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

[oakleaf-mirror.livejournal.com]

“the natives of Calais, Maine, pronounce the name 'callous,' even with francophones right across the border. I do not know how the francophones across the border pronounce it (and now I'm mildly curious)”

I can't speak to the how the francophones over the border pronounce it, but I can tell you the anglophones over the border think that pronunciation is pretty darn funny. In Nova Scotia, we got our american networks on cable in the form of their Bangor, ME, affiliates. Mentions of Calais were often met with snickering (while at the same time acknowledging that it was correct, in that it was the dominant local pronunciation). If you wanted belly laughs, you had to wait for the community announcements when they mentioned an upcomming ceilidh (which they called a "sell-ih-dah").