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Performing Shakespeare in the Original Pronunciation David Barrett A submission presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of South Wales for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2013 1 Contents: Abstract 4 Acknowledgements 6 Chapter 1 Introduction 7 Chapter 2 Original Pronunciation in Context 2.1 Historically Informed Performance 15 2.2 The Shakespearean Voice 90 2.3 Accented Shakespeare 104 Chapter 3 3.1 Shakespearean Original Pronunciation in Performance in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries 123 3.2 Macbeth at the Mermaid Theatre 181 Chapter 4 The Linguistic Context, Phonological Research and Reference 193 Chapter 5 5.1 Transcription Policy 225 5.2 A Comparison of Transcription Styles 276 Chapter 6 Testing the Transcription Policy/ Developing a Method through Workshopping 290 Chapter 7 Conclusion 388 Works Cited 416 2 Textual Note: Unless stated otherwise, all Shakespearean quotes are from: Clark, W.G. and Wright, W.A. (1865) The Works of William Shakespeare (Globe Edition), Cambridge and London: Macmillan. Available at: http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/plays.php (accessed 12.09.210) Macbeth: The complete works of William Shakespeare [electronic resource] Created by Jeremy Hylton; Operated by The Tech., Cambridge, Massachusetts (From Grady Ward’s Moby Shakespeare). Available at: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/index.html (accessed 10.08.2011) The Romeo and Juliet Transcription: based on the First Folio (1623) from the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20080504221015/http://etext.lib.virginia.e du/toc/modeng/public/ShaRJF.html (accessed 24.06.2010) I share the view of Stephen Orgel, who views the acting text, prepared for performance, as the “authentic text” (2002, 237). Generally, Shakespeare’s plays may be assumed to include material other than the author’s. Most of the texts used in this study are modern editions with normalised spelling. Where spellings have been consulted, it is difficult to know where the text has been altered by the compositor’s hand. For the purposes of this project, I accept that the compositor was ‘of the age’ and that their spelling may reflect the contemporary pronunciation, even though it might not represent the author’s. In the case of Queen Elizabeth’s letters, many were transcribed from Elizabeth’s own hand and there is a remarkable level of consistency in the spelling, albeit with some variations. Henslowe’s papers, similarly, are largely in his own hand. Compositor’s interventions regarding pointing are unimportant in pronunciation study. 3 Abstract The purpose of this study is to assess the merits and practicalities of performing Shakespeare in original pronunciation (OP) on the modern stage and to develop a pedagogy, through the medium of the actors’ workshop. I have reviewed the major texts relating to Shakespearean pronunciation and used the findings to create a transcription policy which is workable and relevant to today’s theatre. The transcription policy is tested in a series of workshops attended by drama students and professional actors. I have reviewed the past practice of performing Shakespeare in OP, which helps to place modern OP productions in context. In terms of language restoration, the project explores significant effects of the use of OP on rhyme, word-play and metre; examples of the positive effects of the repairs are included in Appendix 1 and an illustrative transcription of a Shakespeare play in Appendix 2. This thesis proposes a possible methodology for presenting and rehearsing the text, based on discoveries made in the workshops. The choices available to drama teachers, voice coaches and directors wishing to use OP in Shakespeare are explained and the merits and drawbacks of the various methods of presenting the text and teaching the pronunciation are discussed. A complete transcription policy, which may be adopted by drama teachers or voice coaches in full or in part, presents 4 the major pronunciations and variants which were probably heard on the Shakespearean stage. The thesis includes evidence for the pronunciation choices from Shakespeare’s works. The appendix includes sample transcriptions and teaching materials used in the workshops, together with two booklets, which I wrote as an aid to actors taking part in the workshops. There is also a transcription, for illustrative purposes, of As You Like It. 5 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Richard Hand and Dr Rob Dean of The University of South Wales for their support and advice throughout the research and writing up of this PhD. Their encouragement throughout the workshopping process has been immeasurable. I am grateful to The University of South Wales for enabling the workshopping of OP material with drama undergraduates. Thanks go to Professor David Crystal for his invaluable advice in the early stages of the research and to Professor Paul Meier, of the University of Kansas, for his encouragement. I would like to thank my family for allowing me to spend hours at my desk, researching for and writing this thesis. Without their encouragement this project would not have been possible. 