ext_100347 ([identity profile] dreda.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] alexxkay 2009-02-09 04:51 pm (UTC)

Likewise, Falstaff has a lovely pun on reason/raisin in one of the Henry 4's that no longer exists, to pluck out another example. I would cheerfully conduct a whole play in the proper pronunciation, but I think that it would have a vanishingly small audience - I've done scenes in EME pronunciation before and it really is a specialist's kind of geekery.

(It is my kind of geekery, to be sure, especially since it cuts both ways - French spoofing English, English spoofing French or German.)

It is indeed also true that the questions for singing are different for spoken drama - however, the text I reference above is one of the standard and easily accessible resources for period pronunciations of various languages in any circumstance, and I assumed that some of the question-posing was rooted in just wanting to know what an answer might be, even if it never made it to the stage.

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