What Shakespeare Sounded Like: Exploring the Original

Pronunciation (And Why It Matters)

Shakespeare's Accent: How Did The Bard Really Sound?

Over a year ago by BIG THINK EDITORS

Why does the original pronunciation (OP) of Shakespeare's words matter? For one thing, two-thirds of Shakespeare's sonnets
have rhymes that don't work in modern English.
The modern pronunciation of certain words also robs them of meaning. For instance, it matters how the word "loins" (from
Romeo and Juliet) is pronounced in OP because the word is used as a pun on the word "lines," which was pronounced the same
way. So the line ("From forth the fatal loins of these two foes") has two meanings: genealogical lines on the one hand and
physical loins on the other.
Shakespeare, of course, was writing at a time when the English language was rapidly evolving. But it wasn't just the words that
were evolving, it was the way the words sounded as well.
"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:

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 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."