5. Shakespeare and comic form

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Wells
Keyword(s):  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Much Ado About Nothing ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost

Nearly half of Shakespeare’s plays, extending throughout his career, are written in comic form though they play a wide range of variations on it. ‘Shakespeare and comic form’ describes the five earliest as the lightest in tone, but in the five that follow, Shakespeare introduces an antagonist who must be expelled before the play can end happily. The later comedies were written for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The plays considered are The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night.

Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; The Merchant of Venice. Edited by Charles Edelman. $65 cloth; Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; The Taming of the Shrew. Edited by Elizabeth Schafer. $65 cloth; Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; King Henry V. Edited by Emma Smith. $23 paper.

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-161
Author(s):  
Michael Flachmann
Keyword(s):  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Much Ado About Nothing ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It

In their “Editors' Preface” to the Cambridge University Press Shakespeare in Production series, J. S. Bratton and Julie Hankey proudly describe the “comprehensive dossier of materials,” including “eye-witness accounts, contemporary criticism, promptbook marginalia, stage business, cuts, additions and rewritings,” that make up the heart of this brilliant and exceptionally useful collection of Shakespeare editions. Conceived by Jeremy Treglown and first published by Junction Books, the series was later printed by Bristol Classical Press as Plays in Performance, though none of the original four titles remains in print. Already published in the descendant Cambridge Shakespeare in Production series are nine plays—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, The Tempest, King Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice—with Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, and As You Like It forthcoming.

Two Hamlets

Tempo ◽  
1969 ◽  
pp. 6-12
Author(s):  
Stephen Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Original Text ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Musical Settings ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Much Ado About Nothing ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream

Although Shakespeare has in the past been freely plundered for musical settings of every kind—from song to opera—it still seems a fair generalisation to say that his best work does not lend itself to this kind of treatment. Perhaps the most successful of all Shakespeare operas in English is Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which follows closely the text of one of the less substantial comedies. Of The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, no satisfactory opera has apparently been made (though Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict contains charming music), and for much the same reason—namely Shakespeare's unrivalled genius for linguistic imagery—the great tragedies have resisted direct musical setting, Boito's Otello and Piave's Macbeth being, of course, free derivatives, not translations. Only in our own century has it become normal to set Shakespeare's tragedies in the original text, translated or otherwise.

scholarly journals Shakespeare Comes to Indonesia

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (25) ◽  
pp. 99-119
Author(s):  
Michael Skupin
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Indirect Influence ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Dutch Translation ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Lengthy Discussion

This paper discusses the circumstances of Shakespeare’s arrival in Indonesia via the translations of Trisno Sumardjo, published in the early 1950’s. Biographical material about the translator will be presented, and there will be a discussion of the characteristics the Indonesian language and of Indonesian verse which would determine the expectations of his readers, such as rhyme, meter and style, that would influence his renderings of the poetic passages in the Bard’s plays. These are illustrated in a sampling of passages from As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice. The Dutch translation of L. A. J. Burgersdijk was an indirect influence on the translations, and not always for the good. The paper concludes with a lengthy discussion of the extremely difficult problems that Sumardjo encountered in his translation of King Lear. This Lear was not published during the translator’s lifetime, Sumardjo’s prestige notwithstanding because he was not satisfied with the solutions he proposed.

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