Lysenko K. Rhetorical-prosodic peculiarities of radio performances based on William Shakespeare plays.

The legacy of William Shakespeare is enormous: his works have been translated into more than a hundred languages. Famous world-class British and American actors performed in Shakespeare's plays. In the times before the invention of radio any information about the manner of actors’ performing was limited to the description of theatrical schools, principles of declamation and actors’ moves and gestures on the stage. The beginning of Golden Era of Radio in 1930s led to the appearance of different radio channels and programs which made it possible to preserve unique voices and manners of performers who appeared before the microphone in radio studios. The old priceless radio recordings of those remote times can now be comparable to newer recordings, which is important, because every epoch imposes its imprint on the manner of acting, on the style of playing, on the interpretation of images, as well as on the phonetic and forensic design of the actors’ performance in general. Only old radio recordings preserved in archives can be a true and authentic source of information for subsequent diachronic studies. The diachronic research of possible changes in actor’s style and in theatrical radio performances of William Shakespeare’s plays is the focal point of interest in this thesis. For the research emotionally marked fragments of drama texts were singled out and investigated, among them - questions and rhetorical questions.