ABSTRACT
This chapter argues against purists who would wish Uys Krige to stick faithfully to William Shakespeare's letter, that by improvising Feste's witty riff, he is doing no more than being faithful to Shakespeare's own theatrical practice. When Peter Hall dismissed the very thought of Shakespeare's translatability, he was probably not doing so out of any consideration for the theory of translation, but rather from a position of unreflective common sense. Michel Foucault gives a logical reason why Shakespeare's name should remain coupled to his texts. Hall's assertion about Shakespeare's place beyond translation was thrown into relief by a performance, less than a month after he delivered his magisterial pronouncement, in the same theater, of Twaalfde Nag, Krige's translation into Afrikaans of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. For no English-speaking audience can properly understand Shakespeare unless they have access to another language through which he may be made available to them in translation.
