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

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.