FacebookTwitter
Hatrack River Forum   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Discussions About Orson Scott Card » OSC and R & Juliet (Page 1)

  This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2   
Author Topic: OSC and R & Juliet
Leaf
Member
Member # 7880

 - posted      Profile for Leaf   Email Leaf         Edit/Delete Post 
MMmmmmm this is fantastic. Anyone else read it yet?
Well, go do it. it's on the main page, and, in my opinion, is lovely and very poetic (especially for those who generally dislike shakespeares writings, such as myself)

- Leaf (II)

Posts: 46 | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
Wow. I just read through it, and it really IS very good. Most of the changes mainly appear to be explanatory asides meant to clarify more esoteric terminology or plot points, but they fulfill this function admirably without getting in the way of the original language too much.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
ricree101
Member
Member # 7749

 - posted      Profile for ricree101   Email ricree101         Edit/Delete Post 
I haven't gotten that far yet, but so far I really liked the job that he did with the opening dialog between Sampson and Gregory. It was always kind of sad that the play on words had lost a lot of their meaning, and didn't have the effect that I'm sure they did for the original audience.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
WntrMute
Member
Member # 7556

 - posted      Profile for WntrMute           Edit/Delete Post 
The problem is that there is still a large young audience that won't understand. Fortunately, there is THIS.

Enjoy.

Posts: 218 | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
cheiros do ender
Member
Member # 8849

 - posted      Profile for cheiros do ender   Email cheiros do ender         Edit/Delete Post 
Okay, so I'm guessing "WTF AER U ROMEO" is the modern day equivalent of "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" Lol!!!!1
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
No. It'd be "Y U ROMEO?"
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Omega M.
Member
Member # 7924

 - posted      Profile for Omega M.           Edit/Delete Post 
I've just read the opening and skimmed through the rest, but I agree that it's much more understandable than the original. It still seems too mannered to really "grab" me, but that's probably Shakespeare's fault. Maybe I'd like it better if OSC rewrote it (as a play, short story, or novel) from the ground up, preserving all scenes and events but not worrying at all about sticking to Shakespeare's words. Better yet, maybe he could do this with one of Shakespeare's "big five" tragedies!

So how long has this been in the making? I recall an OSC comment from a while ago that non-English speakers have a better experience of Shakespeare than English speakers, because the former get to read Shakespeare translated into their current idiom while the latter are stuck with trying to parse Elizabethan English; but I never heard him say he was working on this. Is he going to stage it?

Posts: 781 | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
It still seems too mannered to really "grab" me, but that's probably Shakespeare's fault.
Somewhere, a hummingbird was zipping along quite contentedly when your words drifted by, viciously ripping its wings from their sockets and hurling it into the sharp rocks below. Repeatedly.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
This makes me incredibly sad and depressed. I am first of all amazed that a play written in English is felt by so many to require "translation." Old terminology a problem? Learn it! It's not that hard with a little effort. Turning everything into modern idiom completely deprives the reader/audience of the richness of Shakespeare's English.

I am even more sad that all of you seem to approve of, and even prefer, the translated version. This really is a sign that our high schools and colleges are failing our culture.

I have read about the first 20 lines of OSC's translation. It does not translate...it alters the meaning.

In Shakepeare's original, the following exchange occurs (forgive the formatting):

quote:
A dog of that house shall move me to stand: I will
take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's.
GREGORY That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes
to the wall.
SAMPSON True; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels,
are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push
Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids
to the wall.
GREGORY The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.
SAMPSON 'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I
have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the
maids, and cut off their heads.
GREGORY The heads of the maids?
SAMPSON Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads;
take it in what sense thou wilt.

In OSC's version, it becomes:

quote:
GREGORY.

Ay, the dog will heel, or sit, or stay at his master’s command, but when he sees you, he’ll go to the wall.



SAMPSON.

His back to the wall, you mean.



GREGORY.

His back! The only Montagues that run from you are their maidens.



SAMPSON.

As well they should! For once I’ve thrashed a Montague, I kick his dog and slap his sister.




Slap his sister? Kick his dog? In the Original, Sampson is talking about rape. His threat is full of meanness and menace. In OCS's version, the threat is taken down to the level of the Hardy Boys.

