When will Shakespeare be translated into Modern English?

[NAF1138]

[QUOTE=Malienation]
Yep, that’s true. But they didn’t perform Shakespeare as written. They made substantial revisions in the language for clarity. They changed endings. They even left out whole acts. Not the same thing.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, it’s exactly the same thing. With the exception of changing the endings, all those changes happen to almost every production of Shakespeare performed today. If you have ever seen a production of King Lear or Hamlet or most of the History plays that was less than 4 hours long you are seeing a seriously abridged version of the plays. Whole plotlines are typically excised from Hamlet, and I believe the Scottish Play and possibly the Tempest are the only plays of his that can be performed in under 2 and a half hours uncut.

I do understand that Shakespeare can be hard to read. But it was never meant to be read and I am pretty sure Willy would be horrified if he knew his plays were being read as texts in schools. You really have to see a production by a group that knows what they are doing in order to understand Shakespeare. You can get a lot by working with the text, but it really doesn’t make sense until you put it together in performance.

[Marley23]

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
Whole plotlines are typically excised from Hamlet, and I believe the Scottish Play and possibly the Tempest are the only plays of his that can be performed in under 2 and a half hours uncut.
[/quote]

Comedy of Errors is the shortest one, I think. I don’t think you could do The Tempest that fast.

But it was never meant to be read and I am pretty sure Willy would be horrified if he knew his plays were being read as texts in schools.

He’d be horrified he wasn’t getting paid, anyway.

[Cervaise]

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
I am pretty sure Willy would be horrified if he knew his plays were being read as texts in schools.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed, he thought his poems were his grand contribution to the ages; the plays were basically his day job. He’d probably be somewhat mollified by the reasonably high profile of his sonnets (some of them, anyway), but his greatest disappointment, I suspect, would be the disappearance into near oblivion, in the popular mind, of works like Venus and Adonis (which was a blockbuster in its day).

[NAF1138]

[QUOTE=Marley23]
Comedy of Errors is the shortest one, I think. I don’t think you could do The Tempest that fast.

[/QUOTE]

I always forget he had some short comedies, I love the text of Comedy of Errors but every production I have seen was done by cut rate troops, so I sort of block it out.

You can do the Tempest that fast uncut. I have seen it done, it might have been 2 hours 45, but still short. I wouldn’t recomend it, but it is possible.

I have seen so much bad Shakespeare that I don’t really wonder why people don’t like it. I just try to change their opinion.

I did work on a production of the Scottish play that was cut to run exactly 65 minutes before intermission. It worked rather well, the last act or so was performed as a sort of simultanious montage up until MacB gets it. It was fast paced and a lot of fun.

[Miller]

[QUOTE=Malienation]

1. Protests that even little kids claim to have no trouble understanding WS are missing the point. Just because one claims to understand anything doesn’t mean one actually does. The appearance of familiar words can deceive, since words that appear to be related to modern words (only with different spelling) can be completely unrelated, with different roots. And words can change meaning over time, sometimes drastically so.
   [/quote]

Are you being disingenous on purpose? Sure, kids aren’t going to catch the double meaning in Hamlet’s “country matters” wordplay, or they might here one of the characters in Henry V called “Ancient” and think that means he’s really old, but they’re not going to be confused to the extent that they think the French won at Agincourt, or that Hamlet and Ophelia lived happily ever after. Yes, there’s a lot of details Shakespeare that require some work to understand. But the plays are perfectly enjoyable without making that effort, which was the point of the “even kids can understand him,” argument. Understand him perfectly? No. But no one understands any great work of art “perfectly.” That’s what makes it a great work of art.

2. Okay, studying one of the annotated versions helps. But doesn’t that reduce studying Shakespeare to largely a vocabulary lesson? This line means this because this word means that. How is learning to understand outmoded word usages and grammar educational? Can one really appreciate WS under these conditions? I say no.

First off, no, it doesn’t reduce him to “largely a vocabulary lesson,” because anyone with a reasonably sized vocabulary should have little trouble understanding the bulk of what Shakespeare wrote. And even if you’re characterization were correct, it would still only hold true for the first couple times you read the play. After that, you’ll have learned the vocabulary, and it would no longer be an impediment to appreciating the play.

And I’m not entirely certain how to answer the question, “How is learning educational?” I can only surmise that you do not understand the meaning of at least one of those words.

3. Along those lines, I reiterate that the true value of learning entails work, often hard work, but not true suffering. Arguments otherwise tend to sound like Latin instructors who used to opine, “a solid base in Latin makes it easier to learn other languages like Italian or French.” Maybe that’s true. But learning Italian or French directly is easier than learning Latin plus Italian or French. There’s only so many hours in a day, and so many ideas one can soak up. It just seems WS’s learning/work ratio is a little skimpy.

