Are You Shakespearienced? Roundup

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"How should Shakespeare really sound?" Telegraph, March 12, 2012

Inspired by working with Kevin Spacey, Sir Trevor Nunn has claimed that American accents are "closer" than

contemporary English to the accents of those used in the Bard's day.

The eminent Shakespearean scholar John Barton has suggested that Shakespeare's accent would have sounded to modern ears like a cross between a contemporary Irish, Yorkshire and West Country accent.>>>

"Was Macbeth Irish? Juliet from Cornwall?" Guardian, March 18, 2012

If you listen to a new CD that tries to capture the original pronunciation of Shakespeare, you might think so.

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.>>>


Nick Clark, "Is this a dagger which I see before me? Historian to explore Shakespearean violence," Independent, March 21, 2012

Rising knife crime in London, youth gangs out of control, and helpless lawmakers attempting to curb the fighting by banning certain types of blade. It may sound familiar, but this was the London of William Shakespeare's day, and gives an insight into one of his most enduring love stories.>>>

Sarah Fay, "How to Talk to Shakespeare, H.G. Wells, and Emily Dickinson," The Atlantic, March 14, 2012

Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris envisions the ultimate creative writing program. In the film, Gil Pender, an American screenwriter and struggling novelist, travels back in time and gleans writing advice from literary luminaries living in Paris during the 1920s and the fin de siècle. Pender is a 21st-century, wannabe writer, a Hollywood hack who is awkward and uncertain in the presence of iconic figures like Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. When Pender asks how he can become a "real" writer, Stein tells him to strengthen the plot of his novel. Hemingway—speaking in "clean," "honest" prose—recommends he overcome his fear of death. We never find out if Pender makes it, but many of us would prefer his experience to that of enrolling in one of America's 300 graduate writing programs: no silly workshops, no other aspiring writers, and direct instruction from "true"—i.e., deceased—masters of the craft.>>>

Chroniclers

Philip White

With the brief lull following my manuscript submission, I’ve finally been able to start reading for pleasure again. Having zeroed in on Churchill-focused books for the past three years, I scoured my shelves for something completely unrelated, and settled on Juliet Barker’s Agincourt, which vividly recreates the battle between heavily outnumbered British troops and their French foes on October 25, 1415.

One of the central figures is Henry V, the iconic English monarch. Previously, I had (somewhat embarrassingly, for an Englishman) only read of his exploits by way of William Shakespeare in Henry V, and through watching the film portrayals by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh.

Such the Bard’s reputation and flair for characterization that we (or at least, I) often forget that he took creative license in his portrayal, and was crafting plays to entertain common, noble, and royal audiences rather than to provide an accurate historical record.

Still, it came as a surprise when Barker revealed that the incident that defines Act I, Scene II – the French prince sending Henry a set of tennis balls that mocked his youth and poured scorn on his negotiators’ attempts to acquire former British territory in France by peaceful means – was merely a myth. Shakespeare did not invent this incident, but seems to have conveniently used this piece of royal tittle tattle for dramatic effect and to set up one of Henry’s most famous utterances in the play:

We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for:
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard

In fact, Barker contends, Henry did not believe that negotiations with the French would yield the land he was claiming without force and while the French did not play ball with English diplomats, no tennis equipment was sent across the English Channel to irk the monarch. So much for fancy words and clever plot tools.

Rather than relying on the playwright’s populist tales for source material, Barker makes fine use of medieval chronicles from Britain and France, including Thomas Elmham, Archbishop of Canterbury and founder of All Soul’s College, Oxford Henry Chichele and Enguerrand de Monstrelet. She uses their stories and anecdotes judiciously, relying on material that is verified in more than one account and debunking falsehoods as needed – such as Raphael Holinshed’s account of the tennis balls that inspired Shakespeare’s aforementioned scene.

As with all primary sources, these chroniclers’ words are not without bias. Many were supported by royal or noble patrons and some, as in Chichele’s case, were in the king’s inner circle. They were indeed writing for posterity, but in many cases, feared that negative observations about their masters could lead to severe punishment in the present. After all, this was an age in which beheading and burning at the stake were common. Thus, the chroniclers’ characterizations of Henry and other leading figures of the era were mostly positive. Yet despite their partiality, these writers give us an invaluable window into this distant age that is far less opaque than the work of Shakespeare – not least because, in the case of Henry V, he was writing about the Battle of Agincourt more than 150 years afterwards.

Reading Agincourt got me thinking about how the art of the chronicle has evolved. Who are the chroniclers of today? Perhaps certain journalists, historians, and filmmakers, or have bloggers taken on the mantle of these Middle Ages scribes? What value will their accounts hold for future generations, and how will their myths and bias find their way into our enduring literary works?