Original pronunciation (also known as “OP” or “Shakespeare’s pronunciation”) is the concept of understanding, performing or listening to Shakespeare’s works as they would have been spoken during Shakespeare’s time.

Original Pronunciation (OP) is a dialect full of weak forms. Small words, such as pronouns, when they aren’t stressed, are replaced with schwas (an unstressed vowel) and “h”s are dropped. “Hour” was pronounced “or” so we would hear: “from hour to hour we ripe and ripe and then from hour to hour, we rot and rot; and thereby hangs a tale.”