“With this lah-ern…”
“What?”
“With this lah-ern…You guys, this is my lah-ern.”
Ah Shakespeare and a Boston accent. Until you’ve experienced seeing a part of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” performed by a handful of townie-looking middle-aged men in Red Sox jerseys dropping Rs with that winter-toughened swagger, I don’t think you’ve actually experienced Shakespeare.
I have this habit where I have to read the written version of anything before I see it performed. I like to judge artistic license, and compare one artist’s version of a work with what I’ve imagined. So, knowing how I do things, I mapped what pieces of Shakespeare I would be watching and plowed through those works sitting on the couch with my mother’s heavy red collection of Shakespeare’s manuscripts. I have nearly overdosed on dear William this year, proudly power-reading through seven tragedies, comedies, and histories before seeing two different productions of Coriolanus, volunteering at six outdoor performances of “Twelfth Night, ” shoving the BBC’s “Hollow Crown” series into my DVD player more than twice, starting both Joss Whedon’s and Kenneth Branaugh’s versions of “Much Ado About Nothing” before giving up and finally seeing students perform it at Emerson, and tacking up the St. Crispin’s Day speech from “Henry V” in my office cubicle. It’s safe to say that I’m nearly on the verge of being Shakespeare-d out. Reading and watching, reading and listening, reading and interacting. Shakespeare has come so alive for me this past year. But it begs the question; is the Bard better written or spoken?
I remember the first Shakespearean work (if you could call it that) I set my hands on. It was an abridged version of “Romeo and Juliet” with some medieval-looking painting of a young girl and a young boy on a maroon hardcover. In hindsight, this was probably a huge disservice to Shakespeare and myself by being introduced to his work through someone’s opinion of what was important in his play and what wasn’t. Cracking the spine and seeing Shakespeare written out, I understood nothing. What was with the lines? Was I reading poetry? I was expecting written conversation, not this iambic pentameter foreign stuff with the funky non-existent rhyming scheme. What in the ever-lovin’ does “Wherefore” mean and why doesn’t it mean “where are you”? There’s no ‘u’ in honor. The way the play actually looked on paper hurt my head, and for an eight-year-old that wanted to read as much as she could as quickly as she could, I moved on, thinking adults were crazy for deeming something so ridiculously not-pretty a classic.
Even now, I find it takes quite a bit of effort to focus and understand what I’m reading when I sit with his work in my lap. I read a whole lot of everything, but its hard reading his words. The lines! The language! The funny stage directions! It takes twice as long to read a normal play because I have to stop and translate, reading one line then the liner notes then mentally translating what I’ve read both by the author and in the liner notes and rereading the original line over again…it makes my head spin. After decades of reading what I call “proper” writing (you know, where they obey the rules of grammar, syntax, and format; frankly, all the boring stuff I love as a wanna-be editor), it frustrates me to no end to see the disjointed lines, random apostrophes, and too many commas (how am I supposed to know what’s really a pause and what isn’t?).
Six years after picking up that awful abridged version, I was sitting in eighth-grade English and wouldn’t you know, we had moved on from F Scott Fitzgerald to “Romeo & Juliet.” We read it out loud as a class. I naturally volunteered because I fancy myself a good public speaker and I love hearing myself talk. And I remember the words flowing off my tongue like water. Spoken aloud, I suddenly understood. And hearing my classmates read these lines, I was in love.
Gone were the disjointed lines, the random apostrophes, and too many commas. Here was real poetry; the words flowed smoothly, everything was beautifully and effortlessly calculated, and the pauses left me time to analyze and experience this tragic story about two melodramatic teenagers. Grammar, syntax, and format all disappeared and I was left with this profound sense of being so close to something so…classic it that transcended structure. Hearing Shakespeare, I got it. I got why his work was legendary and timeless. There was something so lyrically simple while at the same time, so rhythmically complicated about hearing it spoken. It came alive. You can look at a skeleton all you want, understand the scaffolding that holds a body up, and even dig into the nuances of the science behind bone, but until a body has life in it- that which goes beyond tangible fact- it’s just material. And Shakespeare spoken aloud is life. So complicated and yet so simple when you think about it; hard to wrap you head around but so easy to sit down and soak it all in; structured by unforeseeable and bendable rules yet completely free of mandated preconceptions. Like…how does someone (anyone) have the wherewithal to create something that complex and that clean? I mean, that’s all certainly present when you flip through his manuscript, but it’s just that much more apparent when you don’t have to scan a page. It’s just like reading the sheet music to Mozart’s “Magic Flute” and hearing the aria by the Queen of the Night.
There’s been a debate over which Shakespeare sounds better: American or British. I think this takes into account cadence and pronunciation while (it seems to me) disregarding what’s called “original pronunciation” (what it would’ve sounded like when the play was actually written). The traditionalist in me loves hearing it spoken by the Brits because… well, I find British accents very attractive. But also because it feels like I’m listening to Shakespeare in his native language, how I imagine it would’ve been spoken to the rich and poor of late 1500’s London (despite knowing that it was not). It makes his work more palatable and treasured because his genius is so rare and being in America, a good British accent is scarce. To go back to my pal Wolfy, it would be like hearing the Magic Flute performed in its original German as opposed to English. However, hearing Shakespeare spoken by Americans makes it more relevant. Almost as if it doesn’t matter how rare his genius is, Shakespeare himself was a pretty common guy. Without getting too much into the philosophy of accents and their parallels to Shakespeare’s work, I think what it really comes down to whether or not you understand what’s being said. The great thing about Master Shakespeare is that it doesn’t matter what accent you hear it in; what does matter is that you hear it, that you experience the performance of it. I’ve seen the same works performed with both accents and both sound amazing because of what was written, those actual words on paper. The fruit of the struggle of reading his words is thoroughly enjoyed when hearing those same words aloud. It wasn’t until I heard a handful of townie-looking middle-aged men in Red Sox jerseys dropping Rs that I realized that.
Aside: Shakespeare was a hired player so he knew the value of a script and how important spoken word was. I think he just added the iambic pentameter in there to fuck with us.
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