This fall, Paul Meier, a theatre professor at the University of Kansas, is working with students to stage the first-ever American rendition of a Shakespeare play – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – in its original pronunciation. As The History Blog writes, there have only been “three other productions of original pronunciation (OP) Shakespeare before this one, 2 at The Globe theater in London, and 1 at Cambridge in the 1950s.” But this difficult project became possible when Meier and his students started working with David Crystal, a linguistics scholar who wrote Pronouncing Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press) in 2005. Prior to the KU production, Crystal consulted on a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Globe theatre on London’s South Bank (mentioned above), and you can listen to audio clips taken from that English performance right here.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Shakespeare in the Original Voice | Open Culture
