Very little. They’re like that Soylent powder stuff that was in the news recently, a solution in search of a problem. I have a copy of No Fear Shakespeare Macbeth and ‘translated’ side is absolute garbage.
Yeah, that’s why every movie that took a Shakespeare story and updated it to modern times has done so poorly.
I mean, Shakespeare only has 1007 writing credits on IMDB as of today. I guess every one of them was performed in Elizabethan dress and iambic pentameter?
Maybe come out of your ivory tower once in a while. There’s a whole lot of good stuff in Shakespeare, that translates very well to modern audiences, even if the language is dumbed down for us peasants. Or, go be a purist. I’ll be happy watching my DVD of West Side Story. or Strange Brew…
(And I for one think that mentioned “country matters” pun in Hamlet is really lame. It’s not even funny or clever, just dirty. Who knew ol Bill was related to Bevis and Butthead?)
Who said anything about Elizabethan dress? You can set Shakespeare in any time or place, while keeping the original language.
And works inspired by Shakespeare, like West Side Story, can be great, but if so, they’re great because their writers were also skilled, not because of the connection to Shakespeare. The language is the whole point of Shakespeare. Change the language, and you might as well just plagiarize from the same original sources that old Will did, and cut out the middleman.
Point taken about the costuming - I went too far for my point.
So, do you ever read works translated from a language you can’t read? It’s the same thing. Translations make changes to the word play of the original. Are those works equally invalid?
I guess I don’t agree that the language was THE whole point of Shakespeare. It was A point, and a very good one, but I think the stories count as well.
Anyway, we all know writing plays was just something he did to get the chicks.
Take a breath, there cowboy.
Adaptation != translations, which is what the OP is asking for.
Adaptations can be great. West Side Story is one of my favorites. Nothing wrong with a book, movie or play based on a Shakespearean play. But that ain’t a translation.
Problem is that the plots of most Shakespearean plays aren’t that special. If you want to read Shakespeare, which is what the OP indicated, then the point is the language. Annotations are great. Translations, not so much.
I’m another vote for watch a production of a play – preferably, a DVD and PUT ON THE SUBTITLES. That will help you with the language. It may take a few minutes (five or ten) to get into it, but once you do, you’ll enjoy it.
My suggestions to start:
Kenneth Branaugh’s HAMLET
Orson Welles’ MACBETH
Absolutely. I used to watch plays on tv and have my copy of the book with me. Wasn’t always a perfect adaptation, but I could usually keep up. Subtitles is a great idea.
Watch the BBC versions. They did a complete set that is excellent.
To be contrary, do not under any circumstances watch the Branaugh version of Hamlet. Ever. That thing is an offense to all that is holy. Branaugh insisted on putting every single word* of the play into that bloated, turgid production. It will turn you off the Bard forever. Watch the 1948 Olivier production instead.
-
- Even Shakespeare cut Shakespeare.
I’d guess that a lot of us who enjoy reading the plays, came to that enjoyment only after having seen (or heard) them performed. No one should beat themselves up for finding the reading to be slow going if they’ve never seen the language come alive in performance.
So, yeah: the suggestions about watching DVDs-with-subtitles are smart.
That said: the Lamb Tales from Shakespeare is a lovely reading experience in itself. If familiarity with the less-familiar plays’ plots is needed, the Lamb is a nice route to that goal. The Gutenberg (free) book is at The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tales From Shakespeare, by Charles & Mary Lamb.
As others have said, Shakespeare did write in modern English. Had he stuck to formal speech, you’d be fine. But he often spoke in current slang and poetry. So, expecting you to understand him fully and easily is like expecting your grandparents to understand MTV.
I also agree that I’ve found no ‘translation’ that lives up to the original and that seeing a good performance is the best way.
Yippie-ki-yay, mother… ok…calm…breathe…
OK, I agree about proper adaptations. I find it much easier to understand Hamlet watching Branaugh’s version than reading it. My eyes glaze over reading it. There are still a lot of references and allusions that need explaining to a modern audience, but that’s true of many works. Despite being classed as literature*, I think it was meant to be heard more than read, even so.
Thank you for that. While Hamlet’s not my favorite play to begin with, I do adore Kenneth Branaugh, but I just couldn’t get through that production. I was really doubting my judgment! I’m glad to hear someone else didn’t like it either.
Totally agree. I’d much rather someone watch it rather than find some watered down written version. And everyone should watch a play- they can really come to life!
I know another bunch of adaptations are coming out soon, Romeo & Juliet and The Merchant of Venice being two of them.
Having thought about it a little more, I think a “modern translation” is not necessary. About 80% (I’m making this up) of Shakespeare doesn’t need “translation.”
“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” would be “Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo [a Montague]?” OK, you need to know that “wherefore” means “why” and not “where.” Not a big problem.
