Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T16:53:56.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - ‘Lend Me Your Ears’: Experiments with Original Pronunciation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

Sonia Massai
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access

Summary

This chapter investigates the rise of scholarly interest in Early English Pronunciation and, along with it, of research and experimental performances in Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation. While the recent surge in Original Pronunciation productions at Shakespeare’s Globe has been well documented by David Crystal, the history of Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation is still largely under-investigated. Similarly, while early modern original theatrical practices have well-known precursors in theatre-makers like William Poel, pioneering experiments with Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation are fairly obscure. However, these early experiments with Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation are important because they offered an alternative to the otherwise absolute and uncontested acoustic norms associated with Received Pronunciation and Standard Pronunciation which still dominated the first half of the twentieth century. This chapter focuses on a selection of such experiments, ranging from BBC radio programmes produced by Mary Hope Allen in the 1930s and 1940s to a production of Macbeth staged at the Mermaid Theatre in London in 1952. This chapter also identifies two different traditions in early experiments with Original Pronunciation, one that exploits the legitimizing function associated with the accent believed to have been originally spoken on Shakespeare’s stage and the other that aims instead to entertain and develop new audiences for Shakespeare.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare's Accents
Voicing Identity in Performance
, pp. 70 - 101
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×