Comments on: Shakespeare: Globe to Globe

Shakespeare: Globe to Globe

Egg Shen — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 05:19:21 -0800

Shakespeare: Globe to Globe was a series of 37 Shakespeare plays performed in 37 different languages presented at the reconstructed Shakespeare Globe theatre in London this summer.

Among the plays that can be viewed with subtitles (rather than scene descriptions) are: - The Tempest, performed in Bangla - The Winter's Tale, performed in Yoruba - Titus Andronicus, performed in Cantonese - Antony and Cleopatra, performed in Turkish - The Merchant of Venice, performed in Hebrew

By: bebrogued

bebrogued — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 05:39:52 -0800

I missed the entire season, so this is an absolute godsend - thanks! In addition to Egg Shen's selection, the general consensus among our PhD students was that the Belarussian King Lear was pretty special - and now it's here with subtitles. So much for work today.

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 06:13:35 -0800

I've seen a Shakespeare play or two and I hope one day they will be performed in English.

By: Mr. Bad Example

Mr. Bad Example — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 06:44:22 -0800

Thanks for posting this--I missed the Titus, coincidentally enough because I was rehearsing for another Shakespeare play somewhere else that night, and I didn't know it had been put up for viewing anywhere. (I was really disappointed I missed it, too. I don't speak a single word of Cantonese, but I know the story well enough that I could have followed along.)

By: Segundus

Segundus — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 06:53:05 -0800

You have never experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.

By: wittgenstein

wittgenstein — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 07:23:35 -0800

By: Egg Shen

Egg Shen — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 07:41:59 -0800

Shakespeare has been translated into many modern foreign languages Is there a list of all the languages into which has been translated at least one of the plays?

By: Gordafarin

Gordafarin — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 07:49:12 -0800

Very neat, thank you! A varied mix of languages, including many I wasn't expecting. I'm looking forward to watching the BSL one. ..."Hip Hop" is a language?

By: bebrogued

bebrogued — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 08:13:05 -0800

I was told back in a Theater History course that Shakespeare has been translated into many modern foreign languages, and that the translated plays were quite popular without the "language barrier" that we (sort of) have in English. A bit like the old saw that Shakespeare is better in German than English. Is there a list of all the languages into which has been translated at least one of the plays? There's this list for European languages. Not sure about a list for other languages, but I've used this page in the past for links to global Shakespeares.

By: Sourisnoire

Sourisnoire — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 08:15:57 -0800

37? Well, Othello was performed in the Universal Language of Hip Hop. But I suppose it counts as english... Some missed opportunities: -MacBeth in Scots -Hamlet in Danish

By: EmpressCallipygos

EmpressCallipygos — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 09:57:13 -0800

I was in London and visited the Globe while this was going on - didn't get to see a show itself, but I visited right when one of the troupes was finishing rehearsal and they let us into the space during the tail end of things. I can't remember which play it was - only that the cast was from a nation with a somewhat strict Muslim theocracy. I only know that because the tour guide mentioned the Elizabethan convention about women not being allowed to perform in any of Shakespeare's original productions - then she got a funny look on her face, and turned around and gestured to the cast on the stage before us, discussing the day's rehearsal with the director, and she remarked that she'd heard from a couple of the women in the cast of that very show that they'd also faced challenges pursuing careers as actresses themselves.

By: dgaicun

dgaicun — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:18:29 -0800

I've seen a Shakespeare play or two and I hope one day they will be performed in English See also: John McWhorter, The Real Shakespearean Tragedy: It's been 400-plus years. Is it time to translate the Bard into understandable English? I can't understand most of what is said in any Shakespeare play without subtitles and heavy annotation. The speech is in a very old form of English, is written poetically, and contains numerous historical phrases and allusions that I don't know. Any one of these would be a roadblock to comprehension, and so I simply don't have the ability to parse most of the conversations or soliloquies in real time. Throw in "creative", poorly enunciated acting (like Orson Welles' odious fat-guy burbling in Chimes at Midnight), and I take less from a Shakespeare performance than I do from a Telemundo sitcom on three years of highschool Spanish. This all suggests that translated versions of Shakespeare are probably much more comprehensible to nonEnglish-speaking people than unmodified Shakespeare is to English-speaking people. (And given it's continued cultural status, its no surprise that large numbers of average people in the English-speaking world feel the need to lie about liking or being able to understand Shakespeare to feel adequate. To the culture snobs and conservatives, I suppose this taboo inaccessibility is a feature not a bug, much as the inscrutability of the Old Testament gives the preachers of old world religions a kind of mystical legitimacy.) Interestingly there are scripts that are written in a Shakespeare-imitation style using modern English that are much easier to parse in real time; the 1960s movies A Man For All Seasons and A Lion in Winter seem to do this and they are both genuinely witty and watchable for a normal person in a way that Shakespeare could be if it was appropriately modified for modern audiences.

By: Bwithh

Bwithh — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:29:19 -0800

The diversity of language is really impressive

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:10:00 -0800

This is terrific. But is there any way to get a list of the plays and languages without clicking on each one in the linked page, which is beautiful but maddeningly unhelpful?

By: ersatz

ersatz — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:20:56 -0800

I saw Henry V, which was a Globe production in English that closed the festival and had a great cast. They put on extra shows afterwards due to high demand. It was worth every penny. This all suggests that translated versions of Shakespeare are probably much more comprehensible to nonEnglish-speaking people than unmodified Shakespeare is to English-speaking people. It is interesting to consider that some of the translations are so old that they are becoming incomprehensible themselves.

By: ersatz

ersatz — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:22:49 -0800

lh, you can see a 'list' (more of a roll really) here.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 17:27:29 -0800

You have never experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon. taH pagh taHbe'

By: Saxon Kane

Saxon Kane — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 18:37:31 -0800

McWhorter strikes me as more than a bit of a whiner.

By: Pallas Athena

Pallas Athena — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:41:59 -0800

A Man For All Seasons and A Lion in Winter seem to do this and they are both genuinely witty and watchable for a normal person Has this guy actually sat through the 134 minutes of wailing and scenery-chewing that is The Lion In Winter?

By: feelinglistless

feelinglistless — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 07:51:46 -0800

Unfortunately for rights reasons, this lot will apparently disappear tonight at midnight GMT. At least that's the impression which has been given in the press during the announcement of The Space's extension. But there's no indication on the site. Hum.

By: Gordafarin

Gordafarin — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 16:07:58 -0800

It's not midnight yet but now I only see three plays.