<story><title>Opening of Romeo and Juliet Recited in the Accent of Shakespeare’s Time [video]</title><url>https://laughingsquid.com/romeo-juliet-recited-in-original-shakespeare-accent/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pavel_lishin</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I do really wish more Shakespeare was performed in an original accent, as there&amp;#x27;s an awful lot of rhymes and jokes that don&amp;#x27;t work in modern pronunciation. Like &amp;quot;hour to hour&amp;quot; being pronounced like &amp;quot;whore to whore&amp;quot;, which suddenly makes that line quite a bit funnier.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Things like this, among others, continue to convince me that reading Shakespeare plays in high school is largely a waste of time. Unless you have an excellent teacher, who explains the puns, the historical context, and other things, it&amp;#x27;s about as useful as looking at storyboards of a movie instead of watching the movie itself.</text></item><item><author>robotmay</author><text>I do really wish more Shakespeare was performed in an original accent, as there&amp;#x27;s an awful lot of rhymes and jokes that don&amp;#x27;t work in modern pronunciation. Like &amp;quot;hour to hour&amp;quot; being pronounced like &amp;quot;whore to whore&amp;quot;, which suddenly makes that line quite a bit funnier.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s another video of the same bloke that I&amp;#x27;ve seen in the past: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do like that he mentioned being asked to perform using his native Welsh accent in the OP&amp;#x27;s video. Shakespeare was after all the playright for people of every standing, and it feels a bit daft to posh it all up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JoeSmithson</author><text>I remember the footnotes in one Shakespeare play I read at school saying something like &amp;quot;[2] this is a humourous reference to Christopher Marlowe&amp;#x27;s contemporaneous play...&amp;quot; which I sort of rolled my eyes at and remarked how that was a bit of a stretch and was anyone really supposed to notice that.&lt;p&gt;My teacher drew the analogy to Scary Movie (which was relatively new at the time) and how we could all enjoy it just fine without footnotes explaining &amp;quot;this is a humourous reference to contemporaneous horror film Scream...&amp;quot; etc. It suddenly struck me the difference between studying culture historically and actually experiencing it &amp;quot;live&amp;quot;. This analogy has only gotten better with time because I probably would need footnotes to get half the jokes in Scary Movie nowadays.</text></comment>
<story><title>Opening of Romeo and Juliet Recited in the Accent of Shakespeare’s Time [video]</title><url>https://laughingsquid.com/romeo-juliet-recited-in-original-shakespeare-accent/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pavel_lishin</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I do really wish more Shakespeare was performed in an original accent, as there&amp;#x27;s an awful lot of rhymes and jokes that don&amp;#x27;t work in modern pronunciation. Like &amp;quot;hour to hour&amp;quot; being pronounced like &amp;quot;whore to whore&amp;quot;, which suddenly makes that line quite a bit funnier.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Things like this, among others, continue to convince me that reading Shakespeare plays in high school is largely a waste of time. Unless you have an excellent teacher, who explains the puns, the historical context, and other things, it&amp;#x27;s about as useful as looking at storyboards of a movie instead of watching the movie itself.</text></item><item><author>robotmay</author><text>I do really wish more Shakespeare was performed in an original accent, as there&amp;#x27;s an awful lot of rhymes and jokes that don&amp;#x27;t work in modern pronunciation. Like &amp;quot;hour to hour&amp;quot; being pronounced like &amp;quot;whore to whore&amp;quot;, which suddenly makes that line quite a bit funnier.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s another video of the same bloke that I&amp;#x27;ve seen in the past: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do like that he mentioned being asked to perform using his native Welsh accent in the OP&amp;#x27;s video. Shakespeare was after all the playright for people of every standing, and it feels a bit daft to posh it all up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>delecti</author><text>In addition, I think it&amp;#x27;s absurd for your first exposure to any of the plays to be reading it; so much of the dialog only makes sense when being spoken. The homework assignments should never be &amp;quot;read Act I&amp;quot;, it should be &amp;quot;watch the first 45 minutes of movie version &amp;lt;blah&amp;gt;&amp;quot;. Even a disengaged viewer will get more out of watching it than having their first experience be reading it.</text></comment>