Why? Why sanitize? Why alter one of the greatest plays ever written? This is far worse than colorizing old b&w movies. If Shakespeare's play presents problems for a modern audience, it's the responsibility of the modern audience to educate itself and overcome them.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
If Shakespeare's play presents problems for a modern audience, it's the responsibility of the modern audience to educate itself and overcome them.
I'm curious: why do you feel that way? What about a play makes it immune to changing cultural mores?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
Tom,

I never said it was immune. Romeo and Juliet was written over 400 years ago, and English literature and theater has been through many tremendous changes since then. Yet somehow people, even centuries later - during, say, the Victorian era, when attitudes and literary differences were already drastically different from Elizabethan times - did not need Shakespeare translated.

Romeo and Juliet (and many other Shakespeare plays) was routinely read by middle-school kids from all walks of life in schools even just fifty years ago. And yet now, suddenly, the language presents a problem?

I fear for what Harlan Ellison has referred to as the "twilight of the word." Our cultural understanding and appreciation of literature - especially the poetic uses of langauge - have become so shallow that most people don't even seem willing to try anything difficult any more. Great literature requires that you make a journey to grasp it - not that you drag it kicking and screaming, and heavily mutilated, into the present. What can you learn if you force your preconceptions and (frankly) modern laziness on a canonical work? Art should not be easy. There are many layers to Shakespeare, and Card's re-write obliterates them.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:

Romeo and Juliet (and many other Shakespeare plays) was routinely read by middle-school kids from all walks of life in schools even just fifty years ago. And yet now, suddenly, the language presents a problem?

I wouldn't say it's sudden; the inaccessibility of Shakespeare was even observed by Dickens. But you continue to make assumptions here that I don't think you're properly proving:

"Great literature requires that you make a journey..."
"Art should not be easy."

I want to know why you assume these things.

Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Aliette de Bodard
New Member
Member # 9099

 - posted      Profile for Aliette de Bodard   Email Aliette de Bodard         Edit/Delete Post 
There's a saying in Italian: "Every translator is a traitor". That said, I agree Card's translation loses quite a lot of the original meaning (but then, I also agree there was a moment of struggle to get to the point where I understood the Shakespeare bits [Smile] ).

"Adaptation" might be a more valid term.

Posts: 2 | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Omega M.
Member
Member # 7924

 - posted      Profile for Omega M.           Edit/Delete Post 
Hmm, you're right; OSC's version of the passage you quoted really is weaker than the original. And reading the original just now I didn't find it mannered at all. Nobody would ever talk like that in real life, but that's true for all fiction.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever read Shakespeare I didn't like at least a little; and I've read a lot that I've liked very much. But when I read him I don't find myself wanting to bow down in awe of him the way Harold Bloom etc. think we should. Some people seem to think not only that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in English or the greatest writer ever, but that it's impossible for any future writer ever to equal him (because he's already said everything worth saying); and I don't see how you could prove such a claim. I was probably reacting to critics like this when I talked about hating Shakespeare.

Posts: 781 | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
El JT de Spang
Member
Member # 7742

 - posted      Profile for El JT de Spang   Email El JT de Spang         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Nobody would ever talk like that in real life, but that's true for all fiction.
I don't see that at all. I rarely read good fiction that doesn't have believable or realistic dialogue. Plays are a different story, though.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Orson Scott Card
Administrator
Member # 209

 - posted      Profile for Orson Scott Card           Edit/Delete Post 
Two purposes here: 1. To translate for modern comprehension; 2. To have a production suitable for a church-based community theatre.

If I were preparing this translation for publication, I would keep the bawdry and the violent implications - or at least more of it. But also you must remember that in Shakespeare's time, the idea of rape as concomitant with victory in battle was not so repulsive, culturally, as it is now; that is, it was recognized as "what happens" and as something a low-class person might boast of intending. Now it would be regarded as monstrous, and the speaker of the lines as repulsive. Stronger? OF course. But would Shakespeare use it in this position, in this play? Doubtful. Still ... translation would lead me to stay much closer to the original if I were not ALSO preparing it for production in a different setting. Shakespeare also adapted his works (or so we believe) when performing in front of different audiences - performances at court surely omitted language here and there that would be bound to offend or bother royalty.

As for the fact that the play is still somewhat difficult to understand, I brought it to the level where I knew I could get the actors to make it instantly clear to the audience; in other words, I kept the Shakespearean "feel." We have to recognize that when we "translate" Shakespeare, we can do it at different levels: A wholly modern one (which I will someday attempt), and this kind, which preserves the kind of language we think of as "Shakespearean" while allowing comprehension.