Your argument here is based off of a false premise: that reading Shakespeare is “true suffering.” That may be true for you, but I think that you are exceptional in this instance. It certainly does not seem to be the case for the vast majority of English-speaking people in the last four hundred years.

4. For those who claim that WS has to be appreciated in the language of his time, consider: how do you know, really, that he was all that talented and popular in his time? We accept that he was talented in his time, but how do we really know? Do you expect history to read, “Mr. Moneybags sponsored a play by Shakespeare, and the audience responded with embarrassed silence”, if that actually happened? When you’re rich and powerful, the press is unlikely to respond as such. The point is, history is written by the winners. And don’t let WS fans fool you, his popularity since his time was not unbroken. After his death, he was gradually forgotten, then rediscovered later. Those that rediscovered him, how did they come to see him as a literary genius? I’m not saying he wasn’t talented in his time. But how do we really know?

This is just sad. If Shakespeare sucked, how would he have gotten patronage in the first place? He did not come from money: he was middle class, but not wealthy. He came to London, and made a small fortune in a profession that was considered little better than prostitution. He was popular enough to perform for royalty, he received a patent of arms for his work, he was lauded by his contemporaries, and people made an effort to record and perserve his plays after his death, an honor accorded to virtually none of his contemporaries. We know Shakespeare was popular in his time with as much certainty as we know who sat on the throne during his life.

5. It’s true that the invention of the printing press has drastically slowed down the evolution of languages in their written form (not just English). As such, it may be quite some time before Shakespeare appears to the English-speaking world as Chaucer does to us now. But how long?

Who knows? The point is, he’s nowhere near that point right now.

6. The language is not being dumbed down, not that this idea is new. Linguists tend to believe that as long as complex ideas can be expressed in a language it is not “dumber” than any other language that can express those same ideas. Only if a language is a pidgin is a language really “dumb”, since pidgins are languages of convenience and not a people’s mother tongue. Nonetheless, every generation claims the language is going to hell in a handbasket. Every one. Put in your good teeth and deal with it, eleanorigby. Now, it’s certainly true that casual writing like email exchanges aren’t exercises in fine writing. But that’s because the advent of email means that people actually write more than they used to, and as such have to keep it short and sweet . Respond to 20 emails with 20 carefully written and thoughtful replies and there goes your day.

This is as close as you’ve come to accuracy in the whole of this thread. Good job!

7. Shakespeare’s popular? My gym is pretty crowded. Does that mean exercise is popular? No, because it’s the same dedicated people day in and day out. By and large, the truth is that no, exercise is not popular. Most people just lumber from their refrigerator to their SUV. It just seems that exercise is popular if you go to a gym. The way I see it, Shakespearean revivals attract the same people over and over. That creates the same illusion of popularity.

Yes, that’s precisely what that means. If lots of people are doing a thing, then that thing is popular. Even if it’s the same people doing it over and over, it’s still popular. That actually means that it’s more popular: things that people just do once and never try again tend not to last very long. And, no, it’s not just the same people going to Shakespeare over and over. You know how I know? Because the average age of a Shakespeare play-goer isn’t 500. More people see Shakespeare’s plays on a daily basis now, then they did when he first wrote them. How on Earth can you possibly twist that to argue that he’s not really popular?

[TV_time]

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
I did work on a production of the Scottish play that was cut to run exactly 65 minutes before intermission. It worked rather well, the last act or so was performed as a sort of simultanious montage up until MacB gets it. It was fast paced and a lot of fun.
[/QUOTE]
Now there is a concept - a “fun” Scottish play. I’m not sure that was the message it was written to convey. But I think I get what you are saying. I hope the audience got what Shakespeare was saying.

I knew a middle school teacher that would do Romeo and Juliet with her students and have the star-crossed lovers live at the end. Her explanation was that it was better for the students not to be subjected to suicide and the sadness of the Bard’s ending. I know that’s not what you are saying NAF1138, but it just got me to thinking.

[NAF1138]

[QUOTE=TV time]
Now there is a concept - a “fun” Scottish play. I’m not sure that was the message it was written to convey. But I think I get what you are saying. I hope the audience got what Shakespeare was saying.

