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"What's in a name?"
Romeo and Juliet
- II, 2
While
All the Words on Stage is explicitly a pronunciation dictionary,
there is another agenda behind the seemingly prescriptive notion
of the correct pronunciation of the Shakespearean vocabulary.
In presenting our work, we hope that it will stir a greater interest
on the part of actors and directors, as well as teachers and students,
in Shakespeare's handling of language. We believe that a deeper
understanding of Shakespeare's verse, specifically the rhythm
and variants of the iambic pentameter line, can aid actors in
their physical and psychological portrayals of his characters.
The suggested pronunciations in this dictionary reflect the interweaving
of word and rhythm produced by blank verse in its numerous variants…
In the past, editions of Shakespeare seem to have been created
for the reader rather than the actor. However, some editions,
like the Pelican, have included markings for stressed "ed" endings
in the texts, and others have noted the syllabic divisions of
a word in order to respect the rhythm of the verse. The third
edition of the Arden series emphasizes the performance aspects
of the plays in its introductory essays. Individual editors also
suggest pronunciations by including instances of words that elongate
(by the addition of a vowel) or shorten (by the deletion of a
vowel). There seems to be a growing interest in and attention
to the articulation of the plays and their relation to the verse
form…
We began this project with a list of words that we had heard actors
stumble over in the classroom or in rehearsal. We then added character
names, as well as proper, geographic, and mythological names,
and included words that seemed unfamiliar to a sampling of undergraduates,
graduate students and professional actors. The final step was
the inclusion of words that are changed and altered by the play
of the iambic pentameter line. Numerous dictionaries proved invaluable
for the determination of the pronunciation of words in prose.
The scansion of the verse line was the final arbiter for words
in verse…
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