My version could be produced in a high school without fear of parental outrage. That's one legitimate use (for production; not at all for STUDY of Shakespeare); I would prepare a different script for production in a different setting.

Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
I'll address a few points.

OSC said:

quote:
Two purposes here: 1. To translate for modern comprehension; 2. To have a production suitable for a church-based community theatre.

Starting with #2 - that explains things a little bit. I would point out, however, that Shakespeare's plays have been performed across England in Church-based community theatres for centuries, right into the present, without any need for expurgation or translation - save for the usual edits to reduce running time.

#1 is what I really take issue with. Tom's remark about Dickens aside (and I'd like to be sourced on that), Shakespeare was widely read and performed for pleasure in Victorian England, and in the States for that matter. You'll find many characters in Victorian novels quoting Shakespeare, and often times the novels themselves overtly or covertly reference Shakespearean plot-lines (for a darkly ironic example of this - check out Hardy's The Woodlanders). Many members of the working class, who could not afford to buy the latest Dickens or Bronte, could buy cheap editions of Shakespeare and other dead poets. They were read widely and enjoyed.

OSC also said:

quote:
If I were preparing this translation for publication, I would keep the bawdry and the violent implications - or at least more of it. But also you must remember that in Shakespeare's time, the idea of rape as concomitant with victory in battle was not so repulsive, culturally, as it is now; that is, it was recognized as "what happens" and as something a low-class person might boast of intending. Now it would be regarded as monstrous, and the speaker of the lines as repulsive. Stronger? OF course. But would Shakespeare use it in this position, in this play? Doubtful. Still ... translation would lead me to stay much closer to the original if I were not ALSO preparing it for production in a different setting.
The issue of the setting aside, all of this, for me, tends to support the preservation of the original language. No, Shakespeare would not write it that way today. Then again, he probably would not have employed Elizabethan English, or written a play about two underage teens who fall in love and then kill themselves. The play would not exist today - it is a product of its time, a very different time from ours, and you cannot exctricate the play from its time. But those differences between then and now are exciting and wondrous - to be treasured and not "translated."

Shakespeare may very well have adapted his plays for different audiences. Again, beside the point. The definitive folio editions are what have lasted, and those are what have also informed western literature for the last four centuries. This is why there is so much reverence for Shakespeare, as Harold Bloom notes, there is no idea you can have that he has not also had, no concept that would startle him. Any book or play you encounted today feels his influence.

More a little later...work calls.

[ February 03, 2006, 12:55 PM: Message edited by: KidB ]

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
But those differences between then and now are exciting and wondrous - to be treasured and not "translated."
Again, I'm wondering why you feel this way. Are they something akin to mortal scripture?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
mr_porteiro_head
Member
Member # 4644

 - posted      Profile for mr_porteiro_head   Email mr_porteiro_head         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
I rarely read good fiction that doesn't have believable or realistic dialogue.
It seems to me that most fiction, even good fiction, is required to have either long dull passages of exposition, which many authors try to avoid, or sneak it into dialog, making the exposition more palatable, but making the dialog less believable and realistic.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
mr_porteiro_head
Member
Member # 4644

 - posted      Profile for mr_porteiro_head   Email mr_porteiro_head         Edit/Delete Post 
KidB -- I'm wondering how much far you believe this. Do you think that people reading translations of Chaucer are robbing themselves of the delight of experiencing it in the original language? What about Beowulf? The Illiad? Don Quixote? The Ring Cycle? Should no art be translated, or is it just Shakespear?
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
WntrMute
Member
Member # 7556

 - posted      Profile for WntrMute           Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by KidB:
Tom,

I never said it was immune. Romeo and Juliet was written over 400 years ago, and English literature and theater has been through many tremendous changes since then. Yet somehow people, even centuries later - during, say, the Victorian era, when attitudes and literary differences were already drastically different from Elizabethan times - did not need Shakespeare translated.

Errr.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler
Posts: 218 | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
WntrMute,

"Err" yourself. Your own link explains that Bowdler's purpose was primarly expurgation of "offensive" bits. He did not modernise the language.

Look, there are two different issues here, so let's seperate them out to avoid further confusion.

1. Expurgation. This is not my main complaint. While I have seen a number of Church-based community Shakespeare productions that left in some very saucy material without incident, I understand that attutudes vary from one community to another and that the sensibilities of the audience must be taken into account. That's fine. Cutting scenes and shortening passages is routine for peforming Shakespeare - the plays are rarely done without edits for one reason or another.