I knew a middle school teacher that would do Romeo and Juliet with her students and have the star-crossed lovers live at the end. Her explanation was that it was better for the students not to be subjected to suicide and the sadness of the Bard’s ending. I know that’s not what you are saying NAF1138, but it just got me to thinking.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, my use of vocab get’s me in trouble sometimes when I talk about theater*. Anything worth seeing I default describe as “fun”, because in my mind all good theater is fun. It can be sad (heartbreaking even) and still be enjoyable. If it is more than just worth seeing it gets better descriptors, but I think fun is better than “good”.

The end of that particular production was nicely bloody and fast paced (I think some of the events might have gotten confusing if you didn’t know the play well, but hey, that’s war for you) and did a nice job of wrapping things into that final duel between MacDuff and MacBeth and ended with the dripping severed head of MacBeth being triumphantly thrown onto the stage by MacDuff. If that isn’t fun, I don’t know what is.

And to bring this tangent back to the OP, good Shakespeare *is * fun. Even the tradgedies. Hell, especially the tradgedies. The production I am talking about was fast paced and action packed with beautifully choriographed sword fights, and bloody as hell. It was very popular, and it was directed by a Shakespeare purist who (while willing to trim the script a bit, and montage and overlap other parts) insisted that all the actors be word perfect to the original. He understood that the language was the engine that drove the play, and if you screw with that you are lost.

*I was talking to a critic after a different show (the show was an original and it was about people dieing of cancer) and described the show as fun, and got a similar reaction. She wanted to know what it was about cancer that I thought was “fun”.

[Kizarvexius]

[QUOTE=Malienation]
I remember little of Shakespeare. Mostly, I remember hating it. So does everyone else. That’s why adults abandon Shakespeare the first chance they get.
[/QUOTE]

It cannot be doubted that there is a certain percentage of the English-speaking world that has little love or appreciation for Shakespearean speech. But to argue that this is a majority viewpoint based on one’s own negative experiences is akin to claiming that Beethoven is a musical nonentity because his works aren’t played on Top 40 radio. De gustibus non est disputandum.

As others have already pointed out, the art of Shakespeare is the text. Mechanically speaking, much of the Bard’s output is junk – ridiculously contrived plots that rely on the same old endlessly recycled (and shamelessly stolen, at that) plotlines, gags, devices, stock characters, and stunning coincidences. In fact, much of the difficulty in staging and directing these plays is in trying to make these absurd situations even marginally believable. It is Shakespeare’s unparalleled mastery of language that elevates his works into the realm of high art.

[PastAllReason]

I look up and read the banner at the top of the page:

The Straight Dope
Fighting Ignorance Since 1973
(It’s Taking Longer Than We Thought)

Yep, still there.

[Sleel]

I like my modern translation, based on the Original side of the text from an earlier link in the thread.

Hamlet: Act 1, scene i

BARNARDO
Sit yo ass down nigga. I gots some shit to tell that blow yo mind. Been goin’ on two nights now.

HORATIO
You heard the nigger. Set and listen Barn-daddy-o.

BARNARDO
Last night, ‘bout when infomercials be comin’ on, and the crackhead down the street done smoked his last rock, like ‘roun’ now, Marcellus and me hear the church bell rang like it do—

MARCELLUS
Check it, shut yo mouth! I done seen that shit again!

BARNARDO
He look like King who been capped.

MARCELLUS
(to HORATIO) You some egghead been community college an all. Rap with it, Horatio.

BARNARDO
Doan that mofo look like King? Peep it, Horatio.

HORATIO
Mother-fucker, he do. That’s some creepy-assed shit right there.

BARNARDO
Duppy look like he want conversatin’.

MARCELLUS
Axe it somethin’, Horatio.

HORATIO
What the fuck you doin’ out this time a night
Wearin’ the same gear King wore when he out soldierin’ afore we had to bury his ass?
Jesus titty-fuckin’ Christ, say somethin’, mother-fucker.
I think it carries the majesty of the language quite well, actually

Oh, by the way, the Sparknotes No Fear Shakespeare is pretty blah. You can see from the link an earlier poster provided that there are significant differences in not only how, but what it says. And the “modern” version is badly written at that. No flow, no poetry of language, no fun.

[Raguleader]

[QUOTE=Sleel]
I like my modern translation, based on the Original side of the text from an earlier link in the thread.

Hamlet: Act 1, scene i

BARNARDO
Sit yo ass down nigga. I gots some shit to tell that blow yo mind. Been goin’ on two nights now.

HORATIO
You heard the nigger. Set and listen Barn-daddy-o.

BARNARDO
Last night, ‘bout when infomercials be comin’ on, and the crackhead down the street done smoked his last rock, like ‘roun’ now, Marcellus and me hear the church bell rang like it do—

MARCELLUS
Check it, shut yo mouth! I done seen that shit again!

