Shakespeare’s Pronunciation

Original Pronunciation

Para1Early modern pronunciation was significantly different than the English spoken in the 21st century. Vowels were in the process of changing—known as vowel-shifting—the same process that has given us so many different accents today, from the received pronunciation of the British Broadcasting Corporation to the brogues of Ireland to the twangs in Texas. Because of this shift, many words that would have rhymed perfectly to Shakespeare and his contemporaries now sound like half-rhymes or almost rhymes. Examples of this are love and prove, reason and raisin, Rome and room, and lines and loins. To learn more, visit this Open University video made by linguist Dr. David Crystal and his son, actor Ben Crystal. They are some of the pioneers of Original Pronunciation (OP) scholarship and its application in theater.

Why OP?

Para2Just like there are many accents in English today, the same was true of Shakespeare’s time. Knowing how they sounded involves a lot of linguistic expertise combined with scholarly research, as well as some guesswork. Prolific scholar of linguistics David Crystal explains why it is so important to hear Shakespeare’s words in their original pronunciation; his website features extensive evidence about early modern speech. He points out that when older texts are read in modern pronunciation, incorrect social connotations arise. The Original Pronunciation movement, which started in the 1980s, gets rid of these connotations and add a new depth to the text, allowing the audience to gain a better understanding of the author’s original intention.
Para3David and Ben Crystal believe Shakespeare’s pronunciation was closer to a Northern English accent, perhaps from the areas around Liverpool or Leeds, than an American accent. The accent most commonly associated with the British now, one called Received Pronunciation, was actually developed around 1800 so that the aristocracy could distinguish themselves from the growing middle class. David Crystal says that although we will never really know Shakespeare’s true accent, the Original Pronunciation reconstructed by the Crystals is the sound system that everybody used to understand each other in the 1600s.

What’s the Difference?

Para4Many of Shakespeare’s naughtiest jokes rely on homophones, words that sound alike but have very different meanings. In As You Like It, Touchstone says And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe / And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot / And thereby hangs a tale. If read as pronounced currently in the 21st century, it is not funny, but rather depressing commentary on human mortality. However, if hour is pronounced ore to sound like whore, it means something completely different, and Shakespeare’s very dirty joke becomes apparent.
Para5In 2005, Shakespeare’s Globe, the professional theater company that uses the reconstruction of the Globe Theater in modern London, mounted a production of Romeo and Juliet using not only original practices in costume, music, and acting, but also in original pronunciation. David and Ben Crystal offered guidance to the actors, and the entire experience is chronicled in Crystal’s book, Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment.

Key Print Sources

Crystal, David. The Stories of English. Abrams Press, 2004.
Crystal, David, and Ben Crystal. Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion. Penguin Books, 2004.
Crystal, David. Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Key Online Sources

Paul, Richard. Pronouncing English as Shakespeare Did. Shakespeare Unlimited. The Folger Shakespeare Library. https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/original-pronunciation/. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Shakespeare: Original Pronunciation. Open University.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s. Accessed 25 May 2017.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Katelyn Ekker

Katelyn Ekker was an Honors student at Utah Valley University.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Shakespeare’s Pronunciation
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Katelyn Ekker, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship
License/availability
Intellectual copyright in this entry is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.