PODCAST: Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation Reveals Sharper Rhymes and Dirtier Puns

Like any other language, English has evolved in the past 400 years. Not just by gaining and losing words, but with pronunciation too. Thomas Edison developed the first sound recording device in 1877, giving us greater insight to what human speech sounded like then, but there are still centuries of spoken communication that require further research in order to replicate.

Take Shakespeare, for instance. Modern audiences generally associate great Shakespearean performances with the kind of posh, elevated tones made popular by the likes of Lawrence Olivier. But according to father and son linguists, David and Ben Crystal, that elegant style is a fairly new development, and using it deprives listeners of some of the poetry and humor of The Bard's plays and sonnets.

Speaking with Kurt Andersen of WNYC, the pair demonstrate how accents that may sound much coarser to modern ears, "original pronunciation," as it's known, bring out rhymes, puns and - often dirty - jokes.

David, the elder Crystal, started with the sonnets, of which 96 of the 154 known do not appear to rhyme perfectly. But the work of 17th-century grammarians show that, for example, while "proved" and "loved" don't rhyme to us, Shakespeare would have said "pruvved" and "luvved."

The Crystals conclude that the original pronunciation sounded close to the Northern English or even some American accents. "Received pronunciation," the very proper, clipped speech we associate with British actors or BBC news anchors, didn't develop until the early 1800s, when the upper classes wanted to distinguish themselves audibly from the burgeoning middle class.

Ben, an acting teacher, observes that the more colloquial speech not only loosens up actors and transforms the way they speak the lines, it also moves much faster, shaving minutes off the production.

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