ABSTRACT
Theatre often appropriates previous narratives and translates them on stage in the expressive language of bodies, voices, sounds, movements, and lights. Italian Renaissance scholars knew this very well. In the name of an archaeological and philological approach, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they gave birth to modern theatre by reinventing the ancients in the light of the ludic and expressive demands of their own age. Their translation of Greek and Latin comedies and tragedies was only a starting point, in fact, the starting point of an endeavour which distinguished them from their European colleagues, who were more interested in translation theories focusing on poetry and narrative. Translating Plautine and Terentian comedies or Senecan tragedies, or even ancient Greek plays, into the vernacular, whether in prose or in verse, also meant coming to terms with questions of performance (how they were to be acted out, recited, or even sung) and reception, prompting issues which reach beyond an idea of literal faithfulness to the original and entail a more complex philological accuracy.
