Translating Classical Plays: Collected Papers (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) [1 ed.] 9781138124325, 9781315648231, 113812432X

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of illustrations and copyright
Acknowledgements
Part 1 Translation in English
Introduction
1 ‘An agreeable innovation’: Play and translation Translation and the Classic (2008)
2 Theobald and Lintott: A footnote on early translations of Greek tragedy Arion (2009)
3 Benson, ‘Mushri’ and the first English Oresteia Arion (2006)
4 Business as usual: Plautus’ Menaechmi in English translation Ancient Comedy and Reception (2014)
Part 2 Processes and issues
Introduction
5 ‘Good manners, decorum or the public peace’: Greek drama and the censor Modes of Censorship and Translation (2007)
6 Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma Classical and Modern Literature (2007)
7 Transfusion or transgression: The translator as director in Medea Proceedings of the X and XI Meetings of the ECCD at Delphi
Part 3 Greek tragedy
Introduction
8 ‘Enough give in it’: Translating the classical play The Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions
9 ‘Men as they ought to be’: Sophocles in translation Brill’s Companion to Sophocles (2012)
10 The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony GRAMMA (2014)
11 Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy Methuen Drama (2002)
Part 4 Greek and Roman comedy
Introduction
12 The line or the gag: Translating classical comedy CTIA Occasional Papers (2006)
13 Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque The Comparative Drama Conference, 2005
14 Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty DRAMA (1997)
15 Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical National Theatre Platform Lecture (2004)
Bibliography and works cited
Translations
Index

Citation preview

Translating Classical Plays

“J. Michael Walton is a rare and important scholar in that he has brilliantly united his detailed knowledge of theatre studies with classical scholarship and his work as a translator of ancient drama. His ground-breaking insights into the art of translating classical works for the modern stage have been invaluable to both scholars and practitioners for many years. Now we are able to appreciate the wide range of his vital work collected in this spirited, thought-provoking and inspiring volume.” Professor Peter Meineck, New York University

Translating Classical Plays is a selection of edited papers by J. Michael Walton published and delivered between 1997 and 2014. Of the four sections, each with a new introduction, the first two cover the history of translating classical drama into English and specific issues relating to translation for stage performance. The latter two are concerned with the three Greek tragedians, and the Greek and Roman writers of old and new comedy, ending with the hitherto unpublished text of a Platform Lecture given at the National Theatre in London comparing the plays of Plautus with Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The volume is an invaluable resource for anyone involved in staging or translating classical drama. J. Michael Walton is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Hull, UK.

Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies

  1 The Roman Garden Katharine T. von Stackelberg

11 Virgil’s Homeric Lens Edan Dekel

  2 The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society Shaun Tougher

12 Plato’s Dialectic on Woman Equal, therefore inferior Elena Blair

  3 Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom Leanne Bablitz

13 Roman Literature, Gender and Reception Domina illustris Edited by Donald Lateiner, Barbara K. Gold and Judith Perkins

  4 Life and Letters in the Ancient Greek World John Muir   5 Utopia Antiqua Rhiannon Evans

14 Roman Theories of Translation Surpassing the source Siobhán McElduff

  7 Between Rome and Persia Peter Edwell

15 Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity The petrified gaze Johannes Siapkas and Lena Sjögren

  8 Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought John T. Fitzgerald

16 Menander in Contexts Edited by Alan H. Sommerstein

 9 Dacia Ioana A. Oltean

17 Consumerism in the Ancient World Imports and identity construction Justin St. P. Walsh

  6 Greek Magic John Petropoulos

10 Rome in the Pyrenees Simon Esmonde-Cleary

18 Apuleius and Africa Edited by Benjamin Todd Lee, Ellen Finkelpearl and Luca Graverini 19 Lucian and His Roman Voices Cultural exchanges and conflicts in the late Roman Empire Eleni Bozia 20 Theology and Existentialism in Aeschylus Written in the cosmos Richard Rader 21 Rome and Provincial Resistance Gil Gambash

22 The Origins of Ancient Greek Science Michael Boylan 23 Athens Transformed, 404–262 BC From popular sovereignty to the dominion of the elite Phillip Harding

Other books in this series: Childhood in Ancient Athens Iconography and social history Lesley A. Beaumont Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Corinth 338–196 BC Michael D. Dixon

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Translating Classical Plays Collected papers J. Michael Walton

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 J. Michael Walton The right of J. Michael Walton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Walton, J. Michael, 1939– author. Title: Translating classical plays: collected papers / J. Michael  Walton. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY:   Routledge, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2015039173 | ISBN 9781138124325 (hardback:   alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315648231 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Greek drama—Translations into English—History   and criticism. | Greek drama (Comedy)—Translations into   English—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PA3012. W35 2016 | DDC 880.09—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039173 ISBN: 978-1-138-12432-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64823-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of illustrations and copyrightix Acknowledgementsx PART 1

Translation in English Introduction1 1 ‘An agreeable innovation’: Play and translation Translation and the Classic (2008)

