ABSTRACT
Since translation means, to me, a series of acts of loyalty, the first of my observations concerns loyalty to the theatre. Owing to both our background as literary cr itics and the extraordinary poetic and literary qualities of Shakespeare’s art, we are accustomed to reading his work qua literature, the more so since Elizabethan dramatists use verse. We now realize, however, given the development of Shakespear ian cr iticism and the language of modern theatre, that this is a mistake. These plays are plays. Their words have a bodily quality: they need a voice, a body, a stage, an audience. They are complete-they are a complete expression and are completely real-only on
the stage for which they were intended. Even if their poetry is supreme, it goes beyond literature. It is dramatic poetry: theatre. These words were not meant to be read in a library or at home but to be spoken on the stage, by actors during a dramatic action before an audience. These passages (even the ‘purple’ ones, even ‘To be or not to be’ or ‘The barge she sat in’) are always part of an action and a dialogue-even monologues are to be listened to, if not (as often happens) by other characters at least by the audience. Indeed, a playwright, particularly a ‘total’ playwright like Shakespeare, is always a playwright, even if he is a great poet, the greatest of the modern age. Even his most complex passages were written for human beings impersonating human beings in front of other human beings. The theatre is not a solitary art; it is the art of men (and, after the Elizabethan per iod, women) communicating with other men and women. Herein, as well as in its constant change and renewal, night after night, lies its fascination as a mirror of life.
