Stratford Festival coaches how to speak Shakespearean English
Did you struggle with Romeo and Juliet in high school? Was Taming of the Shrew an exercise in literary torture?
Though understanding Shakespearean English may seem like a struggle, that it's understood at all is a triumphsaysAntoniCimolino, director of Stratford Festival'sHamlet.
"The fact is, we have no right to understand Shakespeare quite as well as we do. He lived, after all, 400 years ago."
"And in Shakespeare's time they wouldn't have understood the language of Chaucer which was just a little over 200 years earlier, " explains Cimolino.
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The festival has text and voice coaches, like Janine Pearson, who help actors interpret the scripts.
"Shakespeare's not meant to be read," says Pearson. "Shakespeare's meant to be heard;To hear the story, to hear the thought,and by that to see the image that exists in the thought."
In the audio below, the CBC's Jackie Sharkeygets a crash course from Stratford Festival's text and voice coaches on how to deliver one of Hamlet's famous soliloquies.
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