Apparently, in the UK, there's a stage company that does Shakespeare plays in what's called "Original Pronunciation" or OP for short.
The sound of OP is described as a cross between modern North American English (American/Canadian) and the Irish accent - or, roughly, how pirates are portrayed as speaking in pirate movies.
There's a couple of YouTube videos that discuss this.
The Received Pronunciation developed in the 1830's in the UK and, believe it or not, it spread to North America for a time as well. But it was nipped in the bud shortly thereafter with German and Irish immigrants.
The US southern accent comes from the fact the the majority of US southerners trace their ancestry to the West Country, it's descended from Devonshire accent of the time.
shakespear and his comtempary play rights, more or less invented english as a language,
a significant number of the words he wrote were just made up on the spot, then through their popularly spread to a wider populass and for the first time some thing akin to a common language was created,
this however took many many decades to filter through, particularly to rural places, so Shakespearian language may be undrrstandable to you, just,,,, that however was not the language or the pronunciation that was common, its still largely impossible to understand some regional accents even now, when we are all using much the same words
unified language really didnt happen to the railways took hold and people started to travel further than you can throw a stone., remmbering that the vast majority were illiterate, so writen language didnt really help its spread
hell they didnt even have a common clock till it was necersary to co ordinate railway time tables
factories would have their own clock, so that people worked far longer than they were beibg paid for,
