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Shakespeare's Original Pronunciation

By: William Shakespeare
Narrated by: Ben Crystal, Philip Bird, Rebecca Pownell, Natalie Thomas, Benjamin O'Mahony, Matthew Mellalieu, Colin Hurley
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Publisher's summary

How did Shakespeare sound to the audiences of his day? For the first time, this audio offers listeners the chance to hear England's greatest playwright performed by a company of actors using the pronunciation of his time.

Under the guidance of Ben Crystal, actor, author of Shakespeare on Toast, and an expert in original Shakespearian pronunciation, the company performs some of Shakespeare's best-known poems, solo speeches, and scenes from the plays. Hear new meanings uncovered, new jokes revealed, poetic effects enhanced. An essential purchase for every student and lover of Shakespeare.

Public Domain (P)2012 The British Library Board
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What listeners say about Shakespeare's Original Pronunciation

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Shakespeare Done Right

If you could sum up Shakespeare's Original Pronunciation in three words, what would they be?

Enjoyable, Well Done

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

The various narrators did a good job of acting as they recited the lines. You can almost picture them on stage.

Any additional comments?

Even if you are not interested in the original pronunciation, these are particularly well done and enjoyable to listen to.

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4 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars

Fascinating

Shakespeare is hard enough with a play in front of me. I have a hard time following the changes in dialect which have happened in this presentation. It sounds more like Dutch than English.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

I want more of this!

I've spent many hours reading material printed around 1600 and those works have come to mean a lot to me. The spellings make more sense now.

I would LOVE to have more of this. Whole plays, all the sonnets. Hell, there was a ton of literature printed at the time. They could read recipe books or a treatise on farming and I'd listen to the whole thing.

I hope to eventually hear OP in my head when I read Elizabethan and early Jacobean literature.

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8 people found this helpful