Ay up! King Richard III's accent was more Yorkshire than posh, scientists say

By: dailymail Posted On: September 29, 2024 View: 124

Published: 06:47 EDT, 26 September 2024 | Updated: 06:31 EDT, 29 September 2024

Ever since acclaimed English actor Laurence Olivier portrayed him on the big screen, many have believed that King Richard III spoke in a 'posh' voice.

But more than 500 years after his untimely death, scientists have revealed what the king would have actually sounded like.

An analysis of the king's skull, found in 2012, reveals a bizarre accent that sounds more like Yorkshire than posh 'Queen's English'.

This may come as a surprise to those who have seen Olivier's well-spoken portrayal in his 1955 film, based on Shakespeare's 1592-3 play.

Historians and vocal experts say the approximation – to be revealed at an event in York in November – is the closest we will ever get to bringing the king 'back to life'.

King Richard III was memorably portrayed by Laurence Olivier in his film adaptation of the Shakespeare play (pictured)

King Richard III's voice was reconstructed based on his skull shape as well as information about the era's speech patterns.

It has not been artificially generated, but rather spoken by a human – London-based actor Thomas Dennis, who has appeared as the king for events at Warwick Castle.

It will be debuted at the event – 'A Voice for King Richard III' – at York Theatre Royal on Sunday, November 17.

Project leader, Yvonne Morley-Chisholm, a vocal coach at Royal Shakespeare Company, spent 10 years researching how Richard III would have sounded.

She coached the actor over 'countless hours' to get his voice as close as possible to that of the king's more than 500 years ago.

'This has never been done before – this collaboration has taken a long time,' she told MailOnline.

'It's been a crazy putting together of lots of jigsaw pieces.'

Mrs Morley-Chisholm said the king's skull revealed dents and dimples that give 'clues to size and fitness' of his muscles at time of death which reveal his voice.

The project wouldn't have been possible without the discovery of Richard III's remains in a Leicester car park back in 2012 (pictured)

Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth on August 22, 1485 and his body was buried at Grey Friars Abbey in Leicester. But his bones were removed and lost for centuries. In 2012, they were rediscovered beneath a car park and the bones were re-interred in a new tomb in Leicester cathedral in 2015. Pictured, a late 16th-century oil portrait

Richard III was born at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire and likely spent much of his childhood there, but he also spent several of his teenage years at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale, Yorkshire.

So Mrs Morley-Chisholm said his accent can be placed 'definitely in the north' and is 'looking decidedly Yorkshire'.

Professor David Crystal, a linguist at Bangor University who is also part of the project, admitted that it is impossible to know exactly how Richard III spoke.

But he told the Times: 'This is as close as we're ever going to get.'

For the role in his 1955 film, which he also directed, Olivier spoke with a posh accent that's described as 'received pronunciation', better known as the Queen's English.

The film is based on Shakespeare's 1592-3 play, which depicts Richard III as an ugly and unloved hunchback who is 'determined to prove a villain'.

Stephen Beer, curator of the Medieval Gallery in Dunster, Somerset, said the king is presented by Olivier 'as an almost pantomime villain'.

The new voice is not artificially generated, but rather spoken by a human ¿ London-based actor Thomas Dennis, who has appeared as the king for events at Warwick Castle (pictured)

It sounds nothing like the relatively posh voice by Laurence Olivier in his 1955 film (pictured), which was based on the Shakespeare play

The event at York Theatre Royal in November will feature an avatar of the king's head – created by Face Lab, a group of forensic specialists at Liverpool John Moores University, led by Professor Caroline Wilkinson.

The avatar will be reading the text of a Richard III speech that he gave ahead of his son Edward’s investiture as Prince of Wales in 1483.

'It will be Richard speaking his own words,' Mrs Morley-Chisholm told MailOnline.

'It's a beautiful piece about him talking about his son – he's a proud dad.'

Partly thanks to Shakespeare's play, Richard has long had a reputation as a vile child-murdering tyrant.

While the voice coach admitted she's not as knowledgeable as other 'Ricardians', she told MailOnline he 'is a bit Marmite – you either love him or hate him'.

This 1884 poster advertises an American production of the play King Richard III by Shakespeare

Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, at the age of just 32 – an event memorably retold in the first ever episode of Blackadder.

He led a mounted cavalry charge against Henry Tudor in an attempt to kill him, but Richard was surrounded by Tudor's supporters who fatally delivered multiple blows to the head.

His body was taken to the nearby town of Leicester and buried without ceremony – not thrown into the River Soar as legend had told it.

Of course, the new project wouldn't have been possible without the discovery of Richard III's remains in a Leicester car park in 2012 by historian Philippa Langley.

Analysis of the king's remains confirmed that Richard was not really a hunchback but instead suffered from scoliosis, a sideways curvature of the spine.

Afterwards, Richard's body was paraded in a procession through Leicestershire and finally reinterred at Leicester Cathedral in 2015.