2. Re-writing or "translating" what remains. This is what I take issue with.

Mr. Ph asked "how far" I would take it. The other works he cites are written in different languages, and are therefor translated. This seems like a no-brainer to me. (Though Chaucerian English is not so different as you might think, you can start to get the hang of it with just an hour of instruction and a few more of practice).

Shakespeare, however is IN ENGLISH. As in, the language you and I speak. The language that English theatre audiences hear when they attend several of these plays a year. The language that every British actor uses from the onset of acting-class. If you find something difficult about Shakespeare, I'd contend that it's not the vocabulary - which is very easy to get used to - but the structure. Which, I'm sorry, does require that you pay attention and think. Which is why Shakespeare is fun and engaging.

What I'm objecting to is the approval of "making it easier." This is our spoon-fed, consumerist culture talking here. As readers, we have become lazy. The funny thing is, Shakespeare really is not that difficult, with just a little work.

Tom,

I don't know how else to say it, except to say that I'm amazed you even have to ask. How can any curious and imaginitive person ask that question? I feel like you should explain why anyone should seek to erase these historical differences by creating a modern idiom. If you re-write the words to make it "easier" you're not introducing people to Shakespeare at all, but to something else entirely.

Shakespeare is the basis of modern English literature. No matter how often the plays are performed, they are never exhausted by interpretation or performance - they always yield new things when you revisit them.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
I've since gone through and compared other parts of the text - and there are, indeed, large sections that are mostly unaltered in OCS'c version. Perhaps I was thrown by the initial differences in the opening scene.

Queen Mab's speech retains much it's atmosphere, though I'm not sure why "atomies" must become "sneezes."

So I'll retract what I said about Card's re-write robbing the audience of the experience. It mitigates it a bit.

More than anything else I'm reacting to the attitude I see here that somehow Shakespeare is too difficult for us modern readers to bother with. I've seen this before with complaints about Dickens as well - that "all those words just get in the way." It's this utilitatian attitude to language that I find harmful.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
It's this utilitatian attitude to language that I find harmful.
I used to feel that way, too, until I recalled that language IS utilitarian. It's beautiful as well, but language without meaning, as beautiful as it may be, is failed and useless.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
Language in literature is not utilitarian, unless you incorrectly conflate "having a purpose" with "utilitarian."

And...do you contend that Shakespeare uses language without meaning?

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
docmagik
Member
Member # 1131

 - posted      Profile for docmagik   Email docmagik         Edit/Delete Post 
I think we need to remember what it really is that Card is doing. He is absolutely not breaking in to every university library and swapping pages of text. That would be wrong, and harmful, and would undo everything the Bard was doing.

Instead, he's adapting. He's creating a somewhat altered version that is more accessible to the audience he's perfoming for.

On a whim this week, I picked up the book version of I Know What You Did Last Summer--the book that even the author felt was ruined by the SMG/Freddie Prinze movie. I didn't see any signs of ruination anywhere. Everything seemed to be pretty much how the author had originally written it (including such insane things as having the guys say lines like, "Oh, Jill, in that pink shirt you look just like a tea rose).

The book was still there, unaltered by whatever the movie had been.

Now if the movie had been any good, even if somewhat altered from the original story, it would have sent readers to the original book en masse, who then could have discovered what the author had originally intended.

In this case--and I have not read the entire book, so I don't know whodunit yet--but the author's real gripe wasn't so much about the fact she'd been adapted as it was about the complete change they'd made in the storyline. Where her story is about the fear that guilt brings, the movie is about psychotic fishermen serial killers. The author's daughter was actually murdered by a serial killer, and so the change--using serial killing as entertainment--was morally offensive to her.

I know that's a lot about a fairly unimportant book and movie, but I think it illustrates the same point as here.

Yes, in order to get the full effect of Shakespeare, you would want to read him in the original. However, two things stand in the way of this.

The first is that it requires some effort for most of us to ajust our thinking to get into it. It's like when I watched Dear Frankie. It was in english, but the accents were so thick that at first I had to turn on the subtitles. I stopped needing them after about half an hour, but it took a minute for my mind to "wrap" itself around what they were speaking. I read Shakespeare using side-by-side texts with "translations" alongside. Often, I stop needing to rely on the translations so much, but they help me get into the language and rhythm of the story. In a play, there isn't the luxury of either subtitles or the back-and-forth of a text reading, so doing it this way will probably help to bring in the lay audience.

