featuring Roger Gross, University of Arkansas

[The following are edited excerpts of postings on VASTAVOX initiated as a result of an inquiry into the correct pronunication of Petruchio.]

[In response to methods used to determine the pronunciation of Petruchio.] The first relied on tradition, what the writer had heard actors say. This is an unreliable basis. Good actors have been making terrible mistakes in pronunciation for almost two hundred years. When we lost our knowledge of the blank verse system, we started drifting randomly in our pronunciation. Only recently have we recovered our understanding of ShakespeareÕs verse practice and it has allowed the publication of reliable pronunciation books for the first time. The best now available is Dale F. Coye, pronouncing ShakespeareÕs Words, Greenwood Press, 1998. Before that, it was Helge KokeritzÕ ShakespeareÕs Pronunciation, Yale UP, 1953. I hope the pronunciation info in my forthcoming Speaking ShakespeareÕs Verse will be even better.

The second writer went to an Italian speaker for the answer. Interesting but irrelevant. Neither Shakespeare nor any other English person I have heard had any interest in how the barbarians from Italy, Spain, or France pronounced their words. IÕve often suspected that there is an unwritten British law requiring them to pronounce foreign words differently from the native speakers. (IÕm still haunted by memories of the BBC newsreaders during the civil war in Nicaragua who told us of the trouble in NICK-uhr-AAG-you-uh.) As it happens, Shakespeare did pick up the one-syllable IO from the ItaliansÑand very little else.

Here is an example of the extreme differences which come up and the errors we make when we rely on native speakers as models. In Henry V, we find a character who in modern editions of Shakespeare is called DAUPHIN. Many directors and actors, with enough French to know that the French say doh-FAN (nasalized 2nd syll), speak the name that way. There are two strong evidences that this is inappropriate: in the earliest texts, Shakespeare actually called the character DOLPHIN [and;] a metrical analysis of the lines in which the name appears shows that the name requires emphasis on the 1st syllable.

Here are two more unexpected examples of ShakespeareÕs foreign-name pronunciation: the town the Italians call MILANO, and we call mih-LANN or mee-LAHN, Shakespeare pronounced MIL-uhn.

The only reliable evidence we have for the pronunciation of most of ShakespeareÕs words comes from the rhythms of the lines and from his rhymes. His vowel sounds are pretty much unrecoverable. We can locate many words which we can confidently say share vowel sounds but we can only approximate the actual sounds. The number of syllables and the emphasis patterns are recoverable and they are crucial to the verse. Americans (and often British) tend to add syllables to Shakespeare promiscuously and usually end up turning his wonderful verse to prose.

[On verse variations] Well, if you mean that ShakespeareÕs favorite variation of the blank verse line is the so-called feminine ending, an eleventh syllable, relatively unemphatic, at the end of the line, I agree. If you mean that there are sometimes feet within the line which have three syllables, that just isnÕt so. If it seems so . . . you are almost certainly giving some word one more syllable than Shakespeare did. Which is a very popular thing to do.

There is plenty of evidence for this. . . . We prepare ourselves to make these assertions by doing a metrical analysis of the entire cannon, and an analysis of the other major writers of ShakespeareÕs time, and the minor writers, and the songs of the time, and the critical works of all those who wrote on verse during ShakespeareÕs timeÑand before and after. It has taken me twenty-some years and IÕm not finished yet. I take comfort (and brazenness) from knowing that the other scholars who have spent their lives on these questions are in agreementÑnot on all issues but on these basics. Please believe me when I say that I am feeling less pompous and dogmatic as I write this than I fear it will read.

. . . [And] all this metrical analysis has revealed: no anapest, no dactyls. . . .

(Disclaimer: there are a few hundred corrupt lines in the corpus which no one can scan acceptably. They drive me crazy.) I would like to convince you that any idea which doesnÕt work in practice is an unsound idea. I truly believe I could lead you to prefer the lines spoken as I am saying they should be, if we got together. I find they all give up their meaning more fully when spoken according to ShakespeareÕs rhythms.

[It has been] implied that one needs to choose between Ôacademic correctnessÕ and Ôclarity.Õ I deny such a distinction. Any academic conclusions which donÕt enhance the clarity and power of a production are unsound conclusions. One of the things I have learned over these 20-some years of research and the 38 productions of Shakespeare IÕve directed is that the righter I get the verse, the better everything else works. Shakespeare knew what he was doing.

