Shakespeare and Succession: Translation and Time positions Shakespeare as both participant in and object of translative succession, fusing, as the editors Michael Saenger and Sergio Costola acknowledge, “some unfamiliar approaches” by looking at “theatrical and linguistic adaptation in addition to historical study” (1). The collection is divided into essays by practitioners and historians. Contributions to the first half of the volume “are not generally saturated in the typical citation style of academic essays” (27). Tonal disjunctions are accompanied by what feels like an in medias res narrative, as the first essay, by José Francisco Botelho, offers insights into the task of translating Shakespeare's meter into Brazilian Portuguese. The volume might have benefited from more sustained scene setting, such as an early account of adaptive translation in relation to Shakespeare's grammar school education, for which imitatio and translatio formed bedrocks.
Niels Brunse tackles a question that chimes with the volume's tonal and narratological approach: whether “your version” should “be aimed at actors and audiences, or at the scholarly or pleasure-seeking quiet reader” (62). Brunse expands on an issue that many translators encounter when adapting Shakespeare's English into other languages: the proliferation of monosyllables in the originals. Single-syllable words such as throat tend to acquire two syllables or more, as in the Danish word struben, meaning that Laertes in Brunse's Hamlet becomes “marginally more deliberate and bloodthirsty” (67). Marcus Kyd writes about translating Shakespeare's narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece for the stage and the reasoning behind maintaining a “Narrator, who is centre stage, telling the story” (76–77).
Other contributions to the first half of the volume include Miguel Ángel Montezanti's account of translating Shakespeare's sonnets into standard literary and Riverplate Spanish. Iolanda Plescia writes of translating The Taming of the Shrew into Italian, with the major ambition of producing a text “that would engage, critically and phonologically, not only with the inherent difference of the source and target languages but also with the gaps in culture and language produced specifically by the passing of time” (103). Sarah Roberts roots thinking behind preparing and presenting a Johannesburg production of Much Ado About Nothing in a “critically informed cultural practice” (123) with an emphasis on the place of Shakespeare in South Africa. Zhiyan Zhang and Carl A. Robertson elaborate on the challenges of presenting Romeo and Juliet in the form of traditional Chinese kunqu opera. The first half of the volume therefore offers a remarkable survey of adapting Shakespeare for various cultural and social milieus, across numerous languages and forms, at once disparate and yet startlingly synergistic at times in terms of challenges and opportunities.
The second half of the volume “is written in the common mode of academic writing” (196) and begins with Zoltan Markus's chapter on Shakespeare as a “catalyst for nationalist-cultural mythologizing” (203). Markus stresses that translations of Shakespeare are not secondary or inferior to English Shakespeare: they ensure “survival” and provide a “celebration of the life of the original” (203). Michael Saenger focuses on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson's engagements with classical antecedents as a form of authorial paternity. Sergio Costola analyzes the ways in which the repertory of commedia dell'arte influenced The Merchant of Venice, with the figure of the Pantalone looming over the characters of Shylock, Antonio, and Bassanio. Hiromi Fuyuki gives us a reception history of Shakespeare in Japan beginning with the “first (fragmentary) Shakespeare translation” (259) that appeared in 1874: lines from Hamlet's fourth soliloquy. Ransping Ji and Wei Feng offer a similarly enlightening account of the availability of the image of Shakespeare in China.
Alexa Alice Joubin rounds the collection off by adducing that “translational differences draw attention to the instability of Shakespeare's text as well as their variegated terrains that are open for interpretation” (306). It is sometimes difficult to identify the warp and woof of a collection so wide ranging in tone and content. This renders the consistent lucidity with which the interpretative pliability of Shakespeare's works is conveyed even more startling. Those works shine bright across time, place, and the pages of a brilliant volume.
