![]() The idea that we need women and persons of color to make the work less white and male is just bizarre. Can a playwright, no matter how talented, steep himself in these matters for a year or two and really be an expert? That seems unlikely. ![]() ![]() How will these present-day, modern English translations capture that important feature of Shakespeare’s plays? Do the playwrights and dramaturges involved in the project have the training and knowledge to balance intelligibility with verse and meter? For that matter, do they know enough about Elizabethan language and culture to effectively translate the plays? People spend lifetimes studying such things. That is the dawn of modern drama that we glimpse in his work. These moments, when natural speech smashes the stifling cage of verse and meter, transformed theater and literature forever. He also used it to create more naturalistic speech in general. Often he used prose, a more free form of speech, for lower-class characters, to distinguish them from more elite characters. Throughout his career, Shakespeare broke with this tradition. Iambic pentameter-ten syllables with five strong stresses-was the standard form of dramatic language. When Shakespeare was starting out, almost all plays were written in verse, either rhyming or blank. What is it that OSF hopes audiences or readers will come away with after they run history’s greatest playwright through the de-flavorizing machine? ![]()
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