First published 2022
Wilhelm Viëtor takes readers into the world of Elizabethan England, where Shakespeare's plays rang out in accents we would barely recognize today. Through careful linguistic detective work, Viëtor reconstructs the actual pronunciation of Shakespeare's era, revealing how words like "love" and "prove" once truly rhymed and why puns that seem forced to modern ears were clever wordplay to original audiences. His scholarly investigation uncovers the sound patterns that made Shakespeare's verse flow naturally for sixteenth-century listeners. Viëtor demonstrates how understanding historical pronunciation changes our experience of the plays, making previously hidden meanings visible and restoring the musical qualities that time has obscured. This work preserves crucial knowledge about how English sounded four centuries ago.
Genres: language, non-fiction, linguistics, academic
Vibes: thought-provoking
Tropes: scholarly-investigation
Setting: Elizabethan England
Period: 16th Century
196 pages · Hardcover · Legare Street Press