I don't know exactly how Shakespeare's actors worked, but I'm sure it wasn't like this. The plays are big, wordy texts, designed to be performed in the open air, with an audience that wasn't going to catch every word and wasn't afraid to heckle. If you took them at Olivier's pace they'd last forever- which is why, when he came to film Hamlet he had to cut it by two thirds.
The old actors held the text at arm's length- like Yorick's skull- and turned it to catch the light. Today's actors try to get inside it. They speak fast, they are less musical and sometimes they slight the poetry. There is certainly a loss. No modern actor can be the kind of godlike Shakespearean star Olivier was; the new style prohibits it, but the gains are all in the direction of naturalism, authenticity, drama. Shakespeare was writing entertainment (Coriolanus is all crowd scenes, battles and nose to nose confrontation) he didn't think of himself as the Bard- and I'll swear he wrote the way he did- words, words, words- because he expected his actors to gabble.
