“Look with Thine Ears:” Puns, Wordplay, and Original Pronunciation in Performance

What do contemporary audiences hear when they attend a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays, and how might this differ from the way it was received by an Elizabethan audience? This article examines how historical pronunciation can reveal new meanings in contemporary performance through the investigation of puns and double entrendre, and explores what modern practitioners might glean from an understanding of the listening practices of Elizabethans. As a culture that values literacy and attributes authority to the written word, to "look with thine ears" is not a practice with which we are readily familiar. How does one effectively communicate the more fluid understanding of words of Renaissance English, given that the modern audience is relatively unsophisticated in listening for wordplay in comparison to an early modern audience? And moreover, how might one communicate this in working with an audience used to a fixed meaning of words, and accustomed to the rules of standardization?