9

2 Theobald and Lintott: A footnote on early translations of Greek tragedy Arion (2009)

24

3 Benson, ‘Mushri’ and the first English Oresteia Arion (2006)

30

4 Business as usual: Plautus’ Menaechmi in English translation Ancient Comedy and Reception (2014)

43

PART 2

Processes and issues Introduction65 5 ‘Good manners, decorum or the public peace’: Greek drama and the censor Modes of Censorship and Translation (2007)

71

6 Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma Classical and Modern Literature (2007)

88

viii  Contents 7 Transfusion or transgression: The translator as director in Medea Proceedings of the X and XI Meetings of the ECCD at Delphi

105

PART 3

Greek tragedy Introduction119 8 ‘Enough give in it’: Translating the classical play The Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions125 9 ‘Men as they ought to be’: Sophocles in translation Brill’s Companion to Sophocles (2012)

140

10 The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony GRAMMA (2014)

158

11 Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy Methuen Drama (2002)

171

PART 4

Greek and Roman comedy Introduction189 12 The line or the gag: Translating classical comedy CTIA Occasional Papers (2006)

194

13 Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque The Comparative Drama Conference, 2005

207

14 Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty DRAMA (1997)

216

15 Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical National Theatre Platform Lecture (2004)

233

Bibliography and works cited245 Translations252 Index263

List of illustrations and copyright

  6.1    6.2    7.1    7.2   7.3  14.1 

Pheres and Admetus over the coffin of Alcestis, Hull 1995 The veiled Alcestis with Heracles and Admetus, Hull 1995 Medea and the ‘little ghosts’, Hull 1998 Medea, Creon and the chorus, Hull 1998 Medea Complex, Delphi, 2000 Getty Stage, Malibu, 1994

Copyright Figures 6.1, 6.2, 7.1 and 7.2 are reproduced courtesy of the University of Hull Photographic Department. Figure 7.3 is the property of the author. Figure 14.1 is reproduced courtesy of Richard Beacham.

99 99 111 113 116 223

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the following publishers for their cooperation and, where appropriate, permission to reproduce copyright material: Oxford University Press Arion de Gruyter St Jerome Publishing Classical and Modern Literature The European Cultural Centre of Delphi Wiley Blackwell Koninklijke Brill NV GRAMMA Methuen Drama The Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University of Manchester J. B. Metzler Verlag GmbH 1

‘An agreeable innovation’: Play and translation From Lianeri, Alexandra and Vanda Zajko (eds 2008), Translation and the Classic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 261–77. By permission of Oxford University Press.

2

Theobald and Lintott: A footnote on early translations of Greek tragedy From Arion Third Series, 16.3, Winter 2009, pp. 103–110.

3

Benson, ‘Mushri’ and the first English Oresteia From Arion, 14.2, Fall 2006, pp. 49–67.

4

Business as usual: Plautus’ Menaechmi in English translation From Olson, S. Douglas (ed. 2014), Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, pp. 1040–61. By permission of de Gruyter, Berlin and Boston.

5

‘Good manners, decorum or the public peace’: Greek drama and the censor From Billiani, Francesca (ed. 2007), Modes of Censorship and Translation: National Contexts and Diverse Media. Manchester & Kinderhook: St Jerome Publishing, pp. 143–66.

Acknowledgements xi   6 Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma From Classical and Modern Literature, 27.1, 2007, pub. 2008, pp. 93–120.   7 Transfusion or transgression: The translator as director in Medea From Symposia Proceedings of the X (2000) and XI (2002) International Meetings on Ancient Greek Drama. Athens (2008): The European Cultural Centre of Delphi, pp. 195–205.   8 ‘Enough give in it’: Translating the classical play From Hardwick, Lorna and Christopher Stray (eds 2008), The Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 153–67. By permission of Wiley Publishers.   9 ‘Men as they ought to be’: Sophocles in translation From Markantonatos, Andreas (ed. 2012), Brill’s Companion to Sophocles. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 619–39. 10 The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony From GRAMMA, 22.1, 2014, pp. 143–58. 11 Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy From McDonald, Marianne and J. Michael Walton (eds 2002), Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy. London: Methuen, pp. 3–36. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 12 The line or the gag: Translating classical comedy From The Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies: Occasional Papers, vol. 3, Manchester University (2006), pp. 29–46. 13 Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque From The Comparative Drama Conference Series: Text and Presentation 2005, 2006, pp. 3–14. 14 Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty From DRAMA Beiträge zum antiken Drama unde seiner Rezeption, Band 5, 1997, pp. 171–92. By permission of J. B. Metzler Verlag GmbH. 15 Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical From a platform lecture on the Olivier stage of the National Theatre in London, under the title ‘Business as Usual: Plautus in the Marketplace’, 15 Sep 2004, before a performance of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