The second thing is the fact that most high school english classes have brought so many Americans to the belief that Shakespeare can't be understood. Since he can't be understood, he isn't worth it. What adaptations like this do is help those people who believe that see that he is worth it. The stories are engaging and funny and emotional and wonderful. Hopefully, these adaptations give the audience an engaging and funny and emotional and wonderful experience that they will come to associate with Shakespeare stories, and, at best, they will drive the readers back to the original.

Now if you were arguing that Card were altering the meaning or the message of the play in some serious way--like in the movie example, or as in Bowdler's making Ophelia's death "accidental"--that might be different. But I personally dissagree with the idea that adaptations feed the idea that Shakespeare is too difficult to bother with. When done well, adaptations show those with that attitude exactly why he's worth bothering with.

Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
doc,

Even though you disagree with me, I'm glad that you see where I'm coming from.

As to the goodness/badness of an "adaptation" it's all a matter of degree. I can't object to editing for length, or to slipping in a word-change here and there to avoid confusion (not in all cases, but where an artifact of language would lead to an obvious misdirection for a modern audience). Re-writing or adding lines is another matter. I think Card's version is borderline.

But I think you've conceeded most of my major points. Given the differences in the opening passage, the description of the work as an "adaptation" AND "translation," and the early posts noting a marked difference while complaining of the difficulty and wordiness of the original, I was expecting drastic differences all the way through.

I prefer footnotes for reading Shakespeare, though most of the differences I can intuit. For seeing it performed - usually I try to read it first.

I agree with what you said about our high-schools. That really is the crux of the problem. High school ruins literature.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
High school ruins literature.
So, I suspect, does the opinion that literature should be pinned to a page and trapped inside glass.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
Tom,

Please explain, with reference to my own statements, why anything I've said here argues that literature should be "pinned to a page and trapped inside glass."

I'll go make popcorn.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
mr_porteiro_head
Member
Member # 4644

 - posted      Profile for mr_porteiro_head   Email mr_porteiro_head         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
If you find something difficult about Shakespeare, I'd contend that it's not the vocabulary - which is very easy to get used to - but the structure. Which, I'm sorry, does require that you pay attention and think. Which is why Shakespeare is fun and engaging.
Wow. You make it sound about as fun as doing long division.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Uprooted
Member
Member # 8353

 - posted      Profile for Uprooted   Email Uprooted         Edit/Delete Post 
I think an adapted version of Shakespeare is better than no version at all. As a kid, I remember loving my picture-book version of As You Like It. But I'd hate to imagine the original plays being set aside and never studied by high school students. (And yes, I did note that OSC made that point in his post.) There is a beauty in his language that it's worth the work to get used to, and I think we're doing kids a disservice if we don't ask them to study it. Shakespearean language isn't as far removed from Modern English as Canterbury Tales and Beowulf, so I think it's worth stretching ourselves to master. And as far as the Iliad and so forth -- I haven't studied classical languages, but I have no doubt that the experience of reading Homer in Greek would far surpass my muddlings through English translations.

Part of the reason I think reading Shakespeare's own language is so valuable is because our idiom is filled with allusions to his words. I feel the same way about the King James Version of the Bible. No, not the original Hebrew/Greek by any means, and perhaps not always the most accurate translation. But it is the translation that has enriched our language. I just think it's beautiful, and that's subjective; I feel the same way about Shakespeare. If that's pinning literature to a page and viewing it through glass, then so be it.

Then there's the whole different question of whether plays should be read as literature rather than enjoyed as stage performances as they were intended. Perhaps this is part of the "high school ruins literature" problem. I don't know -- but I do know that I am grateful for the English teachers who got us through a Shakespeare play a year in high school. I didn't always love it, but I would probably have been too lazy to do it on my own, and it helped instill in me a love for literature. I wish every high school student could see an excellent stage production of Shakespeare; I know I suffered through the old movie versions we watched (I'm old) to accompany our study.

Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
Ditto everyting Uprooted said.

Mr. ph,

I'm sorry that paying attention and thinking are such unpleasant tasks for you.

Look folks, I'm not some retired mossback English professor who's chosen to spend his retirement harassing wayward youths on the internet. I'm a youngish, Ritalin-popping, American Idol watching, video-game playing ADHD freak like the rest of you.

