Trevor Nunn, former Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, wants to do a production of Shakespeare with an all-American cast, reports Telegraph.co.uk. Nunn says, “There is a different energy and a different use of language.” This is certainly true: Americans and Brits have very different rhythms and sounds to the way they speak; I imagine that any dialect will bring something new to a character or play.

But the rest of the article chooses not to report on the challenges of staging a play in a dialect or examples of how differences in dialect in equally-talented and trained actors can yield different readings and interpretations of text. Instead, there are a few comments about Nunn’s statement,

“…it is almost certainly true that today’s American accent is closer to the sounds that Shakespeare heard when he was writing.”

You can read the article to see what Professor Stanley Wells has to say about it.

I want to talk about the above quote. It is a common (what I believe to be) misconception that American English is more like Shakespeare’s than British English. Firstly, there are several dialects of English in both the US and UK that vary a great deal from each other. If we’re talking about the perceived “standard” dialect from each country (General/Standard American and British RP/BBC English) I still don’t think American English is any more closely related to Shakespeare’s speech.

English, regardless of where it is being spoken, has been evolving for over 400 years since Shakespeare began writing for the theatre. Language and its dialects change a great deal, especially among super-social societies. There are certainly parts of the US and UK whose dialects have evolved more slowly due to isolation over the past centuries, but there has still been 400 years of dialect evolution.

Perhaps the misconception comes from the idea that British RP is an “invented dialect.” Even so, American English pronunciation has been heavily influenced by our friends across the pond. Remember all those movie stars from the 1930s? Theatre, Film, and Radio in the US had a notably “British” sound for a long time.

So you see why I disagree with Trevor Nunn when he says it is “almost certainly true” that American English is closer to Elizabethan English than modern British English.

David Crystal, world renowned linguist and co-author of Shakespeare’s Words, has done a lot of research on what Shakespeare’s English may have sounded like back in the day. His book, Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment, tells the process of researching this and using the pronunciation in a production! You can also hear David Crystal reading of Sonnet #1 in “Original Pronunciation.” Listen, then decide whether you think modern American or British English “is closer to the sounds that Shakespeare heard when he was writing.”

Romeo and Juliet opens with a prologue that introduces the story that will be the “two hours traffic” on the stage. Only two hours? Isn’t all Shakespeare 4 hours long uncut? I tried to help dispel this myth with Hamlet, and those who think it’s a 5 hour play, as an example. It’s not 5 hours… at least it shouldn’t be.

I mentioned before I was working on a production of Richard III. The running time at the moment is a little over 3 hours — not including intermission — and it’s cut down a bit. Sure, Richard is a long play but that’s not why it’s running so long. It has to do with the speed of the speech. I’ll not rant about the production in general; the audiences seem to like the show, just not the length. Slow Shakespeare is a peeve of mine. Stop acting between the lines!

Shakespeare’s text is supposed to be spoken trippingly on the tongue, not languidly on the lips. I’ve harped on this string before, but “Harp on it still shall I till heart-strings break.” Because, of course, I don’t want to see or be a part of “bad Shakespeare” if I can help it.

I had the pleasure of meeting David Oyelowo at a screening of Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like It, he played Orlando in the film. In a sort of talk-back session he gave some excellently-phrased advice: “Know what you’re saying and talk as fast as you can.” Simple, isn’t it? Yes. Easy? No. Actors these days are all about making the words sound natural. There’s nothing natural about poetry! Nothing natural about theatre, either. We should always strive to be believable, not natural. Don’t be responsible for sound and fury that signifies nothing.

The speed of the text has a lot to do with that. Shakespeare’s plays (and most other classical works) are not natural everyday speech, it’s thought and action. When people criticize Shakespeare saying “nobody talks like that!” smack them. I mean, say, “That’s the point!” People think a lot faster than they speak, and if the verse is thought, then the words need to move a lot faster than natural speech.

The challenge is to know exactly what you’re saying, why you’re saying it, hit the right words, understand the rhetoric, and make the text clear at a fast pace. But when all that comes together you’ve got a heck of a performance. Why do you think Branagh is so good? He’s not a star for his good looks, I’ll tell you that much.

It’s worth noting at this point that verse needn’t always be spoken quickly. There are moments that can be slowed, there are even occasions for pauses (which Shakespeare may have written in — more on this another day). But in general, the text should be continuous stream of text. The rate may quicken, slow, and pause briefly, but it must flow.

On the page the characters seem loquacious, but on the stage they must be vivacious.