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Part 1

Translation in English

Introduction ‘Translate’ and ‘translation’ are versatile words. From Peter Quince’s anxious reaction to Bottom’s appearance in an ass’s head to the process in genetics through which proteins are created from cellular ribosomes, the terms only have in common that they involve forms of transformation, or, to use the Greek term Ovid chose for his book of mythic tales, Metamorphoses. Literary translation is more precise, but still in academic parlance covers a wide field from signing, sub- and sur-titles to the rendering of concrete poetry into a language other than that in which it was first composed. Focusing on the dramatic text introduces a further refinement on the theory and practice of the linguistic translator. The direct relationship between source and target involves a more complex phase when applied to a stage play. Though the source may remain the same the target is not initially the reader, but those whose job it is to give a play stage life; further, the proper target may well be seen to be neither reader nor director, designer nor actor, but the audience, at a third remove from the original source. Plato would not have approved. The present book is written from the perspective of a theatre historian and practitioner. It consists of articles, talks and published papers from the last twenty years, and personal experience from rather longer. All relate immediately to the translation of Greek tragedy or Greek and Roman comedy, but treating those issues as similar to translating drama from other cultures and more recent times. Beyond the written word on the page most plays include a theatrical language which also requires identifying and translating. The term that best sums up the imperative for the drama translator is ‘performance translation’. Some modern examples, not from Greek, but from or into German, may help to define this term, though finding a comprehensive definition is more difficult. The first relates to a BBC televised Brahms Requiem conducted by Claudio Abbado with the Berliner Philharmoniker. The fourth section begins ‘Wie Lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’. The words are based on Psalm 84 which, in the King James Bible of 1611 runs, ‘How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts’. The New English Bible comes up with ‘How dear

2  Translation in English is thy dwelling place’. While the French is ‘Que tes demeures sont aimables’. The subtitler for this television production appeared to go back to the St James version, but came up with, perhaps for brevity, ‘How lovely is thy tabernacle’. The point is, of course, that this was being sung and ‘How lovely is thy tabernacle’ is actually unsingable. The English version is usually Milton’s ‘How lovely are thy dwellings fair’. That fits the music. But there was a clear discrepancy here between the authority of the authorized version of the Psalm and the standard English translation of a German oratorio where the music dictated the choice of words. Anything involving music is a special case, but it is worth bearing in mind that Greek drama was written for some sort of musical accompaniment and with a tight verse structure for dialogue and for choral interlude.1 The second example has more to do with subtext. In Act Two of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, a playwright famous for his manipulation of atmosphere, Stanley Webber is being browbeaten by two intruders in his life, Goldberg and McCann. They aim a whole string of absurd accusations at him and the dialogue reads as follows: GOLD: No society would touch you. Not even a building society. MCCANN: You’re a traitor to the cloth. GOLD: What do you use for pyjamas? STAN: Nothing. GOLD: You verminate the sheet of your birth. MCC: What about the Albigensenist heresy? GOLD: Who watered the wicket in Melbourne? MCC: What about the Blessed Oliver Plunkett? GOLD: Speak up, Webber. Why did the chicken cross the road?

(Pinter The Birthday Party: 51) The first German translator, reputedly, came to the line ‘Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?’ and looked up the words in his dictionary: ‘wicket’, ‘a gate’; ‘watered’, ‘urinated’. Pinter’s line became (translated back from the German), ‘Who urinated over the gates of Melbourne?’. The analogy is a cricketing one. Watering the wicket is not cricket. This would make perfect sense in Melbourne or at Lords; it would be understood by a significant percentage of the population of South Africa; its innuendo would reverberate in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, the Windward Islands and Jamaica. It might mean something to a few people these days in Holland, Nepal and Afghanistan, but probably not in Germany in the late nineteen-fifties when The Birthday Party was first performed there. It meant a lot to Pinter, a wartime refugee whose cricket-bat was his comforter – and for whom ever after cricket was a comfort. Perhaps it could be explained, though only partly, by a cultural equivalent, baseball perhaps for America.2 But, would a literal translation have had any meaning for a German audience to whom ‘watering the wicket at Melbourne’ might as

