Shakespeare Done With Original Pronunciation

h/t Der Miksic

For the moment, I have a hard time believing this is quite the real thing. This sounds to me purely like Shakespeare done by leprechauns. But well, who knows? When Shakespeare called Romeo & Juliet the 'two-hour's traffic of our stage,' I vaguely remember one scholar calculated that the lines would have to be spoken five-and-a-half times faster than are usually done in order to make it two hours long.

That being said, in music the authentic instruments movement just sounded like diluted modern performances until performers added research about tempos, ornamentation and acoustical space. The speech in this performance is about the usual tempo for speaking Shakespeare's verse, plodding. As always, the only authenticity that matters is great artistry. Midsummer, like all the Shakespeare comedies, can be lethal if the dialogue is played at anything but top speed. It has to quick if only to keep up with the speed of Shakespeare's comic timing. Listen to this audio recording of Peter O'Toole and his then-wife Sian Philips (later the unforgettable Empress Livia in I, Claudius) in the Taming of the Shrew. To me, this will always be a much more authentic way to do Shakespeare.



HERE is an example of the benefits of Historically Informed Performance in music.