:21:44 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
John Niessink (jrn42) wrote:
Thank you for a refreshing break from sports and politics.
Sat Mar 24 2012 10:09:57 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
Cynthia B. (baz) wrote:
Very interesting! This will be a fun little thing to offer to the kids in my English classes when start <i>Coriolanus</i> in May. Thanks!
Sat Mar 24 2012 09:41:22 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
Missy Information (Mssy) wrote:
Colonial Williamsburg did a really cool podcast a while back on the 17th century "Shakespearian" accent and the legend of its preservation in remote East Coast communities. http://podcast.
Sat Mar 24 2012 08:46:03 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
Jean Yu (little_genie) wrote:
$120 for a ticket? Wow. That's just too much money to spend on a ticket to anything.
Sat Mar 24 2012 07:18:09 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
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