Cover of Pronouncing Shakespeare

September 3, 2008

David Crystal, acclaimed linguist and author, has launched a website to accompany his 2005 book Pronouncing Shakespeare. The website features audio recordings of two sonnets and several passages from Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida using their original, 16^th century pronunciations. The site also contains information and documentation about reconstructing the pronunciation of Elizabethan English.

Listen to the prologue from Romeo and Juliet in original pronunciation.

Both the website and the book are an outgrowth of two original pronunciation performances of Romeo and Troilus performed at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in 2004 and 2005. Crystal served as a linguistic consultant for both plays. The productions were reportedly the first attempts in more than 50 years to mount full-length Shakespeare plays using original pronunciation.

David Crystal is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on language and has published over one hundred books including the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Along with Pronouncing Shakespeare, he has authored or co-authored Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion, The Shakespeare Miscellany, and Think On My Words: Exploring Shakespeare’s Language.

Crystal had originally wanted to issue a CD with the book version of Pronouncing Shakespeare, but was prevented from doing so by high production costs. Now, the Internet is allowing him to provide original pronunciation audio recordings to the general public, free of charge.

“I hope more people and companies will experiment with OP, to hear the effect it has on our auditory experience of the plays and poems, and to hear alternative interpretations to my own,” said Crystal.

“If anyone is planning to work with this genre, this site can be become the hub from which to share such information.”

Crystal is also extending an invitation to users of the new website. For practical reasons, Crystal was only able to place a limited amount of recorded text on the site. However, he is asking anyone interested in making all the recorded material available on an audio site to contact him via a form on the website.

Web Resources:

Pronouncing Shakespeare website

Pronouncing Shakespeare book - site also contains OP audio clips

Shakespeare’s Words website

David Crystal’s Official website

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The footings of The Theatre © Museum of London Archaeology

August 13, 2008

The Shakespeare Post is proud to introduce Lend Me Your Ears, a new podcast series created exclusively for the Post. Lend Me Your Earswill feature interviews with actors, directors, scholars, historians, educators and anyone else making news in the world of Shakespearean performance and research.

For the inaugural podcast, Jo Lyon, senior archaeologist for the Museum of London Archaeology, discusses the discovery of The Theatre in London. Lyon led the team that unearthed the foundations of the playhouse earlier this summer.

Lyon talks about how the discovery was made, what researchers have learned from the excavation, and what she hopes to find when she returns to the site later in the year.

Use the embedded player to listen to the podcast.

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