Translation in English 3 well be ‘urinating over the gates of Melbourne’? In other words, this translator’s cultural oversight was perhaps nothing of the sort. What he recognized was that the context implied threat, it suggested bullying and brainwashing. Linguistic equivalent was irrelevant in a stage situation which was rooted in emotional tensions.3 Since becoming interested in the process of translation I have started to collect ‘false friends’. False friends are words or phrases which look as though they are correct translations of a source because the original appears to have a linguistic equivalent in the target language. My most recent addition to the list came from a conference at Delphi in 2009. Papers at the European Cultural Centre at Delphi are given in Greek, English or French, so not only does each simultaneous translator have to concentrate on the job, but also they have someone else at their elbow gabbling away in a different language, both from that which they are using and from what the speaker is using. It is a taxing job and these women and men are experts. The topic for this conference was the complex relationships in ancient Athens, and in Europe and the EU today, between citizens and non-citizens. An early paper focused on the ambiguous classical Greek word xenos, which can mean both ‘stranger’ and ‘friend’, ‘host’ and ‘guest’: thus, the nature of ‘hospitality’. One delegate spoke about Odysseus and how he was treated during his ten-year voyage home from the war at Troy. ‘After his departure from Calypso’s island’, the simultaneous translator asserted, ‘the Phaeacians were the first to hospitalize the hero’. A nice false friend. Hospitality and hospitalize look as though they come from the same root, and, of course, they do. It is just that they have acquired different meanings in English. Tom Stoppard is one of the most precise of playwrights, possibly because though he writes in English his original contact language was not English but Czech. He is known, apart from the comic gymnastics of his own original work, for updatings of plays by a variety of European authors, amongst them, Molnár (Rough Crossing), Schnitzler (Undiscovered Country), Nestroy (On the Razzle) and Pirandello (Henry IV). He chooses not to call these translations, though he is always at pains to acknowledge his sources. In 2005 he gave an interview to The Daily Telegraph, having just completed ‘translating’ a play for the first time, Le Vent des Peupliers, by French dramatist Gérald Sibleyras. In tackling the Sibleyras play his first problem was with the title. The literal Wind in the Poplars would raise too much of an association with Wind in the Willows for an English audience. In the end the English title turned into Heroes. The false friend he identified was that the French word ‘niche’, which he was going to translate as ‘recess’, does not mean the same as the English ‘niche’ at all, but is the French for a ‘dog kennel’. Alongside such false friends, there are turns of phrase and idioms which are misleading and sometimes mystifying to anyone trying to translate them. Comedy thrives on such idiosyncrasies because so much in the original language depends on misunderstandings between characters. The translator

4  Translation in English cannot duck the fact that, even in a modern play, differences of culture and associations of familiar speech are extraordinarily difficult to transfer into a different context. In Anthony Minghella’s play Made in Bangkok a group of young men have arrived in Thailand on what has been euphemistically sold to them as an ‘Eastern Promise Tour’. In an early scene at the airport their tour guide allocates them their hotel rooms and it turns out that Gary and Adrian are sharing. The dialogue runs as follows: GARY:

Excuse me there are two of us. And we’re not going out with each other. REP: (shrugs) This was our booking detail. You must check at hotel. ADRIAN: Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out. GARY: Fuck that for a game of soldiers. (Minghella Made in Bangkok: 204) For a German production two translations of the play were prepared. In one Gary’s line ‘Fuck that for a game of soldiers’, translated back into English, came out as ‘I am not a homosexual’. The other was whatever the German is for ‘I always wanted to be a military person’. Almost everyone who has grown up in and around the argot of English slang knows exactly what ‘Fuck that for a game of soldiers’ means. I defy them to explain it to someone who does not know what it means. Translating the English back into English, ‘Fuck that for a game of soldiers’ is a graphic but emphatic way of saying ‘No!’, but what has that to do with soldiers? I bring these examples up as incidences of what can go wrong with what appears to be an ‘accurate’ translation. It is the nature of ‘accuracy’ that I want to interrogate here. I also intend giving the topic a historical slant and suggest how translation fits into theatre history. In his seminal essay ‘Problems of translation for the stage: interculturalism and post-modern theatre’, Patrice Pavis made a number of points about the special nature of translation for the stage. Beginning by asserting the importance of the mise en scène in any act of theatre translation he wrote: In order to conceptualize the act of theatre translation, we must consult the literary translator and the director and actor; we must incorporate their contribution and integrate the act of translation into the much broader translation (that is the mise en scène) of a dramatic text. (Pavis: 25 in Scolnicov and Holland 1989) This acknowledges that translation arrives via the actors’ bodies and what Pavis called ‘heterogeneous cultures and situations of enunciation that are separated in time and space’. He then proceeded to identify those factors that make the act of translation for the stage dramaturgical rather than linguistic, which include the imperatives of ‘a performance text’, the audience,

