I would like to hear how people spoke English in Shakespeare's time..... know any online resources/videos?

Question

I know it sounds nothing like English today, and some people (linguists) do know how it would probably have sounded...... Is there an internet site where I can hear it?

Answer 1

Try searching one of Shakespeare's plays on You Tube.  "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for example comes up with multiple enactments of the play and I'm sure any of the others will be just as popular (aka. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello etc...) Also if you want to hear the language out loud, most of Shakespeare's plays have been turned in to movies (Hollywood style and a few BBC's), that should be available in extracts on You Tube, or at your local video store.  Some examples of popular movies are "Othello" and "A mid-summer nights dream".  Also the movie "Shakespeare in love" is pretty representative of the language and society at the time, and isn't actually based on any of Shakespeare's plays, so might give you a better idea of the day to day language used.

Answer 2

Find a copy of the 1st Bible called "The King James Version".  If you can even understand it, that will be as close (in my opinion) as Shakespeare's time.

Answer 3

Here is a 5 min clip of a play performed at Shakespeare's Globe in what is believed to be the original pronunciation.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...

Edit:  Here is a link to a bbc news story that explains all about the above performance:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment...