The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0244  Tuesday, 28 March 2006

[1] 	From: 	Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
	Date: 	Tuesday, 28 Mar 2006 15:55:37 +0100
	Subj: 	Re: SHK 17.0232 Henry IV, Part 1 Query

[2] 	From: 	Ros King <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
	Date: 	Tuesday, 28 Mar 2006 16:30:42 +0100
	Subj: 	Re: SHK 17.0232 Henry IV, Part 1 Query

[3] 	From: 	Terence Hawkes
	Date: 	Tuesday, March 28, 2006 12:00 PM
	Subj: 	Henry IV, Part 1 Query


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: 		Tuesday, 28 Mar 2006 15:55:37 +0100
Subject: 17.0232 Henry IV, Part 1 Query
Comment: 	Re: SHK 17.0232 Henry IV, Part 1 Query

Interestingly, Sean Connery was a notable Hotspur with the RSC back in 
the 60's and the powerful regional accent was hugely effective - perhaps 
not quite located exactly where the Percy family lived, but there was an 
abrasiveness, brusqueness, very specific reference to a sense of place 
and thus political identity too. His sensuality in the voice and was 
certainly NOT the Berry RSC 'voice' at all, and gave the scenes with his 
Kate an electric charge!

One is minded to recall here the work of Northern Broadsides in UK who 
specialise in exactly this kind of production value. Gives a Shakespeare 
play an entirely different lilt and engages northern audiences far more. 
Have you ever heard as I have a Geordie lad delivering 'To be or not to 
be' or 'If it were done, when tis done etc'.?

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Ros King <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: 		Tuesday, 28 Mar 2006 16:30:42 +0100
Subject: 17.0232 Henry IV, Part 1 Query
Comment: 	Re: SHK 17.0232 Henry IV, Part 1 Query

Jonathan Hope wrote:

 >Aside from wanting to make the pedantic point that the concept
 >of RP is anachronistic for Early Modern English, I found this
 >very suggestive. 1Henry 4 could be seen as part of a rash of
 >'dialect' plays Shakespeare writes in a three-year period at the
 >end of the 1590s: 1Henry 4, 2Henry 4, Henry 5, Merry Wives.
 >
 >
 >I also find it interesting that Shakespeare most often associates
 >dialect with national rather than regional identity.  As Paula
 >Blank notes in her book (*Broken English*), there is surprisingly
 >little direct representation of regional dialect in Shakespeare (and
 >I think in Early Modern drama generally).

We might want to distinguish between sentence constructions and 
vocabulary which, whatever the class of the speaker, might be best 
rendered in a regional accent (Duncan's word order, though not his 
vocabulary, seems to me to fall into that category) and the 
transliteration of 'mummerset', which if not an RP issue, definitely 
suggests class (e.g. Edgar's affectation of Poor Tom; Grim the Collier 
in Damon and Pythias - the author, middle class courtier Richard 
Edwards, was himself 'a Somerset man', may have played the role 
initially, and was perhaps making an in joke against himself.) Love's 
Labours Lost, on the other hand, though not transliterated, gives us a 
range of registers, best rendered in performance by different accents - 
the more the merrier, and whatever the actors are good at.

Best wishes
Ros
Queen Mary, University of London

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Terence Hawkes
Date: 		Tuesday, March 28, 2006 12:00 PM
Subject: 	Henry IV, Part 1 Query

Ida Gaskin finds it worthy of comment ' that Shakespeare could 
apparently call on two Welsh-speaking players'. Yet under the Tudors 
people from Wales 'moved resolutely into every conceivable avenue of 
advancement, from the Court, the Great Sessions, the Council of Wales, 
JP patronage and the academy, through minerals, estate 
industrialization, the merchant marine and its commerce, strategic 
marriage and tactical politics, to smuggling, piracy, the labyrinths of 
sweet Old Corruption and their sister profession the law'. (Gwyn A 
Williams, When Was Wales, Penguin 1985, pp. 122-23). In 1571 Jesus 
College Oxford was created specifically as a Welsh college of the 
university. London was full of Welsh-speakers. Not for nothing was 
Elizabeth 1st called that 'red-headed Welsh harridan' by A.A.Rowse.

T. Hawkes

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