Translation in English 5 the sociopolitical image of a culture and so on. He continued by discussing possible solutions to the problems of interculturalism and cultural appropriation. When it comes to the drama of classical Athens this takes on an additional dimension. The trouble with the Greeks is not only that the original language has become the province of a diminishing few, for none of whom is it still a spoken language, but also that the written texts are dominated by a series of still disputed linguistic and theatrical dramatists which have no necessary meeting point with contemporary stage practice. The Greeks may have subscribed to a stage language of image, gesture and space, but personal academic preference can seldom claim the authority of common theatrical truth. The Athenian playwrights each wrote in a highly distinctive manner, constantly foraging, breaking new ground, making new discoveries about what the power of the theatre could and might be. One of the factors that makes Greek tragedy and comedy difficult to translate is that these dramatists were, in their own day, the avant-garde. Aeschylus used coinages which are not found anywhere else in surviving Greek literature. Sophocles incorporated emotional contrasts which have physical equivalents. Euripides used a mixture of colloquial and forensic language that brings mythical issues to the level of everyday experience. Aristophanes had gods talking to prominent figures of state, who talked to fictional Athenians, who talked to dogs, clouds and birds, who talked to stage-hands or the audience. Menander took over from Euripides in making domestic issues universal as, years later, would Chekhov or Ayckbourn. The medium of these Greek playmakers was a different world, a new art form in a changing society. So, one of the priorities for any translator of Greek plays should be, but too seldom has been, to have such a firm grasp of the playwright’s distinctive features, as well as of the social, cultural and theatrical conditions for which each of them was writing, that their equivalences are rooted solidly in the past before being transmitted into the present. This demands a proper understanding of the term ‘performance translation’. It is never easy for the translator to remain neutral. The good playwright of any period will leave enough malleable for the director and the actor to bring new interpretations and fresh emphases according to the mood and sensibilities of a new occasion. A translator for the stage needs to do the same. For the practitioner the Greek play has no urtext, no primary finished version. Interpretation has to be part of the process for director and actor. It also, I believe, may be part, though only a part, of the process for the translator. Directing a Shakespeare play often involves discarding countless possible interpretations in order to uncover one that is both plausible and consistent. If the same is true for the Greeks – and I would like to think it should be – then the stage translator from Greek into some modern language, including modern Greek, must leave open the performance door which much literary and literal translation seems to close.

6  Translation in English The first examples of tragedy in Latin from the third century bce all returned to the world of Greek mythology while the comedies of Plautus and Terence were poached and pilfered unashamedly from the new comedy of Menander and his contemporaries (see Part 4). No Roman tragedy survives until the plays of Seneca in the new Imperial age of the Christian era. Seneca’s plays show little evidence of performance technique or ethic. Their absence from the present book simply reflects that I have never felt any urge to translate them or investigate their various translations. There is no doubting Seneca’s direct influence on drama from the Renaissance onwards, but the influence of Greek myth which found its way into early opera and the tragedies and comedies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was filtered into the freest of adaptations from the world of fifthcentury Athens. Original authors who were attracted by the power of Greek plays seem to have believed that their target audience with their contemporary cultural expectations would find unadulterated Greek tragedy obscure and alien. They responded by selecting one or more of the themes of a Greek original, usually Sophocles or Euripides, and recreating the play in a world that their new audience would recognize. African examples have offered some of the best practice, and many of the Irish adaptations have used subtle and forceful blends of ancient myth and more recent history (see Ch. 11). But adaptation is a different kind of creative act, not the same as translation, nor even translocation. It belongs rather to that repertoire of versions of Greek myth which, in one form or another, made such an impact on the European stage. As the process of revitalizing, in the present, stories from the deep past was precisely what Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides did in every surviving Greek tragedy bar Persians, it would be impossible not to applaud both the writers and the myths themselves for proving such a rich vein of dramatic inspiration.4 The issue of the director/translator proper is identified in a challenging essay from the same volume as that of the Pavis article quoted above. In ‘The play: gateway to cultural dialogue’, Gershon Shaked wrote: The past is a closed world unless we translate it into the present. The political regimes, ways of behaviour, transportation, communication, and architecture of the past are all insufficiently understood in the present. Therefore they are reinterpreted: candles become electric lights, swords and bows become rifles and mortars, human labour becomes machines, slave society becomes capitalism. (Shaked 1989: 13) At the same time Greek tragedy offers, no less than do the Old and New Testaments, a fund of exempla. The Trojan War can be every war. It may be the Peloponnesian War. It may be the First World War. It may be Middle

Translation in English 7 Eastern conflicts, or the civil wars in many parts of Africa. On stage a war may be a non-specific macrocosmic metaphor. If the director so chooses, it can be one battle on one occasion through which to view greater truths about the whole nature of war. For the translator what is important is to trust the originals while leaving interpretation of them open, not closed. I began to tangle with all these issues only when I started to translate. A number of productions later, appointment as General Editor of Methuen Classical Dramatists (1998–2003) and the founding of The Performance Translation Centre in the Drama Department at the University of Hull led eventually to a book (2006) in which I tried to address the questions I found myself asking. It did not stop there and the articles included here are the result of earlier or further research and discussion in a number of forums, both practical and historical – especially at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles – in which I have been privileged to participate. My thanks to a multitude of practitioners and academic colleagues, collaborators all of them in conference, classroom and rehearsal. My first thought was to arrange the papers in chronological order, then, more sensibly, by genre. As my approach is from the standpoint of theatre historian and of practitioner, there are now four separate sections which overlap, but have an individual perspective. The opening part is historical rather than practical, with an article on the history of translating Greek tragedy and comedy into English, from the sixteenth-century Iphigenia at Aulis of Lady Jane Lumley and the eighteenth-century Aristophanes of Richard Cumberland and Henry Fielding. The piece was first published in the company of a wealth of other contributions about aspects of classical texts within the history of classical culture (Lianeri and Zajko 2008). The second and third chapters concern a bold but largely fruitless venture to publish English translations of Greek tragedies in the early eighteenth century, and the dating of the first performance in English of The Oresteia by Frank Benson. Both articles were originally published in Arion. The last piece traces the translation history of the best known of all Roman comedies, Plautus’ Menaechmi, seemingly the primary model for Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, and was written for a volume in honour of the notable scholar and translator, Jeffrey Henderson. Some editing and revisions have been made to individual essays throughout the book, not for updating purposes, but for clarification or to avoid repetition. Play titles have been regularized to their most familiar form and anglicized with ‘c’ for ‘k’ and long vowels indicated only in transliterated Greek words. This is not always consistent, especially with Latin titles, but I hope clear. Any variations follow the preference of individual translators. Translations referred to are examples to illustrate specific issues as treated in various periods. Each of the other three parts has a separate Introduction.

