French Pronunciation and Accents in Shakespeare

[alexxkay]

(I wrote this up in an email to a list of folks who've just started working on a _Henry V_ production. It occurred to me that some people who read this LJ might have useful/interesting input as well.)

I noticed at the read-through that lots of us have lines in French, but
are unclear on how to pronounce them. Certain other cast members offered
helpful corrections, but the more I think about it, the less convinced I
am that those corrections were, necessarily, correct.

There are at least three different 'French accents' we could consider:
A) How a modern Frenchman pronounces French
B) How a Frenchman in Shakespeare's time pronounced French
C) How a typical Englishman of Shakespeare's time pronounced French

I'm quite sure that A and C are very different, and I suspect that A and B
are pretty disjoint as well. I'm no expert on French in any period, but
I've read lots of period primary sources which mention French city names,
and they are clearly quite different from modern French pronunciation;
"Calais", which is now pronounced Call-ay, shows up in period English
books as "Callis" or "Callice".

In the scene with Pistol and the French Soldier, Pistol mistakes "moi" for
"moy" and "bras" for "brass". These mistakes are not very plausible if
the FS's pronunciation is in accent A.

I don't currently have a facsimile of Henry V handy, but I'm really
curious how Shakespeare spells the French dialogue therein. How much is
phonetically spelled (as he does with the funny-accent English), and how
much is 'correct'? Have 20th century editors 'corrected' his French to be
consistent with modern spelling?

Finally, of course, there's the question of what *we* are going to do
about French pronunciation in our production. Would researching and using
period pronunciations of French be worth the effort? Would it alienate
the audience, or be a cool educational element?

Comments

[negothick.livejournal.com]

AH, great minds think alike!

I suspect that Calais Maine has been pronounced that way since it was founded in the 18th century, because that's how its English founders pronounced it. I don't know how the pronunciation was received by French-speakers on either side of the border at that time--or now. One website speculates that the founder, Colonel Jacob Davis, named this town and Montpelier, Vermont in tribute to France's aid in the Revolutionary War--but didn't speak French. I think he pronounced the two names as he had heard them.

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

Not just great minds, but ours. Here's what I wrote on the actors list, before looking at this thread:

"What's the use of teaching boys to say Kikero when for the rest of their lives, they'll say Sissero, or say it at all?"

Sorry, I couldn't resist. :) But really, I'm for doing an accent that our audience will accept. That is not limited to the French one, btw, but the Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Latin, and for that matter, English accents as well. When we had an English visitor for one of the Lear rehearsals, she was fascinated to hear a Shakespearean play done with American accents. As we're not going to go very far to reformulate our accents into Elizabethan English, I think time should be spent on a period French accent only insofar as it floats the actor's boat, and helps them get a hook into the material.

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

"...time should be spent on a period French accent only insofar as it floats the actor's boat, and helps them get a hook into the material."

or, you know, insofar as it is funny... :-)

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

"You mean you could speak medieval french at any time?"

"Not at an time, only when it is funny."