Elizabethan Accents in Philadelphia
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| William Shakespere |
The following is nearly verbatim recounting of a conversation which took place in Philadelphia, between two Philadelphians, in the year 2006, Elizabeth II reigning. The scene is the dressing room of the basement exercise area of a private club. There are about twenty stalls for members to hang up their clothes before going into the gym. Although clothes are usually seen hanging in no more than three or four stalls, on this particular day there was only one empty stall, at the far end of the long corridor.
FIRST STRANGER: Well, we certainly seem to have a lot of athletes in the club, today.
SECOND STRANGER: You're very generous with your description of our members.
FIRST STRANGER: Perhaps I ought to call them athlete-wannabees.
SECOND STRANGER: Yes, that might be more appropriate.
(Exeunt)
Shakespeare would have expressed it a little better, but anyone can recognize in this little exchange, the elements of those short interlude scenes in Shakespearean plays. The bit players create brief background while the stagehands shift scenery between major acts. Nobody actually has an Elizabethan accent these days, but in Quaker and Upper-Crust Philadelphia circles, the Elizabethan manner of speaking pops out at odd moments, as a code way of asking strangers, "Are you a native Philadelphian? You sort of look like one." If the stranger doesn't seem to get the idea, well, let it pass.
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| Elizabeth I |
In the more remote sections of the Delmarva peninsula, it is claimed the natives often do speak in a pure Elizabethan accent. Somehow I am dubious of that, having listened for it over sixty years of travel in those regions. Rural Delaware talks with a softened version of a Southern accent, even softer than you hear in Tidewater Virginia. It's hard to believe that Marlowe and Shakespeare talked like that. But go into a roadside coffee shop and listen to the truck drivers joshing the waitress; it's not an accent but an Elizabethan manner of address that's very recognizable. They self-consciously stop talking that way when obvious strangers come in the shop.
Because of Dr. Samuel Johnson's dictionary, Shakespearean adjectives pepper English speech in all regions of the world. Johnson was a theater critic in his early days, and so when he needed familiar quotations to illustrate the words in his dictionary, he drew heavily from Shakespeare. William Shakespeare's tendency to invent likely vocabulary was thus enshrined by Johnson's dictionary as official language for the English-speaking world for centuries to come. Some quite uneducated farmers therefore have an unexpectedly elegant sound to their speech whenever these Shakespearean influences persist. But an accent? Hard to pick it out, if it's present.
Sam Johnson, who by the way was contemptuous of the American Revolution, also impresses on Philadelphia talk a set of one-liner mannerisms that can be quite useful in debate, such as in board and committee meetings. The Quaker habit of holding back until others have spoken gives an opportunity to consider and refine an apt phrase, then use it to good effect when discussion seems near conclusion. All of this comes from study of Boswell's biography of the old curmudgeon, mostly jotted down at the table in an Eighteenth century tavern, no doubt with a quill pen. To sit silently while others are excitedly shouting at each other eventually gives the curmudgeon a certain right to be heard, particularly when others are out of breath. Johnson had a signal that he had got his one-line epigram ready, everybody please be quiet. "Why, sir," he would rumble, and then the argument was about to get settled. The equivalent Quaker signal would be, "Well, it has always seemed to me..." And then, the meeting is over.
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