I'm not a great fan of "authenticity" in Shakespeare: partly because tastes change, and partly because we can never be absolutely sure how the plays once looked and sounded. But a new 75-minute British Library CD, seeking to recapture the original pronunciation of Shakespeare through a selection of scenes and speeches, has a certain historical curiosity.
Listening to three short extracts from the disc, I was struck by several things. Sonnet 116, for instance, is taken at great speed. A word like "marriage" turns into a three-syllable affair. In contrast some vowels are shortened so that "doom", "proved" and "loved" sound like "dom", "provved" and "lovved".
All very fascinating. But I'd hate to see a scholarly experiment become standard practice because what may have been normal to Elizabethan ears sounds odd to us. When Macbeth asks of the imaginary dagger if it is not "sensible to failin' as to sight" the Scottish thane suddenly sounds like an Irishman. Similarly, when Juliet tells us that "That which we call a rose by any other waird would smell as sweet" you start to wonder if she is Cornish or Northumbrian. I'm not saying that Shakespeare can only be done in standard Received Pronunciation:as the Northern Broadsides theatre company has shown that would be nonsense. But, while it may be fun to listen on a CD to the presumed original Shakespearean sound, it would be perverse to make this a thing of custom.