6 Chapter 1, Introduction David Crystal (2013, 1-2) remarks that “Shakespearean phonology - the sound system of Elizabethan English, as evidenced in the plays and poems - has been remarkably neglected.” From the point of view of the director and actor it is significant to note that in justification of the use of OP he goes on to say, “[d]espite the recognized difficulties of reconstruction, the exercise is well worth attempting. It is a commonplace in literary criticism and dramaturgy to acknowledge the centrality of the relationship between pronunciation and interpretation.” Moreover, he advocates that, “we need to try to get as close as possible to the sound system that Shakespeare himself would have heard and used, and not rely for our conclusions solely on the auditory effects introduced by a modern phonology” (2013, 1-2). The difficulties to which Crystal refers relate to the fact that there will always be uncertainty about the validity of any reconstructed Elizabethan sound system. There are too many variables and inconsistencies in the evidence ever to be a hundred per cent certain that a given pronunciation is correct. This is evidenced in Shakespeare’s own usage, which shows significant variation, depending on context.1 1 In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, 1, Shakespeare rhymes ‘fear’ with ‘there’ (the vowel in both words would have been pronounced in a similar way to ‘there’ today) but in II, 2 ‘fear’ is rhymed with both ‘bear’ (pronounced as ‘bear’ today’) and ‘here’ (pronounced in a similar way to ‘here’ today, as the spelling shows). In As You Like It IV, 2 Shakespeare rhymes ‘deer’ (which was generally pronounced with a vowel like today’s) with ‘wear’ (which would have had a similar vowel to today - the final ‘r’ had a lowering effect and prevented the raising to [i:]). 7 Academic interest in original pronunciation (OP) was first aroused in the late nineteenth century when Shakespearean critic Richard Grant White reconstructed a passage from Hamlet in an approximation of Elizabethan speech (Ellis 1871, 973). In common with other academics who have reconstructed Shakespeare’s language since then, White attempted to justify his pronunciation choices by citing rhymes, puns and spellings as evidence. White was hampered by the lack of an effective means of transcribing the language; this situation changed in 1888 when the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) was published.2 A few attempts at reconstructing the pronunciation for the performance of short scenes by linguists were followed by a pocket of serious interest in the mid twentieth-century, when three full-length productions were staged, two in England and one in the US. Apart from a few extracts produced for radio and an OP scene within a regular production, the momentum for performing Shakespeare in OP was lost. It was not until early in the twentieth century that interest in Shakespearean OP was re-kindled by linguist David Crystal’s and director Tim Carroll’s work on Romeo and Juliet (2004) at Shakespeare’s Globe. 2 The IPA was first published in 1888 by Association Phonétique Internationale, a team of French language teachers led by Paul Passy. Originally devised for teachers of French, German and English, it was based on a script devised in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis and remodelled by Henry Sweet as his Romic Alphabet. 8 This project aims to demonstrate that the use of reconstructed language has a place in modern performances in the same way that reconstructed playing spaces and conditions do. It aims to determine what is the best medium in which to present an OP text and what is the best method of coaching the actor with no experience of OP. This thesis will survey the work done in certain related areas of historically informed performance (HIP) to determine how this might relate to original pronunciation performance and to determine whether there is any correlation between performance in OP and other areas. As HIP is not the main focus of this project, the coverage given in the thesis will necessarily be selective rather than universal. OP is used in this thesis to denote ‘original pronunciation’. In the past, the abbreviation OP has been used to denote ‘original practices’. Whilst original practice is mentioned in Chapter 2, this project is partly concerned with discovering ways in which original pronunciation might inform, enhance and enliven a modern production, rather than with meticulously recreating an oral performance style from a given point in history. OP refers to the reconstruction of an historical pronunciation which can be from any historical period. In this project, I use the term to denote the reconstruction of the pronunciation of Shakespeare’s stage.