[In response to challenging lines submitted by voxers to be normalized.] I think I need to lay out a few basic principles first. An inappropriate definition of iambic pentameter is a verse line of 10 or 11 syllables with alternately light and heavy emphasis.” This definition has led many metrical analysts to conclude that Shakespeare didn’t actually write many iambic pentameter lines. It has also caused too many actors to give unbearably clunky readings. It has caused even more actors to give up on the verse and to speak the text as prose, not by choice but by default.

Here is an appropriate definition (that is, one which actually describes what the blank verse writers were doing): “iambic pentameter is a verse line made of five iambic feet. An iamb is a verse foot composed of two syllables, the first relatively less emphatic than the second.” The ‘relatively’ is extremely important. It makes all the difference.

Imagine our verse lines as describable in terms of ten possible degrees of emphasis (1 = least emphatic; 10 = most emphatic). A line spoken with an emphasis pattern of

1, 2 / 1, 2 / 1, 2 / 1, 2 / 1, 2

is a perfect stock iambic pentameter line. It has no heavy
emphases. A line spoken with an emphasis pattern of

9, 10 / 9, 10 / 9, 10 / 9, 10 / 9, 10

is a perfect stock iambic pentameter line. It has ten heavy emphases. A line spoken with an emphasis pattern of

1, 2 / 3, 4 / 5, 6 / 7, 8 / 9, 10

is a perfect stock iambic pentameter line. It has five heavy emphases and five light but they don’t alternate.

This last line is an exaggerated example of one of Shakespeare’s most common patterns. I call it the Cascade, a phrase of steadily building emphasis, usually four or six syllables long. A foot spoken with an emphasis of 2, 2.01 is an iamb. In fact, human perception strategies will cause a foot of two equally emphatic syllables (as might be measured by some technological device) to be perceived as an iamb when it is spoken in the context of iambic verse. This definition (which is the only one that fits the actual verse) makes the idea of pyrrhic and spondaic feet meaningless. We just don’t hear pyrrhics or spondees as such.

A single verse line does not contain enough information to allow us to scan it. We can only be confident about the rhythm of a line when we know enough about the relevant context. In Shakespeare’s case, the relevant context includes all of his verse lines, the lines of his contemporaries, what was said about verse in his time, and the work of the reformer orthographers of his time who, in trying to regularize spelling, gave us much of the most solid information we have about the rhythms of pronunciation in Shakespeare’s time.

We scan the whole corpus in order to scan any given line with confidence. I’m sure I drive people crazy saying “but Shakespeare doesn’t do that” or “that’s the way he pronounces that word.” My only justification is that I have studied the context and unmistakable patterns have emerged.

The two problems which most often throw people off in their efforts to scan Shakespeare are 1) that they pronounce his words according to modern norms and 2) they have modern habits of emphasis which don’t match Shakespeare’s. We need to learn his pronunciation habits and we need to allow the iambic form to tell us which syllables get relatively more or less emphasis rather than projecting our habits on his verse.

. . . What [do] I mean by ‘corrupt’ lines. I definitely don’t mean the ones Will wrote while drunk. Those are some of his best. The corruptions I’m talking about are errors in transmission of the text. Elizabethan/Jacobean typesetters made plenty of mistakes for which there is strong evidence. When a verse line simply doesn’t fit any of the patterns of Shakespeare’s verse practice and/or just won’t make sense and when it is the kind of error we have found often before, I feel safest in guessing that the line as we have it is corrupt. (Actually, if you read any of the modern editions of Shakespeare, you will be reading hundreds of words that have already been corrected by editors. Many still remain.) You can only bang your head against the wall so many times, trying to make metrical sense of an irregular line.

We need to follow the scientific standards of Elegance and Parsimony which warn us not to multiply our assumptions and remind us that the simplest and most broadly applicable theory is to be preferred. I don’t call every non-stock line corrupt. Shakespeare had a standard set of variations from the stock line. They were his tools for creating rhythmic excitement. However, I don’t feel safe in saying that an anomaly is a purposeful variation unless I have seen it many times used meaningfully.

Shakespeare’s most common variation is the “feminine ending.” His next most common is the inverted foot (I find that name more useful than calling it a trochee; it suggests its function more clearly). The short line (usually used to generate special attention at the beginning or end of a major speech; usually from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 feet) is the next most common. The next, I think, is the Silent Beat in midline.

There are a few more which he uses rarely. But dactyls and spondees are not among his variations. Where you might be tempted to declare a dactyl or a spondee, there is always a more Elegant and Parsimonious explanation.

