About Arlene Schulman Expertise I have loved Shakespeare all my life, and as a Stage Director and Actor for over twenty-five years I have had the opportunity to study his work in intimate detail. I would be happy to share my knowledge of his plays. I can also help with acting Shakespeare, working with blank verse, character development, script analysis and interpretation. I don`t have as much knowledge in the area of his sonnets, but I can help to understand their meaning and language. I also have some knowledge of his life and of the Globe theatre where he performed his plays, as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company and his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, and can point you in the direction of some wonderful websites on the subjects as well.
Experience
Organizations SSDC - associate member The Shakespeare Institute (MA Candidate - "Shakespeare & Theatre)
Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas
The Shakespeare Association of America
Shakespeare - Rates of Speech of Shax' plays - Contemporary vs. Elizabethan Speech
Expert: Arlene Schulman - 6/29/2009
Question Mine does seem to be a question for a dramaturgy: I read somewhere (?) that drawbridge records on days of play performance along the public route to and from Shakespeare's Globe indicate that a "long" play (by today's standards) like Hamlet (performed these days from this or that folio edition with minimal cuts in 3-4.5 hours) was likely to have been performed in Shakespeare's own time in something like one third the time it presently takes to intelligibly and meaningfully deliver those lines in modern speech (whether British or American - both of which differ necessarily from the dialects of Shax' own time).
Many modern playgoers - even those familiar with and loving Shakespeare's works - often complain that the dialogue seems to go by at such a clip that it is difficult to understand, no less enjoy, it (however invested the performer, excellent the director, or otherwise well-motivated the performance).
Thus, if more or less the same texts were performed to the obvious enjoyment of even "the groundlings" of Shakespeare's times (whose ears were apparently not too much split to mar their enjoyment or limit Shakespeare's popularity), then Elizabethan English must have sounded very, very different than any English of today. Nevertheless, Shakespeare's prosody and his "beats" are rather strongly marked. Such strong marking would seem to place fairly narrow bounds on speech rates (to preserve Shakespeare's or his characters' intents).
That seemingly implicit contradiction in re speech or actor's delivery rates of then and now seems to warrant some investigation and reflection--going to the appreciation of Shakespeare's works and the degree to which modern audiences might be able to enter or resonate with Shax's "world" (at least in performance).
What does a director make of this? Have you heard of these speech rate differences? Do you allow for them? If so, how?
I have no conclusions of my own to present here. If what I think I remember reading matches your own received knowledge--and, say, the drawbridge openings and closings can't be accounted for otherwise by the sparse props and scenery in themselves having sufficed to "compress" the plays to shorter durations without inordinate acceleration of speech rates--then what do you make of this question?
Any of your thoughts would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Carroll
Answer Hi Carroll,
I have, indeed, heard a facsimile of Elizabethan English (although it is just that, since we have no way to know exactly what it sounded like - recordings being not invented at the time). And yes, it does sound very different from what we think of as the sound of English now. Although keep in mind that there are many, many different sounds of English, even now - thinking of all the varied accents and dialects of England, America, Ireland, Scotland, Australia and more.
But it is not the the sound of the speech that speeds up the rate; it is simply the fact that Shakespeare was writing for people in their own language. It's not that they spoke particularly fast; it's that we speak the speech particularly slowly.
Think about it. We are speaking a "dialect" (for lack of a better word) with speech patterns, words and phrases that are largely unfamiliar and uncomfortable to much of our audience (not to mention being in verse). That being the case, while to do endeavor to make it feel more or less conversational, we do tend speak it quite deliberately and clearly (much more so than we speak our normal everyday speech), so that our audiences can understand as much as possible. Even though it sounds conversational to us, the result is that it is considerably slower than "normal" everyday speech.
Shakespeare's actors, though, however much they declaimed the lines (and remember, their acting style was quite different from ours today), were still speaking the "everyday" English of the time and could speak without worrying about whether the audience would understand what they were saying. So they spoke a conversational, if theatrical, speed.
Listen to how your friends speak sometime. Fast. Really fast. Have you ever had a partial knowledge of a foreign language - French, Spanish? - and yet found native speech far too fast to follow? Or even gone to England, Ireland or Scotland and found that native speakers, speaking in their native accent or dialect, were speaking way to fast to be able to understand entirely at their customary speed. That's what we are dealing with hear. Spoken at natural speed, Shakespeare's plays whiz by. But at that speed (and in its native dialect) it would be impossible for us to understand.
Also remember that, as you say, Shakespeare was performing pretty much on a bare stage - no set changes, no act or scene breaks, few major props or especial effects. So, much of the added performance time that those things create on our stages was eliminated.
That said, remember two that those "two hours traffic on the stage" was referring to specifically "Romeo and Juliet" - a play much shorter than "Hamlet". There is no way that "Hamlet", Shakespeare's longest play - or "Richard III", his second longest play - ever ran 2 hours. But many of his shorter plays no doubt did.
