From: thorntn@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Duncan Peter G. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Accents (was Re: COVINGTON CROSS)
Date: 28 Aug 92 19:09:49 GMT
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

In <betel.715014583@camelot> betel@camelot.bradley.edu (Robert Crawford) writes:

>Bill Thomas <bt16+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:

>>from the rich, give to the poor" idea caught on. Anyway, Robin would
>>have spoken some form of early English, but it would have been
>>unintelligible to us. So, Costner's accent was as historically accurate
>>as anyone's in the film -- which is to say, NO ONE's accent was even
>>close to being right. Actually, the single most inaccurate accent in the
>>film was that of Alan Rickman. NO WAY would the Sheriff of Nottingham
>>have spoken anything other than French. Of course, Rickman is generally
>>credited as the only one who spoke with a correct accent. Hooray for
>>Hollywood! 

>	At the time that Robin Hood:POT came out, I was dating an
>English major who had spent some extra time concentrating on Old
>English. She and I came up with the same conclusion: the only reason
>people had to complain is that there weren't more French accents.
>	Of course, try explaining to 99% of the population why Robin
>Hood sounded like he was Appalachia and the other nobles sounded like
>they just came over from France...

Oh, well, as far as that goes I'm a grad student in English who has
spent some extra time concentrating on Old and Middle English. My
complaint is not that Kevin Costner and Covington Cross didn't have
authentic accents for their time. I don't mind Shakespeare with
American accents one bit. My complaint is that they were using lousy
attempts at a modern English accent as if that was somehow more
authentic - and that their chief method of trying to sound more
English (dropping Rs to get "farmah" rather than "farmer," say)
resulted in an accent that not only sounded stupid (like no one, past
or present, has ever spoken), but was substantially less authentic
than it would have been if they had left their accents alone, or, as
did the Hollywood stars of yore, simply tried to speak with more
variations in pitch. (Lots of Hollywood stars in the 30s and 40s
seemed able to go between British and American roles without changing
their accents at all.)

To sum up: Covington Cross had many annoying accents because a) they
were trying to be more authentic by sounding English, and b) they were
doing a very lousy job of it that made them sound even less authqentic
than they would have without trying to sound English in the first
place.

Don't tell me the accents are that way on purpose: I know some of the
actors on Covington Cross went from the plane to the set without
having had time to work on their accents; I know Kevin Costner only
had a day to work on his accent (and was quite unhappy with it). The
problem, in both cases, isn't that the accents are inauthentic
(although they are, in fact, less authentic as representations of
Middle English than either a modern British or American accent) but
that they are lousy, and the results of the same laziness and poor
preparation obvious in a lot of the rest of the production.

Now, we can say that whether their historical analogues would have
spoken Middle English or Norman French, there's no reason to expect
them to sound modern English at all, and I agree: there's no reason
they shouldn't sound American, just like they did in _Amadeus_.  It's
a little jarring, since the usual convention in historical films or
costume dramas is that accents are represented either by modern
British accents or by modern accents of the country in which the film
is set (so you will sometimes hear two characters talking, both of
whom are supposed to be 17th C. French, but one of whom sounds French
and one English), but it's not a convention that makes a lot of sense,
so I don't care. But there's certainly no reason either historically
or artistically for them to sound like modern Americans who have
trouble with their Rs... The reason is incompetence and laziness.

- Corwyn of Lincoln


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Duncan Thornton                           thorntn@ccu.umanitoba.ca