At the time, I knew none of this. The first inkling I had that something was in the offing was an email in December from Debs Callan, Head of Continuing Education. The message mentioned that the Globe was planning an OP weekend for the last weekend in June, and that Globe Education wanted to support and help inform the work of the Theatre Department by setting up a study weekend ahead of the performances, at the beginning of that month. The aim was to provide a forum for discussion between theatre practitioners and scholars about the nature of Elizabethan pronunciation. What did I think?

I wasn't surprised to get such a message. My links with the Globe had become steadily stronger since 1997, when Nick Robins, the editor of the membership magazine Around the Globe, had asked me to write a regular piece on Shakespeare's neologisms – or Williamisms, as I went on to call them – for his magazine. As part of the Globe Education seasons, I had presented a few performance lectures on Shakespeare's language – a mixture of academic commentary and theatrical presentation, supported by actor son Ben. In 2003 I had the privilege of becoming the Sam Wanamaker Fellow for that year, and towards the end of the year I found myself working with Globe Education as a consultant for Wordplay, one of their schools outreach programmes. So I suppose I fell into the category of ‘tame linguist’, as far as the Globe was concerned. And no linguist could have been tamer and more ready to collaborate. I think the Globe is the most exciting theatrical project of modern times.

But the message made me think. It was a fine idea, but a difficult one to implement. In our book on Shakespeare's vocabulary, Shakespeare's Words, which had appeared in 2002, Ben and I had avoided representing Elizabethan pronunciation – or Early Modern English (EME), as it is more technically known – in all but a few very difficult cases (such as ‘oeillade’). We felt most readers would have difficulty with a technical representation of the sounds – a phonetic transcription.

Would actors be any different? I remember Ben telling me that phonetic transcription was not routinely a part of actor training. It was not immediately obvious how to get round this problem.