Here are some other things which throw our scansion efforts off. There are hundreds of contractions in Shakespeare which are not typographically indicated, especially in modern editions. It is clear that the indication of contractions was random. Again I am inclined to blame the typographers.
Remember that they had to read a line in the very difficult secretary hand, remember it while they picked each letter out of the box of type and fitted each letter into the type frame. It’s no wonder that auditory memory was imperfect and led to many approximations of what they had read.

Consider, any time you see “I am” or “I have” or “I would” or similar phrases, that they should be contracted to “I’m”, “I’ve,” or “I’d” (or as the texts have it when they do indicate contractions, “I’ld”). If the line doesn’t seem to scan, look for an unnoticed contraction.

There are thousands of words in Shakespeare which, when compared to our pronunciation, seem to be “elisions.” I’ll call them that, even though I believe that to Shakespeare these were normal pronunciations and our pronunciations would seem to be “expansions.” The most common is the “medial-vowel elision,” the omission of a vowel sound which falls between two consonants. It’s what we do when we say EHV-ree instead of EH-vuh-ree.

Here are some examples: Salisbury (2 elisions, both the i and the u pronounced SALZ-bree); Dangerous is usually DAYNJ-russ; Sufferance is SUHF-ruhnce; Stolen is usually STOHLN (and in the original texts is usually spelled STOLNE; General is almost always JEHN-ruhl (but then, that’s the way most of us say it now); Several is almost always SEHV-ruhl. You get the idea. It really hurts the rhythm if you speak those extra syllables. When a line won’t scan without dactyls or anapests, search for an overlooked elision.

One of Shakespeare’s most common practices is what I call “the Last-Word Variation.” Shakespeare was very concerned that his audience should feel the beginning and end of lines. He would hate our typical practice of running lines on in such a way that one loses track of the lineform and hears the words as prose.

One of his ways of strengthening line ends (and the important ideas he placed there) was this variation: many words, when they hold the last position in a verse line are given one more syllable than they normally get. All words ending in -ion get the last-word variation, also -ious words and -uous and -io, -ia, -eo. Grumio is always GROOM-yoh, Gremio always GREM-yoh, Tranio always TRAN-yoh, Romeo always ROHM-yoh except when they appear as the last word in a line (Romeo is rare in that it also gets the long form once at a full stop in mid-line; it’s a mid-line stop that should be as important and “final” as a line end.) There are many more diphthongs in Shakespeare than you may think.

[I’ve been] asked about two lines from an Imogen speech in Cymbeline, 4.2:

This bloody man, the care on’t. X I hope I dream;
and
And cook to honest creatures. X But ’tis not so.

This is a wonderful example of what I think is Shakespeare’s fourth most common variation: The Silent Beat. This scene is so intense and Imogen is tossed so abruptly from thought to thought, from feeling to feeling, that Will uses it twice in three lines.

The Silent Beat is used at moments of high intensity to indicate (or allow for) an abrupt change. It might be a moment of emotional impact, or a moment of realization, or when an unexpected entry or exit occurs which changes the situation in a big way. Sometimes it is there to cue and cover a crucial piece of business.

As a director, I tell my actors to maintain the integrity of the verse line by allowing the silence to be whatever length a spoken syllable would have been at that moment, in that situation. I feel it is necessary for the omitted syllable to be replaced by a major physicalization of the sudden impact. We should almost hear it.

The presence of the Silent Beat usually extends the line to six or six and a half feet, sometimes more. Six feet in both of these lines from Cymbeline. The X in these lines was put there by me, of course. It is my way of indicating the
Silent Beat in the performance editions I create for every Shakespeare I direct. (These are versions which I edit in a way that makes it possible for an actor, with one evening of training, to know what the verse rhythms require of the actor. I re-spell or mark the words in such a way that their length and emphasis patterns are visible.)

Here is another example of the Silent Beat for which the necessary subtext/behavior is clear; (from Romeo and Juliet):

Murder’d her kinsman. X O, tell me friar, tell me: (6.5 ft.)

The Silent Beat in this case is the moment at which Romeo draws his dagger in preparation for suicide. Here is another example (Cordelia in Lear):

Cordelia leaves you. X I know you what you are. (6 ft.)

Cordelia begins to leave, then, at the Silent Beat, stops abruptly, turns to her sisters and speaks with complete candor. So it seems to me. As a director, I find this kind of indicator very useful. The Silent Beat makes such moments more powerful.

. . . [I am asked] about the Leontes lines from Winter’s Tale, 1.2, 284 ff. This is indeed a strange set of rhythms. Leontes is out of his skull with anger and pain. It is safe to generalize that the more agitated the character is, the more erratic (i.e., variation-filled) the verse. There are few moments of agitation greater than this.