8  Translation in English

Notes 1 Opera does present all sorts of translation problems. Edward Downes recalls a Dutch singer who could only sing in English in three vowels. Downes, accordingly, translated the role of the Caliph in Turandot, missing out two vowels entirely: history does not extend to identifying which. 2 Christina Babou-Pagoureli, Greek translator of both Pinter and Tom Stoppard, another cricketing playwright, simply translates any cricketing reference into a tennis one. 3 For a further comedy example see the Introduction to Part 4 (189–93). 4 For the most comprehensive account of the influence of Greek tragedy in Britain see Hall and Macintosh (2005); also ‘When is a Translation not a Translation?’, Walton (2006): Ch. 10: 179–96.

1 ‘An agreeable innovation’ Play and translation Translation and the Classic (2008)

In Michael Wodhull’s 1782 translation of Euripides’ The Suppliants he includes a stage direction which must, by any benchmark, be rated a significant miscalculation. The play, though seldom translated at all and hardly ever performed, includes one of the most intractable of staging problems in surviving classical drama. Evadne, crazed as Tosca, apparently makes an appearance on a high rock (aitherian petran, 987), threatening to jump into the already burning funeral pyre of her husband, Capaneus, one of the seven killed in the unsuccessful siege of Thebes. Not only does she threaten to jump, but, eighty lines later, does so, to the dismay of her watching father and of the Chorus of mothers of the slain, one of whom ought to be her mother-in-law. The first translation into English of Suppliants (which has the same title but nothing else in common with the Aeschylus play) was in 1781 by the Rev. Robert Potter as Supplicants. Potter was a seasoned translator by this time, having produced the first full English Aeschylus four years before. His Euripides appeared in two volumes initially, two years apart, lacking only Cyclops from the surviving canon of nineteen plays. The ribaldry, never mind implied buggery, of Cyclops proved a problem for a number of early translators, though not for Michael Wodhull. Wodhull, a product of that remarkable forcing-ground of classical scholarship, Winchester College, had been working in a desultory fashion translating Euripides for a number of years without much end in sight. When Potter went into print with his first nine Euripidean tragedies, it galvanized Wodhull into action and his entire nineteen were published in 1782, together with a crabby introduction and some snide remarks about Potter’s ordering of plays, which reveal Wodhull’s gall at Potter’s getting in first, at least in part. Potter completed his run of eighteen the following year and a depth comparison between the two translators would make an intriguing study in its own right. For the present purposes this one example stands out. Evadne perched on her cliff has a final short speech, the end of which Potter translates as: It matters not; thou canst not reach me here. Now plunge I headlong down; to thee my fall

10  Translation in English Not pleasing, but to me, and to my husband, Thus join’d in death and in one funeral pile. (Potter 1781: 1069–71) Neither Potter nor Wodhull had any expectations that their translations would appear anywhere other than in print, but Wodhull chose to add a stage direction: EVADNE, as she is throwing herself from the Rock, It is all the same; Nor can you now by stretching forth your hand Stop my career. Already have I taken The fatal leap, and hence descend, with joy, Though not indeed to you, yet to myself, And to my lord, with whose remains I blaze. (Wodhull 1772) Potter’s mastery of the five-foot iambic line (the Greek dialogue line is in trimeters with six feet, but most verse translators opt for the blank verse iambic pentameter) may not be memorable, but has a simple dignity and a plausibility. Wodhull extends the number of lines in English from three to six and, through his stage direction, apparently invites his readers to envisage them as delivered by Evadne in midair. The staging of the scene is problematic enough without this intervention. It is a moot point whether it is any part of the translator’s job to offer stage directions that have only marginal justification from the text (see Ch. 4; also Walton 2006: 51–3 and 69–79). Potter offers nothing more than the identification of those present in any scene, but most subsequent translators of plays from the classical repertoire up to the most modern do give a version of the stage action from their own imagination. Not to labour the point too much, it does highlight a need, in translating a play from any period, to make allowance for what is stageable, if only because that is how and why the plays were written. The potential for stage action may well be deeply embedded within the spoken text. My purpose here is to look at the early history of the translation of classical drama, Greek and Latin, identifying some specific examples, mainly from the Greeks, that demonstrate why translating a play is such a different exercise from translating any other area of the classics. Sirkku Aaltonen pointed to the special requirements of stage translation when she wrote: The interest in what follows is directed functionally towards translated texts which have been intended for use, or actually been used, in stage productions.

