I am, of course, a Colonial, exiled from the Mother Country across the Pond. And so there's no expectation that I would speak the English of Good Queen Bess.
Interestingly, Her Majesty Elizabeth II Regina doesn't speak the English of Good Queen Bess, either.
Shakespeare is a lot dirtier than you get from watching Sir Laurence Olivier. It's much less bloodless, meaning a lot earthier and a lot bloodier. If you do it right, the original iambic pentameter doesn't always work. I suspect that's because the Mother Tongue has shifted over the last four centuries.
People in times long past are perhaps not so very different from people today. Putting Shakespeare on a pedestal does him - and them - a disservice. Of course, this is all just one minute of the indispensable The History Of English in Ten Minutes:
5 comments:
VERY interesting! I 'knew' there was a different pronuciation, but didn't realize how significant it was. Thanks!
That History of English short is fantastic.
Up yours, Caesar!
Shakespeare is a west country accent found in Somerset and Gloustershire and still spoken like that today. Which makes sense as Shakespeare was a West country lad. I used to take holidays down in the Somerset levels. So I'm familiar with it.
It sounds like a West Country accent to me!
Except that I was taught that the "w" in "sword" was pronounced, and if someone struck you with one, you had a "wound," as in the past tense of "to wind."
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