The twelve line sequence beginning with “Is leaning cheek to cheek? . . .” has 3 inversions, 8 feminine endings (5 lines in a row; very rare), and five Silent Beats. Wow! The lengths of the Silent Beat lines are 7ft., 6, 5, 6.5, 6.5. That’s probably a record for variations. You won’t find many moments in Shakespeare this irregular. It’s the great extent of the irregularity that makes each irregularity more convincing. I use this speech in my Acting Shakespeare class as a “tirade exercise.” If you get the rhythm right, Leontes’ mental state will be apparent.

There are a few other things in this speech which might throw a modern reader off. It is mid-NIGHT, not MID-night; it is bo-HEEM-yuh, not bo-HEE-mee-UH; it is KUHV-ring, not KUH-vuhr-ING. These are all standard in Shakespeare.

[In response to if he has considered publishing his notated performance editions.] I think about it all the time, but I just haven’t found the time to hustle the publishers. I will do it before too long. In the meantime, if you do a show I have edited, I’ll be happy to send you a copy of my version (if it is one I’ve finished).

Also, if you ever have a question about the scansion of a line or a speech, feel free to ask me. I’ll have an opinion, that’s for sure.

* * *

Modesty may not be something which one would ordinarily accuse Roger Gross of, but he is being very modest in this discussion in not letting you know that he founded and ran for several years in the 60's a wonderful Shakespeare Co. called the California Shakespeare Co. (in Santa Clara and later a second theatre in Los Gatos). That theatre might still be running today if it weren’t that it became so popular that it opened a second theatre—and financial difficulties happened as a result. I had the privilege of working with that Co. for a season, and other alumni of the original California Shakespeare Co. include David Ogden Stiers, David Dukes, and Joan Schirle (one of the founders and directors of the Dell Arte Co. in northern Calif.). I’m sure he can recall many other names as well of alumni who went on to careers in professional theatre. Roger’s combination of scholarship and practical theatre know-how were among the reasons for the theatre’s success and the success of many of its alumni.

Carol Pendergrast, East Carolina University

POETRY AND PROSE ON THE TOPIC

To help his young son, Derwent, remember the most common metrical feet, Coleridge wrote the following verse:

Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long;
With a leap and a bound the swift anapaests throng.

“In any poet’s poem, the shape is half the meaning.”

Louis MacNeice

“To young people studying for the stage I say, with all solemnity, leave blank verse alone until you have experienced emotion deep enough to crave for poetic expression, at which point verse will seem an absolutely natural and real form of speech to you. Meanwhile if any pedant with an uncultivated heart and a theoretic ear proposes to teach you to recite, send instantly for the police."

George Bernard Shaw

Above postings from Paula Langton, Boston University

Iambic meter bounces thus
Trochees do it backward
Spondees beat lines down
Anapestical meter just bounces along
Dactyls are finally backwardly anapests.

Source Unknown.

Posted by Eric Armstrong, Roosevelt University

SUGGESTED READINGS ON THE TOPIC

I . . . have a reference for you: Gert Ronberg’s A way with WORDS: The language of English Renaissance Literature, ISBN 0-340-49307-0 (Edward Arnold pub.). In chapter 1, Ronberg treats Sounds and Spellings with 12
subheadings: “A as in have”, “A as in swan”, “A as in shall”, “A as in haste”, “Er as in serve and clerk”, etc. Most of these are based on rhymes. She also includes some on endings, stress, and spellings.

Eric Armstrong, Roosevelt University

I have written a new pronunciation dictionary for Shakespeare’s names called Shakespeare’s Names: A New Pronunciation Dictionary. The release of this was somewhat delayed, it was to come out last year. But it is now within weeks of publication. If you would like to order a copy you can do so through any bookstore, or contact the publisher directly: Drama Publishers, 260 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, 10001. (212) 725-5377 or email info@quitespescificmedia.com

Louis Colaianni, University of Missouri, Kansas City

Shakespeare’s Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation by Cerignani.

Posted by Kathleen Campbell, Austin College

. . . May I suggest a text by Edward S. Brubaker, entitled Shakespeare Aloud. It is published by the author, copyright 1976.

Barry Kur, Penn State University

. . . The best thing I have found is a wonderful book by George T. Wright, called Shakespeare’s Metrical Art (University of California Press, 1988.) I recommend it to anyone who wants to sharpen their understanding of iambic pentameter (and their ability to coach actors in clear and effective work with the verse.)

Ellen O’Brien, Guilford College