The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0455 Wednesday, 17 May 2006
[1] From: John Drakakis <
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Date: Thursday, 11 May 2006 16:15:45 +0100
Subj: RE: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
[2] From: Frank Whigham <
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Date: Thursday, 11 May 2006 10:41:38 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
[3] From: Mary Coy <
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Date: Thursday, 11 May 2006 11:55:49 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
[4] From: John Briggs <
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Date: Friday, 12 May 2006 01:10:41 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
[5] From: Terence Hawkes <
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Date: Friday, 12 May 2006 09:34:08 +0100
Subj: Regional Accents
[6] From: Megan McDonough <
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Date: Friday, 12 May 2006 11:12:21 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Drakakis <
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Date: Thursday, 11 May 2006 16:15:45 +0100
Subject: 17.0436 Regional Accents
Comment: RE: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
Donald Bloom asks an interesting question. I think I'm right in saying
that there was no such thing in the late 16th or early 17th centuries as
'received pronunciation', not even for aristocrats. But a look again at
Holofernes' and Sir Nathaniel's comments on pronunciation in LLL might
take us a littler further.
Cheers,
John Drakakis
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Frank Whigham <
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Date: Thursday, 11 May 2006 10:41:38 -0500
Subject: 17.0436 Regional Accents
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
It's hard to know what to make of its relevance to daily practice, but
there is certainly data on regional speech in what George Puttenham says
(in 2.04) about how poets should write (and perhaps speak):
This part in our maker or poet must be heedily looked unto, that it be
natural, pure, and the most usual of all his country; and for the same
purpose rather that which is spoken in the king's court or in the good
towns and cities within the land, than in the marches and frontiers, or
in port towns, where strangers haunt for traffic's sake; or yet in
universities, where scholars use much peevish affectation of words out
of the primitive languages; or finally, in any uplandish village or
corner of a realm, where is no resort but of poor, rustical, or uncivil
people. Neither shall he follow the speech of a craftsman or carter or
other of the inferior sort, though he be inhabitant or bred in the best
town and city in this realm, for such persons do abuse good speeches by
strange accents or ill-shaped sounds and false orthography. But he shall
follow generally the better-brought-up sort, such as the Greeks call
charientes: men civil and graciously behaviored and bred.
Our maker therefore at these days shall not follow Piers Plowman nor
Gower nor Lydgate nor yet Chaucer, for their language is now out of use
with us; neither shall he take the terms of northern men such as they
use in daily talk -- whether they be noblemen or gentlemen or of their
best clerks, all is a matter -- nor in effect any speech used beyond the
river of Trent: though no man can deny but that theirs is the purer
English Saxon at this day, yet it is not so courtly nor so current as
our southern English is; no more is the far western man's speech. Ye
shall therefore take the usual speech of the court and that of London
and the shires lying about London within sixty miles, and not much
above. I say not this but that in every shire of England there be
gentlemen and others that speak, but especially write, as good southern
as we of Middlesex or Surrey do, but not the common people of every
shire, to whom the gentlemen and also their learned clerks do for the
most part condescend; but herein we are already ruled by the English
dictionaries and other books written by learned men, and therefore it
needeth none other direction in that behalf.
Albeit peradventure some small admonition be not impertinent, for we
find in our English writers many words and speeches amendable, and ye
shall see in some many inkhorn terms so ill-affected, brought in by men
of learning, as preachers and schoolmasters, and many strange terms of
other languages by secretaries and merchants and travelers, and many
dark words and not usual nor well-sounding, though they be daily spoken
in court. Wherefore great heed must be taken by our maker in this
point, that his choice be good.
~Frank Whigham
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mary Coy <
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Date: Thursday, 11 May 2006 11:55:49 -0400
Subject: 17.0436 Regional Accents
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
I, too, am interested in your question. I have done some research into
Elizabethan pronunciation and found nothing regarding differences in
pronunciation due to class. I did, however, find evidence of differences
due to geographical origin and also to the age of the speakers. I used
the generational differences when staging the Closet Scene from Hamlet.
The Queen, Polonius, and the Ghost pronounced certain words differently
than did Hamlet (recently educated at Wittenburg).
The lack of differences due to class underscores for me the fact that
that Shakespeare must differentiate between his kings, queens, and
servants (and all those in between) with his rhetoric. Not only prose
and verse but in his choices around imagery, and the interplay of
schemes, and tropes. This idea is a cornerstone in the Mary Baldwin
College graduate program in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in
Performance affiliated with the American Shakespeare Center and the
Blackfriars Playhouse.
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Briggs <
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Date: Friday, 12 May 2006 01:10:41 +0100
Subject: 17.0436 Regional Accents
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
I would suggest that Don Bloom first reads:
E.J. Dobson, English Pronunciation, 1500-1700 (Clarendon Press, 1957/1968).
John Briggs
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Terence Hawkes <
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Date: Friday, 12 May 2006 09:34:08 +0100
Subject: Regional Accents
Donald Bloom wonders if readers have noted 'any regional accents beyond
a few Welshmen . . .' A touch quaint. How about Henry V for a start?
T. Hawkes
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Megan McDonough <
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Date: Friday, 12 May 2006 11:12:21 -0400
Subject: 17.0436 Regional Accents
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0436 Regional Accents
Relating to accents/dialects... I have a good friend who played Horatio
in Hamlet a few years ago and found that Horatio seemed to have a very
different manner of speaking - word order, rhythm, vocabulary - as an
actor he chose for this to signify Horatio's foreignness in the Danish
court, that Danish (English) was not his native language. He did not
choose, however, to play the role with a noticeable accent, but rather
to play Horatio as someone who must choose his words a little more
purposefully than a native speaker might, someone who physically
embodies Hamlet's life at Wittenberg, and always seems a little out of
place in Denmark. (This particular production costumed Hamlet and
Horatio in stark almost Amish-looking clothing to represent the severe
"Lutheran" education they would have been receiving. This choice helped
make Horatio stand apart as an outsider.)
Has anyone written on Horatio's different manner of speaking? I would
love to explore the question further and see if it holds any water...
Megan McDonough
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