BARNARDO
He look like King who been capped.

MARCELLUS
(to HORATIO) You some egghead been community college an all. Rap with it, Horatio.

BARNARDO
Doan that mofo look like King? Peep it, Horatio.

HORATIO
Mother-fucker, he do. That’s some creepy-assed shit right there.

BARNARDO
Duppy look like he want conversatin’.

MARCELLUS
Axe it somethin’, Horatio.

HORATIO
What the fuck you doin’ out this time a night
Wearin’ the same gear King wore when he out soldierin’ afore we had to bury his ass?
Jesus titty-fuckin’ Christ, say somethin’, mother-fucker.
I think it carries the majesty of the language quite well, actually

Oh, by the way, the Sparknotes No Fear Shakespeare is pretty blah. You can see from the link an earlier poster provided that there are significant differences in not only how, but what it says. And the “modern” version is badly written at that. No flow, no poetry of language, no fun.
[/QUOTE]

BAHAHA, that’s the greatest thing ever, although my room mate feels he now understands Shakespeare less than he did before.

Can you do Romeo And Juliet?

[Tapioca_Dextrin]

How about some Chaucer in da Hood?

[Wendell_Wagner]

As I wrote in an earlier post:

> It’s easy to rewrite any English-language writer into stupid slang which
> completely misses the point of the passage being rewritten. So what?

[Sleel]

[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner]
As I wrote in an earlier post:

> It’s easy to rewrite any English-language writer into stupid slang which
> completely misses the point of the passage being rewritten. So what?
[/QUOTE]

Actually, my reasons for doing that were: A) to have a little fun, and B) point out how silly it is to “translate” Shakespeare into any version of modern English. Why is standard broadcaster dialect any better than AAV? It’s not.

The straight re-wording from that page, if it’s indicative of the Shakespeare without Fear books, kills the feeling of the language. Better not to read Shakespeare at all if you’re going to read that crap. It’s like renting the B-version knock-off of a major movie rather than getting the real thing.

On the other hand, I really doubt that anyone in this thread has actually read completely unmodified versions of Shakespeare. Textbook versions have standardized his spelling, substituted more modern vocabulary in many places, and most that I’ve seen have extensive footnotes and explanations of abstruse points. Reading raw Shakespeare is probably beyond the skills of most university-educated people who have not specifically studied language and literature from that period.

So, in other words, what you read in high school or even college was a translated version. If you didn’t appreciate it, then you’re probably not going to appreciate it. Some people get it, some don’t. No big deal, move on to something you do like.

Part of the point of presenting literature to kids is to introduce them to lots of different styles and to make them deal with many different kinds of language. You won’t like some of it, but almost certainly you will be introduced to something you do like that you never would have discovered without being “forced” to read it. I probably hated about a quarter of what I had to read in high school, Virginia Woolfe and Henry James in particular, but reading their stuff was valuable because I learned what I dislike in literature too. Plus, having read them, I understand the references people might make. Besides, if you want to criticize something it’s much better to have a solid understanding of what you’re disparaging, or else you look like a fool.

Like others have said in this thread, see a good movie version or watch a theater production to really experience the plays the way they were meant to be. Reading a play is kind of painful unless you’re pretty good at visualizing and mentally presenting dialog; watching a play is a completely different experience.

[Wendell_Wagner]

I wasn’t sure if you were criticizing the process of translation or just joking. (And, no, it wasn’t obvious that you were joking. It’s never obvious on the SDMB.) The problem is that some people take third-rate translations of Shakespeare into modern slang with many of the older references replaced with new hip references as if that thereby proved that all translations were worthless. There are lots of good translations of many different sorts of classic works into foreign languages that are superb and nearly the equal of the original. There are lots of good translations of Shakespeare into foreign languages, for instance.

I certainly don’t disagree with you that the versions of Shakespeare that nearly all of us read today are changed from the original in some ways. They nearly all have modern spellings for the words and have some annotations. That’s probably necessary for a reasonable appreciation of the works for a modern English speaker.

As I said before, in about four hundred years it will be absolutely necessary to have some translations of Shakespeare into contemporary English of that period for people of that time to understand it. Some people will still be studying Shakespeare in the original language, but it will be as hard for them as Chaucer is for us. And, yes, English will continue to change over the next four hundred years. Predicting that English will stop changing is like predicting that the continents will cease drifting. All our experience in languages shows that they are always evolving. The fact that we will have sound and video recordings of present-day English is no more relevant than the fact that we have print recording of English for the past thousand years. People learn their language from their contemporaries, not from the past.