Yeah, it’s written in short lines so poetry rather than paragraphs of prose, but that’s not difficult, I hope. Anything there that doesn’t make sense in mordern English?
You’ve got problems with o’er instead of “over”, and the occasional 'tis for “it is.” And the 'd instead of ed in past tense: stepp’d for stepped and wish’d for wished.
In short, you can understand most of it (especially if you’re watching a DVD, where you won’t even notice a syllable or two that miss’d an e. I went to a website looking over famous quotes, and none of them need any modernizing. Yeah, it’s not the kind of day-to-day language we use in ordinary speech (although there’s certainly lots of phrases that have become day-to-day)… but it’s poetry, and beautiful.
The idea of translating that “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech … well, I guess it’d go something like:
“Time is eternal, and we as mortals only live briefly.”
I prefer the original.
Having thought about it a little more, I think a “modern translation” is not necessary. About 80% (I’m making this up) of Shakespeare doesn’t need “translation.”
“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” would be “Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo [a Montague]?” OK, you need to know that “wherefore” means “why” and not “where.” Not a big problem. An annotation footnote does it.
Yeah, it’s written in short lines so poetry rather than paragraphs of prose, but that’s not difficult, I hope. Anything there that doesn’t make sense in mordern English?
You’ve got problems with o’er instead of “over”, and the occasional 'tis for “it is.” And the 'd instead of ed in past tense: stepp’d for stepped and wish’d for wished.
In short, you can understand most of it (especially if you’re watching a DVD, where you won’t even notice a syllable or two that miss’d an e. I went to a website looking over famous quotes, and none of them need any modernizing. Yeah, it’s not the kind of day-to-day language we use in ordinary speech (although there’s certainly lots of phrases that have become day-to-day)… but it’s poetry, and beautiful.
The idea of translating that “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech … well, I guess it’d go something like:
“Time is eternal, and we as mortals only live briefly and life has no meaning.”
I prefer the original.
But isn’t the E that’s contracted out in stepp’d properly pronounced, as in step-ped, to fit in the meter? I’ve heard older actors do that, but more recent ones seem less mannered. And it’s not like any actors stick with an exaggerated iambic pentameter because that’s annoying.
I think so, but don’t quote me on it. I believe if Shakespeare needed the extra syllable for the metre then the ed would be pronounced. If a syllable needed removing he would just remove the E as in your example of stepp’d. Actors today seem to pronounce it whatever way they wish.
I really enjoyed it
I’m not sure whether what’s going on in many of the posts in this thread is passive-aggressive bragging, or just well-meaning people who genuinely don’t realize that much of Shakespeare is sailing over their heads.
But it is absolutely true that a modern American of average intelligence and education does need help understanding Shakespeare. Yes, you can get the gist. Maybe even 80% or more, which is why it’s useless to quote short excerpts and say, “See?”
But missing up to 20% of the meaning is not my idea of good comprehension. It’s not so much the vocabulary as the idioms. Everybody knows what “cobbler,” “naughty,” and “out” mean, but in the space of six lines in Act 1 of Julius Caesar, those words are used with obsolete meanings, so if you don’t look them up in the footnotes, you only think you know what the characters are saying. Not to mention the fact that many of the plays assume a knowledge of history and mythology that very few Americans possess today.
That said, IMO the language Shakespeare used is the main reason to read his plays, because IMO the history is inaccurate, the jokes aren’t that funny, the psychology is trite, and the romantic plots are ridiculous. So if you just want to know what the plays are about, you would save a lot of time by simply reading a plot summary, or even better, a commentary like Asimov’s guide. But if you want to read Shakespeare, then resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to slog through it the first time by looking up 400-year-old terms or idioms several times per page, and you might have to read it through two or three times before you can read it fluently.
Oh, damn, if only we had a Like a button for this post.
OP - go watch Kenneth Brannagh’s version of Much Ado. It’s set up specifically to give the modern ear a chance to ease into the text.
Anecdote: I’ve heard that most modern audiences need about ten minutes for their brains to adjust to hearing the Shakespearean style spoken aloud. I don’t know if that’s true. It wouldn’t surprise me though, because being good at listening to Shakespeare is no different than being good at any sort of code-switching language activity and people do that all time. So making sense of different vocab and language use, is something the brain is used to doing.
My google fu is failing me, but there’s a scene in Brannagh’s musical version of Love’s Labour’s Lost (it’s uneven) where Nathan Lane is playing Costard, one Shakespeare’s ‘humorous’ characters, and he absolutely kills it. He reads the lines in the exact sort of rhythms that make vaudeville work. It almost makes the part sound like it was written for the Marx Brothers. I’m always in awe of Lane and Brannagh is famous for finding the natural rhythms in speaking Shakespeare, but that scene was a complete revelation.
Anyway, yeah. Get a vocabulary and listen to the plays out loud.