However, I also have tremendous curiosity about the past, especially when it comes to literature. And I have noticed that many of my age-group - generations X, Y, and Z - harbor grave misconceptions about "old" literature, and are largely unware of what our culture is now in danger of losing forever. As I said, much of this has to do with the dumbing-down of our literature classes, and lowered expectations. But I think there has been an overall decline in our ability to read and write eloquently, and confront complex texts, across the board. Our newspaper articles are getting shorter and shallower, our textbooks more sterile, our literature more "utilitarian." The language of the Victorian novel, considered by many now to be "wordy" or overlong, is actually remarkably efficient when properly viewed, but somehow our system is not conveying this. Often, teachers who discuss older novels do not even understand them properly, at a basic level (as when Thomas Hardy is portrayed as a rustic nature-lover).

Talk to your grandparents someday, and ask what they read for fun as kids. Kipling! Robinson Crusoe! And...Shakespeare! And now most adults find this too difficult to be worth their time. This is bad news.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
mr_porteiro_head
Member
Member # 4644

 - posted      Profile for mr_porteiro_head   Email mr_porteiro_head         Edit/Delete Post 
Hey, I read Shakespeare (real Shakespeare) for fun myself as a kid. You're going to be pretty wrong if you make assumptions about what I'm like just because I disagree with you about this.


quote:
The language of the Victorian novel, considered by many now to be "wordy" or overlong, is actually remarkably efficient when properly viewed
Please elaborate on this opinion.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
WntrMute
Member
Member # 7556

 - posted      Profile for WntrMute           Edit/Delete Post 
We're up to generation Z now? Good gravy.

I guess we'll have to sterilize them all, though, since we've run out of letters -- how will we know what stereotypical assumptions to make about them, unless we have some trite name for them as a collective?

Unless....we could always bring back the letters 'thorn': þ (it stands for voiceless 'th' like 'thin') and 'eth': ð (voiced 'th' as in 'the') and just use ðose. I þink ðat'll work out perfectly.

Posts: 218 | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
docmagik
Member
Member # 1131

 - posted      Profile for docmagik   Email docmagik         Edit/Delete Post 
I vote for the letters in Dr. Seuss's "On Beyond Zebra."
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
Mr. ph,

I make no assumptions about you. Your comment about "long division" sounded like a petulant reaction to "thinking and paying attention."

Sorry to offend. [Smile]

As for "elaborating" - this will require a somewhat lengthy analysis of a sample passage. I do not have the time now, but will happily indulge you, time permitting, after the weekend.

Here's the brief version: The structure of a sentence, the sequence of phrases and careful word-choice, says as much as the words themselves. Victorian novelists also often relied on what was then "popular" culture - a broad and comprehensive familiarity with the Bible, with Greco-Roman and sometimes Teutonic mythology, and in many cases with Shakespeare. They were thus able to embed a rich symbolic layer within the surface narrative. For a quickie example, read the opening line of Great Expectations, and then the first line of King James' Book of John. See a similarity? Not a coincidence.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
solo
Member
Member # 3148

 - posted      Profile for solo   Email solo         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by KidB:
This is why there is so much reverence for Shakespeare, as Harold Bloom notes, there is no idea you can have that he has not also had, no concept that would startle him. Any book or play you encounted today feels his influence.

I really strongly disagree with this statement. The idea that nothing is new is not only untrue, but it is irrelevent. A story told by someone else is never the same story. We bring our own ideas to things and to say that "there is no idea you can have that he has not also had" elevates him to a godlike status. There is no one person who is the source of all originality on this earth. I refuse to accept that it's all been done. Sure, much of what is available in modern media is all rehashes of the same old stories but there is also much that isn't.

Also, some of your comments seem to imply that a work of literature written in our common vernacular is inherently inferior to something written centuries ago. This is sad to me. There is so much written word that has great power and beauty being produced. Sure, much of it is influence by Shakespeare but I am sure that the bard was influenced by the stories he read, the plays he saw, and the culture of his day.

Posts: 1336 | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
A Rat Named Dog
Member
Member # 699

 - posted      Profile for A Rat Named Dog   Email A Rat Named Dog         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
... there is no idea you can have that he has not also had, no concept that would startle him ...
"Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers."
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
clod
Member
Member # 9084

 - posted      Profile for clod   Email clod         Edit/Delete Post 
"Also, some of your comments seem to imply that a work of literature written in our common vernacular is inherently inferior to something written centuries ago."

