Ben Crystal - Pt 5: Shakespeare's accent - Speaking the bright and beautiful English of Shakespeare 

It would be more engaging if actors actually knew what the words meant.

@@emhu2594 Yes!

Aye, ye be specken some truth ther matey. Geoffrey Rush is an Aussie btw.

What is OP?

@@cjsk45 Original Pronunciation, which is the accent he demonstrated

Now, put yourself in a world where you're forced to listen to the formal accent all of the time, because your parents want to raise you that way. I knew a kid in that world, and some people liked hearing it, as he got older, but I wouldn't like living it.

That makes sense. I remember learning in some of my college English classes that the Great Vowel Shift didn't complete until after Shakespeare's time. It's amazing to get this window into how the language would have sounded then!

It's most similar an English west country accent.

West Virginians still have the original pronunciation (or at least closest to it)

Original pronunciation sounds like the original Germanic tongue (pre-1066) overlaid with French words (introduced by the 1066 invasion)

​ @Robot killer As you may be aware, the "pirate accent" really does come from the West Country accent -- specifically the accent of Robert Newton, the actor who played Long John Silver in the 1950 adaptation of "Treasure Island", and who played the title character in "Blackbeard the Pirate" in 1952. (The historical Blackbeard was from Bristol, so he may have spoken in the 18th century version of that accent -- but it was Newton who made it famous as "pirate speech".)

Sally Johnson Yes, definitely like my father-in-law - also from Devon.

That's what I'm hearing.

Because white pirates existed back then.

@@misadventurousguy3859 i'm not sure if you are being sarcastic but yes? pirates were white back then...?

@@silveryfeather208 What about the Barbary Pirates from the coast of North Africa that enslaved people from as far as the west coast of England? They were not white

@@tonyoliver2167 well of course. But there are white pirates no?

thank you chief

I'm talking to a friend that lives in Bristol and by God does he sound like a Pirate doing Shakespeare lmao

Depending on where they were from. This is very much a more southern version of English. Those from different regions will have spoken quite differently.

@@rahjeel "See yer laterrrr me loverrr"

There's a reason for that.

When I moved to Nova Scotia I was pleasantly surprised to hear some of the older folks' accents. Very reminiscent of Devon and the west of England.

I was just thinking Newfie accent too!

Nowhere else in Canada sounds quite like the newfies

Fascinating especially as Stratford is in Warwickshire.

Who’s David?

@@DeanH92 his father/well known linguist

Holy heck, I can see it.

Bingo!

what is OP

m77yice killem Original Pronunciation.

Penzance.

There was a problem with the British Council's Channel, which originally hosted the film of the lecture...

Cheers

Not more preserved??? Mate, rhoticism is well preserved in Scotland & Northern Ireland which are part of the UK. Gosh! England is not the only kingdom in the United Kingdom! Being British is not only being English!

@@kevingutierrez9273 😅 Well what is happening it seems like the U.K. is going to break up. Bruh that was two years ago I’m more aware rhotic pronunciation still exists defiantly in the north.

He is

Ay, frend.

You can listen to Ben and David discuss how they discovered what Shakespeare sounded like here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gPlpphT7n9s.html Another breakdown here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WeW1eV7Oc5A.html&ab_channel=NativLang

Basically you can see which words he rhymed

hi there - we have to guess at the prosody, the little we can gain are from the elisions in the Folio, which sometimes are metrical, and other times are to indicate alacrity; and from Hamlet's advice to the Players, to speak the speech 'trippingly', and to 'not mouth it'

In Romeo and Juliet, the Prologue refers to the play as "...the two hours' traffic of our stage." If one plays the complete play at modern speeds, it runs nearly three hours.

American and English accents have evolved from their original point of origin to take on regional differences over the last centuries.

Accents evolve more quickly in more heavily populated regions. There’s good reason to believe that some American accents are closer to Shakespearean English than the modern English Received Pronunciation you would hear in London, due to America’s relative isolation in its early history

I think it is genuinely a lack of accepting and owning the words that they are saying. Many actors will do the work to understand *what* they are saying, but to then wear it as their own and let their emotion and personality run free in this foreign tongue is the next level that many do not strive for. I think if you look at professional seasoned actors like Catherine Tate and David Tenant perform Shakespeare (maybe check out videos of them in Much Ado About Nothing), they approach the roles not too differently from contemporary roles, and so I think you will find they are a lot more musical and colorful in their performance than others who perform Shakespeare. But I'd be interested if you watched them and still felt they were monotonous performances! In short---it's hard. I think it's easy for actors to get scared of the words and focus more on getting the lines/role right instead of relaxing and playing the character truthfully. This leads to rather phoned-in performances.

cleoshh omg 😵 this line of enquiry must be followed