ABSTRACT
Because audio performances are like radio a “theatre of the imagination,” a small actorly choice can exert a relatively large influence over how we imagine the unfolding performance. This is particularly true of vocal quality and accent, one of the listener's primary guides to the nature of the characters, their relationships, and the social world they occupy. It is a misconception of the aural medium that it works to disembody actors and strip them of physical presence. Accent is one of the actor's most potent tools for projecting what Stephen Connors has called a “vocalic body,” the kind of body we are coaxed to imagine from myriad aural cues and the particular grain of the actor's native voice, a surrogate auditory-body that is gendered, classed, raced, sexualized, and aged in specific ways. This study will briefly examine the history of accent in audio performances, with special attention to the most prominent series—the Marlowe Society, Caedmon, Living Shakespeare, BBC, Naxos, and Arkangel. I will first venture some generalizations about changes in accents in these series, then turn to looking at certain characters who have been often been performed with non-standard accents: Falstaff, Shylock, Othello, and Caliban.
