I Used to Talk Like William Shakespeare

Well, maybe.  Kind of.

I performed at the Renaissance Pleasure Faires (unfortunately now part of Renaissance Entertainment Corporation) in California (originally held in Calabasas and Novato, then later in Devore and Vacaville [and Gilroy after that]) for several years.  (You can read more about the history here.)  They were nominally set in the Elizabethan era (as in Queen Elizabeth I of England) in an English village, roughly in the 1580's.  When they started, there was a strong focus on history and education.  At some point that included trying to sound like Elizabethans theoretically would have sounded.

And that brings us to Basic Faire Accent (BFA).  I was told it was originally inspired by the actor Robert Newton and how he spoke when he portrayed the pirate Long John Silver in the 1950 movie version of Treasure Island.  Apparently he was told at some point to make the character sound distinctive, so he used the local West County accent, where he grew up in England.  And it stuck.  That's how everyone thinks pirates should sound.

But someone thought that's close to how regular people would have sounded in the 1500's, and BFA was built on that logic.  So when you worked at the Faire, you were taught BFA in pre-Faire workshops (yes, we took workshops to educate us on what life and people would have been like in the Elizabethan period; like I said, it was started with an educational focus).  A good breakdown from someone who used to work at the same faires can be found here.

As written there, the short "a" is one of the more distinctive sounds, because it is always like the "a" in "apple."  You never say it the way we pronounce that letter in the word "want" nowadays.  Short "e" and short "i" are pretty much how we say them now, though.

Our warm-up in the morning to get us in the right linguistic mindset was reciting the 23rd Psalm from the Bible.  Here's the beginning, as best as I can write it with the pronunciation.  Don't forget that all those short a's are as in apple!

Thee loord is muh-ee shep-herd, Uh-ee shall not want.
He me-keth mee to luh-ee do-oon in green pas-tyoors.
He lay-deth mee bee-suh-eed thee still wa-ters.
He re-stoor-eth muh-ee so-ool.
He lay-deth mee in the path of ruh-ee-tee-us-ness foor his nems sek.
Yay, tho-oo Uh-ee wak throo the va-lee oov thee sha-duh-oo oov dayth,
Uh-ee shall fair no ee-vil,
Foor thuh-oo art with mee.
Thuh-ee rood and thuh-ee staff thay coom-foort muh-ee.

Now, whether Shakespeare actually sounded like this, I don't know!  I haven't heard anyone refute that BFA is a reasonable approximation of how people spoke in that era.  But today is "National Talk Like Shakespeare Day", celebrated on the anniversary of his death, which gave me an opportunity to remember fondly my days of speaking in Basic Faire Accent.