ABSTRACT
James Grant Benton’s uproarious Twelf Nite O Wateva! hit the stage in Honolulu on December 26, 1974. Preserving Shakespeare’s plot while reworking his setting and characters, Benton’s play translated Twelfth Night, or What You Will into Hawai‘i Creole English, a language called “Pidgin” by those who speak it. Benton’s use of Shakespeare is most remarkable, however, in that it contributes to a transvaluation of Hawai‘i Creole English language and culture. During the reading sessions, Terence Knapp told his students that comic characters in Shakespeare are “quite often played in dialect of various kinds” and urged them to read comic passages from the plays aloud “in Pidgin.” Benton translates Shakespeare both linguistically and culturally. His Twelf Nite transforms the timeless Illyria – designed to appeal to Elizabethan audiences – into the easy-going O‘ahu of a mid-1970s daydream. Both Twelf Nite O Wateva! and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night open with the lovesick lord’s rapturous response to music.
