I have been following the controversy over Oregon
Shakespeare Festival’s translation initiative and wanted to write down my
thoughts about it. Arguments against
this project have a tendency to make several assumptions. I do not find these
assumptions especially surprising, but from my perspective they should be
questioned (as most assumptions should).
Assumption 1: There is a unified version of Shakespeare
(generally the First Folio), and companies with “Shakespeare” in their names
are obligated to uphold this standard version.
Here is OSF’s mission statement: "Inspired by
Shakespeare's work and the cultural richness of the United States, we reveal
our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic
plays, deepened by the kaleidoscope of rotating repertory." This project strikes me as falling squarely within their
mission.
You can argue that their mission statement has de-emphasized
Shakespeare by reframing their work as “Inspired by,” and you’re welcome to be
upset by that. But this is not unique among Shakespeare companies. The Utah
Shakespeare Festival “presents life-affirming classic and contemporary plays,
with Shakespeare as our cornerstone." The Illinois Shakespeare Festival uses “the
artistry and humanity of the Shakespearean canon as our constant touchstone.” There are dozens if not hundreds of
Shakespeare companies, and these companies take a range of approaches to
Shakespeare. Almost all of their missions emphasize connecting with audiences
or making Shakespeare live for today. I found two that use the word “preserve”
in their mission statements, and only the Colorado Shakespeare Festival uses it
in reference to preserving the works of Shakespeare.
In theatre practice today, there are multiple Shakespeares.
This does not even go into the instability of Shakespeare’s texts, as anyone
who has read the First Quarto Hamlet
can attest: “To be or not to be—ay, there’s the point.” Anthologized and
paperback versions of Shakespeare are heavily edited, and editors have made
choices about language. Those editorial practices have changed over time. This project strikes me as a new kind of artistic editing.
Assumption 2: The word “translation” must refer to
linguistic translation; these versions should be called adaptations because
they are being translated from English to English.
Some theorists of translation would use a much wider scope
for the word: “cultural translation” and “intersemiotic translation” do not
necessarily imply linguistic translation. Analysis of translation generally
requires a transfer from a source culture to a target culture. I think that Shakespeare’s
culture was significantly different from our own and requires cultural
translation. Indeed, in practice we already translate Shakespeare to our own
culture because the majority of productions do not use boys to play women.
When Nick Bottom returns to his friends after his change in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Quince
says, “Bless me: thou art translated.” I hesitate to mention this because of
the nature of Bottom’s transformation, but it is evidence that there are multiple
definitions of “translate,” and Shakespeare used the word differently than we might.
I think the term “artistic editing” might be a better one,
but I suspect that OSF chose “translation” in opposition to “adaptation.” I’m
seeing a lot of lamentation that these playwrights have not been commissioned
to do adaptations, which would be more interesting. Some of them already have!
If you aren’t familiar with Shishir Kurup’s Merchant
on Venice, go read it.
I’m not a linguist, but I think there is some merit to the
suggestion that Shakespeare’s English is not the same as contemporary American
English. It has been 400 years since Shakespeare’s death. It has been 600 years
since Chaucer’s death. We don’t expect the average person to read Chaucer in
Middle English. As Lue Douthit points out,
it’s harder to catch all that beautiful, complex language while listening than
while reading.
Assumption 3: These versions will be staged at OSF and will
then be published and will become the new standard versions of Shakespeare and
then the real Shakespeare will be lost forever!
This fear ignores some realities of the commissioning
process and rights. Many plays get commissioned and are never produced by the
company that commissions them. These translations
will presumably require a royalty fee. Many productions of Shakespeare happen because
Shakespeare is in the public domain. If these versions are bad, they won’t get
done. But I suspect they won’t be bad. If they are good, I think the most likely outcome is that these versions will
lead to more productions of lesser-known Shakespeare plays.
The first time I got excited about Shakespeare was in a
visual and linguistic translation: I read a comic book version of As You Like It when I was in eighth
grade. I have since read most of the Shakespeare canon, performed in several of
the plays in college, served as a TA for a Shakespeare class, and now regularly
teach Shakespeare in Theatre courses. If these translations provide a
successful first exposure to Shakespeare, they may actually recruit Shakespeare
enthusiasts, some of whom might even join the cult of the First Folio.
