A note on my own recordings

You need to treat these judiciously. The texts were read in a single take, so there are bound to be occasional inconsistencies. They are also extremely pedestrian, as I was aiming to capture the qualities of individual sounds and not trying for a dramatic performance.

As the book makes clear, there were several variations in pronunciation current in Shakespeare’s time, and I had to make choices, always in collaboration with the director/performer. An example is the pronunciation of initial /h/, which one might keep or drop - the effect to modern ears will be quite different. Note also that there are some changes over time, as I gained more experience of hearing the accent used on stage. In particular, the front vowels (of words like see and say) become a little more open.

I’m also providing the notes which I issued to the actors for the two Globe productions: see Romeo and Juliet notes and Troilus and Cressida notes. Sample transcriptions are also appended: see Troilus 1.1 transcription and Sonnet transcriptions. You will need the Times New Roman Phonetic font to read these, which you can download here.