I think I’m ready to address that TCG article by John McWhorter on adapting of Shakespeare for modern audiences. So, TL;DR/scroll-by caveats are in effect, otherwise here we go. I guess the easiest answer to “It’s been 400-plus years. Is it time to translate the Bard into understandable English?” is “We haven’t thus far, so why start now?” But that is glib. And as much as I wanted to dismiss the article outright, it is too well-reasoned to do so. (Which does not mean that it is entirely correct.) Perhaps the initial distaste is a matter of tone. Starting out with the hypothetical production of King Lear does the reader no favors. It is shoddy point of entry to speculate that some imagined audience members might *gasp* be bored, or “wishing they had brought a magazine” to this imaginary production. Guess what? I get bored at Shakespeare, and I, contrary to the author’s assertion, am one of the people who “digs him.” It takes about ten or so minutes for the ear to get comfortable with the rhythms of speech.
“The problem with Shakespeare for modern audiences is that English since Shakespeare’s time has changed not only in terms of a few exotic vocabulary items, but in the very meaning of thousands of basic words and in scores of fundamental sentence structures.” Yes, and? Plays written in the last century sometimes have inscrutable phrases and passages. Granted they are mostly colloquialisms. Still! We still use many of the words Shakespeare coined to this day, and in the meaning he ascribed to them. For the thousands that may have changed, there are arguably more that have not. As for “fundamental sentence structure,” the article already acknowledged the fact that the majority of the text is written in iambic pentameter.
“No one today would assign their students Beowulf in Old English—it is hopelessly obvious that Old English is a different language to us.” Would they not, now? I will point you to some teachers who just might.
“How realistic or even charitable is it to expect that anyone but specialists, theatre folk and buffs will have the patience to read more than a prescribed dose of Shakespeare under these conditions? And ultimately a play is written to be performed, not read, and certainly not deciphered. A play that cannot communicate effectively to the listener in spoken form is no longer a play, and thus no longer lives.” Yes, I agree in that these are fundamentally written to be heard and seen, but isn’t there an old saw that says that back in “ye olden days” of this country even the poorest of folk always had at least two books on hand: a Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare? (Intern! Please research and clarify!)
“Shakespeare is not a drag because we are lazy, because we are poorly educated, or because he wrote in poetic language. Shakespeare is a drag because he wrote in a language which, as a natural consequence of the mighty eternal process of language change, 500 years later we effectively no longer speak. I submit that here as we enter the Shakespearean canon’s sixth century in existence, Shakespeare begin to be performed in translations into modern English readily comprehensible to the modern spectator.” I submit that it is precisely that! Laziness, short attention spans, constant distractions, etc. & so forth. We are not accustomed to giving over five hours of our mental energy to one product, as spectators in Shakespeare’s day did at his plays, BECAUSE THAT WAS THEIR ONLY FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT (aside from a good cockfight or some bear-baiting). Attending theater is an effort, it is a communal experience between actor and audience, the participation of both parties are necessary for a successful evening.
I do agree with McWhorter that tricked up “interpretations,” done to seem “relevant,” are so often terrible. (Titus Andronicus on Mars! Julius Caesar set in a women’s prison!) But that is a failing of not trusting audiences to “get it,” it is an artistic, an interpretive failure.
“However, especially if [new translations] were included in season ticket packages, audiences would begin to attend performances of Shakespeare…Pretty soon the almighty dollar would determine the flow of events—Shakespeare in the original would play to critical huzzahs but half-empty houses, while people would be lining up around the block to see Shakespeare in English the way Russians do to see an Uncle Vanya.” Uh, in what dream world would that be? With the cups of non-profit theaters overflowing with the “almighty dollar”? Theaters are in dire straits, and a kicky adaptation of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” versus a “traditional” one will not and cannot change that, not when audiences can see a movie for ten bucks.
“Indeed, the irony today is that the Russians, the French and other people in foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do, for the simple reason that unlike us, they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the language they speak. Shakespeare is translated into rich, poetic varieties of these languages, to be sure, but since it is the rich, poetic modern varieties of the languages…” Might that be because, well, those audiences would like to enjoy the works in their native tongue? I certainly would, as a one-off, see Moliere performed in the original French, but to truly understand it I would rely on an effective translation into English, the language in which, we’ve established, Shakespeare wrote his plays. Any theater company that is producing Shakespeare is effectively “translating” the text, in that the director will often cut swaths of text, re-arrange scenes, and instill to the best of their abilities a concise through-line.
“We must reject the polite relationship the English-speaking public now has with Shakespeare in favor of more intimate, charged one which both the public and the plays deserve. To ask a population to rise to the challenge of taking literature to heart in a language they do not speak is as unreasonable as it is futile. The challenge we must rise to is to shed our fear of language change and give Shakespeare his due—restoration to the English-speaking world.” And…STFU! Forget what I said earlier, I’m going back to my original rebuttal: We haven’t thus far so why start now. (Which, I’m lying, it has been done and the results were decidedly mixed.) I have seen, in classrooms back when I was doing outreach/education work, fourth graders heartbreakingly convey the meaning and intention of scenes from Shakespeare’s canon. Why? Because language, however changing, is still the tool we use to transmit feeling and emotion, and speaking words, onstage in plays, is a form of action, one utilized to communicate human truth. What works, in Shakespeare, is that there is none of that tricky, modern subtext. Characters say what they mean/feel. Sometimes directly to the audience! (Yes, there is clever wordplay, double entendres, but not to mask meaning, rather to enhance it.) It is in that way more clear than some of the plays written today.
The author’s bio states he “is a linguist” — and that is precisely the problem. As much lip service as McWhorter pays to the craft of acting, to the production of plays, he is still approaching the question as an academic. He established that the plays were written to be heard, to be performed. So, let the theater artists charged with doing their craft solve the issue of conveying understanding, and charge the audience to do their part, engage them in actively listening to the story. No matter how McWhorter tries to frame it, this is not an academic problem.
