Shakespeare in the Original Pronunciation

Paul Meier, a theater professor at the University of Kansas, had his students this semester stage the first-ever American rendition of a Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in its original pronunciation.

According to The History Blog, there have only been “three other productions of original pronunciation (OP) Shakespeare before this one, 2 at The Globe theater in London, and 1 at Cambridge in the 1950s.”

The students worked with David Crystal, a linguist and the author of Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment. Crystal worked on a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Globe Theater in London.

You can listen to audio from the Globe performance and watch some video from the student production at KU.