Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

1

‘Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the
tongue’: Original Pronunciation in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with
reference to Hamlet
Came there for cure, and this by what I prove:
Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love
...
This is not an isolated phenomenon,
in fact, only a third of the sonnets rhyme perfectly in Modern English2
...
The works of linguists such as Helge Kökeritz
in the 1950s, E
...
Dobson in the 1960s, John Barton in the 1980s, and David
Crystal in the 2000s have been ground-breaking in recovering what were thought
to be the irretrievable sounds of Early Modern English (EME)
...
As Crystal admits, “there are still gaps in
our knowledge”
...
The fact that only a
handful of Shakespearian productions have been performed in OP in modern
times is not only unfortunate for the audience, whose aesthetic enjoyment of the
plays is inherently compromised, but represents a lost opportunity for criticism
...
Shakespeare, William
...
The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
...
Oxford: Oxford
University Press
...
Crystal, David
...
The Oxford Dictionary of Original Pronunciation
...

3
13
...
2004
...
Cambridge
University Press
...

Hearing any of Shakespeare’s works in OP immediately exposes a great
difference in tone with respect to their RP equivalents
...
‘War’
for instance was pronounced ‘Wahrre’; ‘eye’ was pronounced ‘Ay-ee’ and ‘Time’
was pronounced ‘Tay-eme ’”
...
One example of the dramatic consequences
of OP can be observed in Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet, where Capulet snarls,
“Old Montague is come, / And flourishes his blade in front of me”
...

This sound was certainly more resonant and lower in pitch, and emanation from
the chest rather than head voice would have created a more powerful aural effect,
physically pushed the actor’s chest forward and out, and hence have heightened
an already increased sense of danger by anticipating physical combat
...
Barton, John
...
Playing Shakespeare: An Actor's Guide
...

1004
...
2016
...

Edited by Gary Taylor, John Jowett, Terry Bourus and Gabriel Egan
...

6
106
...
2016
...
Oxford
University Press
...
2014
...
07 25
...

http://www
...
net/archives/1942
...
Another frequently noted effect of OP
that is its increased pace or “tightness”, reflected in the statistic that modern
productions of Shakespeare’s works in OP consistently run about fifteen minutes
shorter than their RP equivalents9
...

The first meeting of Romeo and Juliet also reveals the way that OP worked
in synergy with other original practices to varied effects
...

ROMEO: O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do:
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair
...

ROMEO: Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take
...
(I
...
2014
...
07 25
...

http://www
...
net/archives/1942
...
2004
...
Cambridge
University Press
...
Shakespeare, William
...
The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
...
Oxford: Oxford
University Press
...
Stern
11

characterises the cues in this exchange as “competing calls of compulsion and
disobedience” , a theory which is affirmed in the OP of the verse
...
Juliet’s lips do not follow this
position, instead ending with “sake”
...
Finally, her end-rhymes “booke” and “took” echo Romeo’s
pursed lips, thereby signifying her physical and verbal compliance: the
“competing calls of compulsion and disobedience” are unified
...
OP also works to
reveal the sonnet’s underlying musicality: “prayer” and “despair” become a full
rhyme
...

That Shakespeare was aware of the interpretive implications of
pronunciation is evident in the way in which he addresses pronunciation as a
subject in itself
...
Indeed, in a meta-theatrical scene about the
13

11

101
...
2007
...
Oxford University
Press
...
Ibid
...
2016
...

Routledge
...

I am not I if there be such an ‘I’,
Or those eyes shut that makes thee answer ‘Ay’
...

