Dialect of 1600's London
Persona Pentathlon Item 5: Performance/Writing
An audio recording and accompanying notation (in the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA) of how we believe Shakespeare’s words might have sounded when spoken for the first time in London, applied to a speech from Henry IV part 2.
In the digital portion of the display I have 3 pieces available to listen to:
Though they were speaking ‘English’ in early modern England, it sounded somewhat different from how we speak today - both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Over the past 10+ years a group of scholars and artists have been working to piece out what the dialect of Shakespeare’s London might have been, leaning primarily on indicators hidden in the text of his plays and poems.
By looking at how words are spelled, places where it appears words should rhyme but in current pronunciation they do not, puns, and observations by contemporary writers, we can piece together what certain words or sounds might have been.