Accents: don't. Even most professional actors can't do them well.

As for speech patterns, read diaries, journals, plays and popular literature of
the time period to get an idea of how people spoke. If you can find examples
from the same geographical area you are in, that is even better. Wearing the
period clothing helps too. If you wear it long enough, you'll find that it will
change the way you move which will help your "character". Period dances of the
time are good for teaching that as well.

It's my experience that speech patterns and mannerisms are much more effective
for conveying a character than accent. You should be able to tell that someone
is "different" without them having to utter a word. Thus, it is better to
forget about the accent (because until phonographs, we really don't know what
people sounded like anyway). And again, very few people can really master
accents and thus instead of adding to a character, they usually become
distractions.

A funny side story, a British friend and I were walking through the historic
part of Philadelphia and cringing at the bad "English" accents being used by
the living history people. He said to me, "You're accent is probably more
correct than mine for this time period." The fact that the women had
draw-string mob caps didn't help much either. Tisk tisk Philly, you guys should
know better.

Deb

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