Ok, first off elctrictroy, please don't think that I'm being arguementative here, I honestly think this is a very interesting conversation. I looked over Dr. Lerer's site and didn't see much, but I assume you've purchased some of his products and have listened to them. Note that he is an expert in CHAUCER, whose name I've already identified with your position. The problem still remains that the dialect of Chaucer was 250-300 years before the performances of Shakespeare. Would you say that the American dialect, or any other, remained unchanged for that span of time? Of course not. The problem with dialect is that it must be written that way. Consider the work of Twain or Steinbeck. They wrote dialect that was unmistakable, it was read the way it was written. That being said, Shakespeare wrote plays. Who's to say what "accent" was used when performed. Was Macbeth done with a Scottish accent? Was the Merchant of Venice done with an Italian accented English? All we have to go by is what is on the page and, when pronounced as written, the iambic pentameter rhyme scheme always works as written. I still assert that you may have been led into a less accepted viewpoint by a professor with an interesting theory, but just that, a theory.