Play and translation  11 This specification is important as theatre translation is not necessarily synonymous with drama translation. (Aaltonen 2000: 4) This difference between ‘theatre’ and ‘drama’ is undeniable. Aaltonen adds here the implied licence, or even requirement, in translating a theatre work to identify the action within the text and, notwithstanding the words on the page, make it into something that underlines performability. ‘Performability’, as Susan Bassnett suggested, is a nebulous critical term, but she also pointed to the distinction, advanced by both Horace and St Jerome, between two types of translation: word for word and sense for sense (Bassnett-McGuire 1981: 37 and 1991: 121–32). There is a flexibility beyond the word in translating stage plays and a consequent flexibility in translating a play for specific performance. The simple cause is the need for the translator to uncover the ‘theatre language’ and also the ‘true target’ which resides within the area bounded by stage production and audience reception. What this amounts to is that we may identify as a classic, a poem, a piece of rhetoric or a historical description, mutable according to the experience and interpretation of each reader, but with something about it that is fixed and to which it is possible to return. Plays are different, the written text existing with some intrinsic worth (who could deny the power of Shakespeare as a poet on the page?), but with the performance dimension still to be added, which makes them open-ended. This is inevitably more of an issue with classical drama than with modern plays, partly because the barrier of time includes much conjecture on, but precious little factual indication about, how the surviving classical repertoire was actually first performed; partly because any act of theatrical transference, however ‘faithful’ to the original (whatever that may mean), consists less of re-creating that original than of re-creating it for an audience which is not the original. A play is captured or recorded in print, which is how the texts of Aeschylus, Aristophanes and the rest have been preserved. But what is written is only a partial guide to what was originally played, and even less of an indication how anything from the classical repertoire might be revisited in subsequent centuries, or translated to alternative tongues and cultures. Even Seneca, never devising his plays in all probability for full stage presentation, allows through the nature of dialogue for a player’s interpretative delivery. However possible it may be to maintain faith with the dramatic and theatrical essence of a classical tragedy and comedy – their narrative drive, their rhythm, their emotional engagement – the proper job of each new translator, director and actor is not to try and recreate ‘the classical’, in the sense of disinterring an ancient performance, but to renew it. The ‘classical’, when talking of a theatre piece, is not the fact of chorus, mask or message so much as the refashioning of the total context so that an audience of today may witness a drama of today, distilled through, and devolved from, an ancient work and its conventions.

12  Translation in English Seeing the production of a Greek tragedy or comedy is not like witnessing an old film. Film as a medium captures and encapsulates the director’s original, freezing it in time so as to be the same for any future audience, give or take the baggage that they will individually bring to its reception. A part of theatre, the throwaway art, dies off nightly and recedes, dreamlike, further and further into a collective response with every individual performance, with any new casting, or in any new production. Engaging with a classic piece of theatre is not to search for the single definitive production, or even the single definitive performance of that production. There can be none, any more than there can be a definitive version of a myth which has a broad baseline, but is flexible in its detail. This is why translators of a dramatic piece prefer, the best of them, to open it out, not close it down. To survive at all over time a play needs plasticity. Its survival mechanism is to be able to change its shape and adapt to what any new generation requires of it. One direct result of this is the ephemeral nature of most stage translations, to which those of Potter and Wodhull bear abundant witness, though theirs less so than in some nineteenth- and twentieth-century examples. The history of the translation of classical plays goes back to the Romans, but almost nothing survives of the first tragedies in Latin apart from titles. Lucius Livius Andronicus, born at the beginning of the third century bce about the time that Menander died, is known to have translated Homer’s Odyssey into Latin and wrote an Aegisthus, an Achilles and an Andromeda. He was sufficiently respected in his own lifetime for The College of Playwrights to be founded in Rome in his honour in 207 bce. Quintus Ennius, a young man at the time, wrote tragedies whose titles echo those of Euripides, an Andromache, a Hecuba and a Medea, but whose surviving work amounts to little more than single lines. What distinguishes the two Latin tragedians from the Greeks is that both wrote comedies as well as tragedies, something virtually unknown in the Greek world. The first extant Roman drama is represented by twenty comedies of Titus Maccius Plautus and six of Publius Terentius Afer, though their work is very different in tone. Plautus was the former actor, author of marketplace farces which were so popular that his name and reputation were pirated both during his life and after his death. Terence, barely ten and living in Africa at the time when Plautus died in 184 bce, himself died young after completing only the six comedies. What does link the two dramatists is that their plays were all based on Greek originals, Terence’s Andria (The Girl from Andros), Adelphi (Brothers), Eunuchus (The Eunuch) and Heauton Timoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor), all from Menander originals. Whether these four, or any of the plays of Plautus, count as ‘translations’ is arguable (see Ch. 4: 43–63). Certainly, there was no intrinsic disgrace attached to the process of adaptation from Greek into Latin. There was still considerable debate, if Terence’s defensive prologues are anything to go by, about what constituted a guarantee of quality and what was simply plagiarism.

