SHAKESPEARE'S PRONUNCIATION 
the Irish and this has been particularly noticeable 
among those who prided themselves on the fact that 
they could pronounce this English tongue of ours 
properly. A very interesting reversal of such opin- 
ion in the matter has come in recent years among 
those in touch with scholarly advance in knowledge 
of the history of English. For linguistic research 
has served to bring out very clearly the fact that so 
far from the characteristic Irish pronunciation,— 
which is usually called the Irish brogue, perhaps 
because it seemed to contemptuous critics to be as 
coarse as the shoes which the Irish wear—having 
been invented by the Irish themselves, it represents 
quite literally the old-fashioned pronunciation of 
English which used to be universal among the edu- 
cated. This mode of speech proves to be the way 
that many of the English classic authors spoke in 
their time. Indeed only a comparatively little study 
is needed to show very clearly that the Irish brogue 
is really a preservation of the Elizabethan method 
of pronouncing English, which has come down to 
a great degree unchanged in Ireland from Shake- 
speare’s time. There is no easier way to get an 
adequate idea of just how Shakespeare and his con- 
temporaries spoke this English tongue of ours than 
to listen to two reasonably educated Irishmen who 
come from some country place in Ireland talk Eng- 
lish. The sounds they utter are almost exactly those 
which Shakespeare was accustomed to hear in his 
day and which he was accustomed to utter when he 
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