Brief, zounds! Determine my weal or woe (3
...
45-51)

There’s a dramatic irony at play in Juliet’s awareness of the interpretive
differences of “Brief, zounds”
...
In performance, the
effect is an expression of intense grief, as the intermittent [aɪ̯ ] create a wailing
sound
...
In line 6, Shakespeare writes, “From forth
the fatal loins of these two foes”
...
This secondary meaning
references blood lines, but also implies a strength in words as great as that in the
body to engender the tragedy, and can perhaps be read as a self-conscious
acknowledgement of the power of the “lines” of the play that follows
...
For instance, Hamlet, in his famous direction to his
actors, asks them to:
HAMLET: Speake the Speech I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you trippingly on
the Tongue: But if you mouth it, as many of your Players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines (3
...
1-4)
Shakespeare takes heed of his own words in Hamlet’s famed soliloquy:
HAMLET: To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them
...
“Cowards” sounds like chords, the silent
f’s (“O’ troubles”), h’s (“The t’ousand”) contribute to that sense of soft rhythm,
in contrast to the crisp t-sounds of RP
...
For instance, the OP pronunciation of “question” is one of threesyllables, thereby deviating from the typical iambic pentameter by an added two
beats, and hence amplifying Hamlet’s tumultuous mental state
...
Rather, people from all over the country were coming to Elizabethan
London and their accents were fusing:
Not long after Shakespeare's time people started getting on the boats to America,
and later Australia
...

The deviations in OP, and the increasing anxieties about these deviations, were
15

referenced by Shakespeare in his works to enrich his characterisations to indicate
such things as social status, age or political view
...
Kökeritz, Helge
...
Shakespeare's Pronunciation
...

Crystal, Ben
...
The Independent
...
Accessed 2018
...
independent
...
uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/tuh-beh-oar-nat-tuhbeh-that-was-the-question-7575928
...

15

7

“In Verona-England, we might imagine that the older-well educated, and more
conservative members of society would have been influenced by orthoepist
opinions”
...
Mercutio is characterised as a
vanguard of such “orthoepist opinions”, sneering at the way Tybalt speaks: he
calls him one of the “new tuners of accent” (2
...
29)
...
The opposition in speech between Tybalt and Mercutio
17

furthers their antagonism: Shakespeare illustrates their “divergence” in terms of
the theory of communication accommodation : their binary modes of speech are
18

read as a form of territorialism
...
This
phrase reveals how attuned Shakespeare was to the changing pronunciations of
the time, and what they meant: Mercutio is irritated by the use of “very” as an
intensifying word with a positive adjective, which was a linguistic trend emerging
and the end of the sixteenth century
...
Even the University of
Nevada production of Hamlet in 2011 showed in its use of OP filtered through
16

Crystal, David
...
Pronouncing Shakespeare, The Globe Experiment
...

17
Evans, Blakemore
...
Negotiating Shakespeare's Language in Romeo and Juliet:
...

18
"Communication accommodation theorists focus on the patterns of convergence and
divergence of communication behaviours, particularly as they relate to people’s goals for
social approval, communication efficiency, and identity"
...
Giles, Howard
...
Accommodation Theory: Communication, Context,
and Consequence
...

19
Evans, Blakemore
...
Negotiating Shakespeare's Language in Romeo and Juliet:
...


8

different American accents, which in a sense is more authentic than having
uniform speech
...

Not only does a performance in OP convey the full affective intensity of
Shakespeare’s language, but it reveals subtleties of tone unbeknownst to Modern
English readers
...
Thus, any
analysis of Shakespeare’s language is incomplete without consideration of its OP
...
2016
...
Edited by Gary Taylor, John Jowett, Terry Bourus and Gabriel
Egan
...

Secondary Sources
Barton, John
...
Playing Shakespeare: An Actor's Guide
...

Crystal, Ben
...
The Independent
...
Accessed 2018
...
independent
...
uk/arts-entertainment/theatredance/news/tuh-beh-oar-nat-tuh-beh-that-was-the-question7575928
...

Crystal, David
...
Pronouncing Shakespeare, The Globe Experiment
...

—
...
The Oxford Dictionary of Original Pronunciation
...

Evans, Blakemore
...
Negotiating Shakespeare's Language in Romeo and
Juliet:
...

Giles, Howard
...
Accommodation Theory: Communication, Context, and
Consequence
...

Kökeritz, Helge
...
Shakespeare's Pronunciation
...

Shakespeare, William
...
The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete
Works
...
Oxford: Oxford University Press
...
2007
...
Oxford
University Press
...
2014
...
07 25
...

http://www
...
net/archives/1942

---