Books, Arts & Manners: Shakespeare without Tears

Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing raises some interesting and important questions that go beyond the specifics of this enterprise. Thus it seems to me that no matter what they do, American actors will never equal British ones in Shakespeare, at the very least because they have not the right language. British English has a melody; American English has not. More precisely, British English is like classical music; American English is like a marching band.

I am, of course, aware that Shakespeare’s own English sounded more or less like that still spoken in parts of West Virginia, and not at all like the “high” English my generation associates with Oxford, the Old Vic, and the BBC. No matter: once you have gone forward with linguistic evolution, there is no turning back—at least no turning back with impunity.

JS

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John Simon

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Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing raises some interesting and important questions that go beyond the specifics of this enterprise. Thus it seems to me that no matter what they do, American actors will never equal British ones in Shakespeare, at the very least because they have not the right language. British English has a melody; American English has not. More precisely, British English is like classical music; American English is like a marching band.

I am, of course, aware that Shakespeare’s own English sounded more or less like that still spoken in parts of West Virginia, and not at all like the “high” English my generation associates with Oxford, the Old Vic, and the BBC. No matter: once you have gone forward with linguistic evolution, there is no turning back—at least no turning back with impunity.