This seems important.

Posts: 351 | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Amilia
Member
Member # 8912

 - posted      Profile for Amilia   Email Amilia         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Then there's the whole different question of whether plays should be read as literature rather than enjoyed as stage performances as they were intended. Perhaps this is part of the "high school ruins literature" problem.
I will be forever grateful to my 11th grade English teacher who insisted that Shakespeare wrote plays, not novels, which were meant to be seen, not read. We watched MacBeth in class, and if we chose to write a report on one of Shakespeare's plays, we had to watch it either on stage or on screen. Because of this, I no longer fear Shakespeare. While I have difficutly reading the plays, I love watching them. I never understand a word of the first 15 minutes or so of a Shakespearian play, but then it is like my brain suddenly kicks itself into gear, and I understand everything from there on out.

The experience is similar to watching a foreign movie with subtitles. At first, it is very annoying trying to read the dialog and watch the action at the same time, but by the time you are half-way through the movie and get up to go into the kitchen for more popcorn, you are startled to realize that you no longer understand Italian now that you are not looking at the screen.

Posts: 364 | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
imogen
Member
Member # 5485

 - posted      Profile for imogen   Email imogen         Edit/Delete Post 
I think I agree with KidB.

And while I don't think OSC did a bad job by any means I question the idea of 'translating' Shakespeare into "the Shakespearean 'feel'."

If you want to adapt Shakespeare's works to fit modern day language well and good. Many have done it, and some have worked well.

But why 'translate' the work into a mock-Shakespearean lexicon? If you want the authenticity, stick with the original. If you want to make it accessible by modern English standards, translate it into modern English. I guess I just don't get the (what seems to me) faux-Shakespeare approach.

Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Orson Scott Card
Administrator
Member # 209

 - posted      Profile for Orson Scott Card           Edit/Delete Post 
It's worth pointing out that productions of Shakespeare in Victorian times had CHANGED ENDINGS - Romeo and Juliet are interrupted just in time; Cordelia doesn't die; Othello finds out the truth without killing Cordelia; etc. It was considered quite revolutionary when the original endings were restored.

Church productions invariably change all the jokes that the church community will consider offensive - at least all those that the director GETS.

When directors are "cutting for length" how do you think they decide what is expendable? Bawdry is often the first to go, along with jokes that nobody will get. In other words, the usual solution is to cut so much humor and risque material that what is left is NOT the play Shakespeare intended; the lightening effect of the comedy is purged, and the result is much heavier (and longer-seeming, I might add) than the uncut version.

There is no "cutting for length" that is not also cutting something else; it always involves a judgment of what is expendable; and it is usually a confession of what the director does not wish to try to make intelligible to the audience.

As for the bawdry, let's remember that Shakespeare lived in a coarser time. Language and subject matters that were relatively mild in his time are far more indecorous today. The result is that some of his material is shocking in a way that he never intended; things his audience would have viewed merely with delight and a bit of pleasure at the discomfiture of the strait-laced Puritans now seem quite crude (though he didn't use words that we routinely use - words that were known and used in his day, but he chose not to; so he DID have limits and was careful about his decorum).

In particular, in the opening of R&J, when the servants "joke" about raping the women of their defeated foe, this wss NOT as socially appalling as it is now. Not that anyone approved, but it was recognized as a common event in war, AND the idea of forcing a woman was considered "rough sex," not "unspeakable violence" as it is today. This has actually changed in my lifetime - plenty of dirty jokes when I was a kid used the word "rape" almost interchangeably with "f---" - as a euphemism, in fact. (And look how Gerard Depardieu got into trouble with the same mistake.) It's a mistake to think that Shakespeare intended his words to have the effect they have in OUR culture. He didn't know our culture; you have to know enough about HIS culture to judge how his words were meant to be received, and then translate the jokes and wordplay etc. so they have the SAME effect today, relative to our culture. So as our culture changes, the translations must also change.

Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
Oh, sure. When performing Shakespeare,the Victorians messed with endings, or performed only individual scenes in sideshows, all kinds of changes. I don't think that this was the case for reading Shakespeare - my understanding is that the orginal texts were available in book-form. If I'm wrong about this, please source me. All I noted before was that the Victorians did not need Shakespeare "translated."

But, OSC, I think you're conflating seperate issues that I've already tried to separate out here. I've already left behind any objection to making the play "church-appropriate". Certain jokes are offensive to certain audiences - that's all that needs to be said on that subject. Which is why I'm confused that you continue to make an unnecessarily problematic (and to me objectional) argument about cuts that I concede are defensible on "audience" grounds alone.

Specifcally:


quote:
As for the bawdry, let's remember that Shakespeare lived in a coarser time. Language and subject matters that were relatively mild in his time are far more indecorous today. The result is that some of his material is shocking in a way that he never intended; things his audience would have viewed merely with delight and a bit of pleasure at the discomfiture of the strait-laced Puritans now seem quite crude.

He didn't know our culture; you have to know enough about HIS culture to judge how his words were meant to be received, and then translate the jokes and wordplay etc. so they have the SAME effect today, relative to our culture. So as our culture changes, the translations must also change.

My question - why should Shakespeare's plays be made reflect our cultural sensibilities? To me, the fact that they do not is one of the most exciting things about them.

Nobody in their right mind would today write, for popular entertainment, a play in which two teenagers fall in love and kill themselves. Imagine the outcry! For that matter, no writer wishing anything other than total obscurity and professional failure would write a play, or a movie script, or a novel in metered verse.

Everything about Shakespeare's plays signals that they are a product of a different time and a different sensibility. Sure, attitudes about rape were different. Then again, so were attitudes about Jews (Merchant of Venice), women (Taming of the Shrew), authority (Henry V), and a host of other issues. If I were to apply the same "adjustments" to these plays that you are suggesting for the dialogue concerning rape, the above plays could not be performed in anything like their original form - entire storylines would have to be drastically altered.

When you sit down to read/watch Shakespeare, the first thing on your mind should be "I am leaving the present day behind." The idea that certain lines were not meant to be "shocking" because his contemporary audience had a thicker skin is all the more reason for us to keep them. Aren't we adults enought to see past our initial "outrage" and enter, even if temporarily, into a different sensibility?

I suppose what I really have a problem with is the idea that an audience must be "protected" from unpleasant aspects of the past.

quote:
So as our culture changes, the translations must also change
That's much more than just cleaning it up to make it church-friendly for a spceific production. I don't think you really mean what that statement implies, because it essentially implies the erasure of cultural history - accomodating modern impatience and prudery by sacrificing the bits we don't like, forever.

More tomorrow, re: victorians. Other work calls today.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
mr_porteiro_head
Member
Member # 4644

 - posted      Profile for mr_porteiro_head   Email mr_porteiro_head         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Oh, sure. When performing Shakespeare,the Victorians messed with endings, or performed only individual scenes in sideshows, all kinds of changes. I don't think that this was the case for reading Shakespeare - my understanding is that the orginal texts were available in book-form.
How is this much different from what's happening here? OSC's translation is intended not to be read, but to be seen in a performance, and the original texts are still avilable in book form.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
mr. ph,

It is intended to be read. He put it on his website so people could read it. (And no disclaimer about "church-friendly version" is included.)

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:

When you sit down to read/watch Shakespeare, the first thing on your mind should be "I am leaving the present day behind."

Why? Why do you believe literature becomes more important as a relic of history?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
That's not what I said, Tom.

If you want a hyperbolic answer to your hyperbolic question:

"Relic" implies death, and I consider great literature to be living. How much can you dismember a living thing before it dies?

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
"Relic" implies death, and I consider great literature to be living.
I mean it more in the specific sense of "artifact." If the first thing on your mind when reading Shakespeare is that you're attempting to experience his time and place, the literature itself becomes secondary to its anthropological value.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
KidB
Member
Member # 8821

 - posted      Profile for KidB   Email KidB         Edit/Delete Post 
This is silly, Tom. You're trying to box me into saying something you can easily disagree with.

I'm just saying that you have to be willing to be transported to be receptive to what literature has to offer. I'll elaborate more tomorrow.

Remember, the play was not only written in the past, it is also set in the past. Therefore, imagining and/or understanding the past is a crucial first step to entering into the world of play. Not that you have to understand all of it - just that you must be willing to accept that it occupies a different world. That is what makes the "universality" of the story even more moving.

Posts: 53 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:

Remember, the play was not only written in the past, it is also set in the past.

But -- and this is also key -- it's set in a highly Anglicized medieval Italy that not only never existed but was massively altered for Shakespeare's audience. Do you believe this ruined the play for people, when he made this decision?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
  This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2