Play and translation  13 The plays of Seneca come into a similar category. His nine tragedies, written during the first century AD, include Agamemnon, two Hercules plays, Medea, Oedipus, Phaedra (Hippolytus), Phoenician Women and Trojan Women, all with a distant Greek equivalent. There was also a Thyestes, a subject twice tackled by Sophocles and once by Euripides in lost plays. Comparison between any Greek title of the same name and the Senecan equivalent reveals little indication of the Latin being anything more than a new approach to a topic from Greek myth, though Seneca almost certainly knew his Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Much of Roman culture was second-hand and, a somewhat dilettantish philhellenism apart, absorbing foreign cultural tastes was part of the Roman empire’s strength. Comedies in Latin ‘derived from’, or at least with an awareness of the plays of Terence, re-emerged in various parts of Europe from the fourteenth century onwards, inspiring subsequent translations especially into Italian for court circles. In England, by the sixteenth century, a number of the plays of both Plautus and Terence had received productions in Latin at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, an Aulularia (The Pot of Gold) in the presence of Elizabeth the First (who had herself translated a Euripides into Latin). There were two English translations of Terence’s Andria (The Girl from Andros) and one of Plautus’ Amphitruo before Plautus’ Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus) from W. W. [William Warner] which appeared in print in 1595. This is an impressive work, close in structure to the original and vigorous, but with a decidedly contemporary feel (see Ch. 4). Further English Plautus or Terence would have to wait till Laurence Echard’s Amphitruo, Epidicus and Rudens (The Rope), in 1695; and all six plays of Terence in 1705. Alexander Fraser Tytler [Lord Woodhouselee], in his Essay on the Principles of Translation (1790), was savage about some aspects of both Echard’s Terence and of his Plautus, ‘extremely censurable for his intemperate use of idiomatic phrases’ (Tytler: 140). Tytler’s main aversion was to colloquial language, i.e. the seventeenth century slang of Echard’s which by 1791 is simply awkward. Davos’ soliloquy in Act One of Terence’s Andria (The Girl from Andros) begins, in Betty Radice’s translation: Well, Davos, if I took in what the old man was saying just now about a wedding, this is no time for slackness and go-slow methods. I must look out and look sharp or it’ll be the death of me and my young master. (Radice 1976: 206–9) The Bohn edition by Henry Riley has: Assuredly, Davus, there’s no room for slothfulness or inactivity, so far as I’ve just now ascertained the old man’s mind about the marriage; which, if it is not provided against by cunning, will be bringing either myself or my master, to ruin. (Riley 1867)

14  Translation in English Echard’s version, to which Tytler took special exception, offered: Why, seriously, Davy, ’tis high time to bestir thy stumps, and to leave off dozing; at least if a body may guess at the old man’s meaning by his mumping. If these brains do not help me out at a dead lift, to pot goes Pilgarlick, or his master, for certain. (in Tytler: 139–40) Opinion over which of these three may come closest to the spirit of Terence, or, indeed, that of Menander, on two of whose plays Terence based his The Girl from Andros, may vary, but there is no denying the liveliness of Echard, even if we are uncomfortable with Davos turning into Davy and have no idea of the precise meaning of ‘mumping’ or ‘Pilgarlick’ (see also Ch. 4: 50–1). None of the three translations, as it happens, is in verse – Terence’s variations of metre are intricate and virtually impossible to replicate – nor were any of the translations intended for production. The issue of modernizing, particularly of comedy, comes down to personal preference, though the stage translator of comedy is faced with the fact that whatever satisfies an audience of today, is likely to date as quickly as the ‘book’ of last year’s pantomime. The influence of Plautus and Terence was not only on Shakespeare but on all manner of writers from Nicholas Udall – Ralph Roister Doister dates from 1555 – to Jonson, Marston, Heywood and Steele, but borrowings, even close ones, are no more ‘translations’ than are the Electras of Sophocles and Euripides translations of Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers. Seneca was similarly influential both on Renaissance tragedy – ‘quotations’ from his Phaedra, Thyestes, Trojan Women and Oedipus have been identified in Kyd, Marlowe and Shakespeare – and on a mass of plays on classical themes to be found on the British stage from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The majority opinion is that Seneca’s tragedies were never intended for full production, certainly as part of the repertoire of the Roman theatres which sprouted in any Roman or provincial town of even peripheral importance from the early years of the empire onwards. Various of his tragedies were translated in the second half of the sixteenth century, the earliest Jasper Heywood’s Thyestes from 1560, closely followed by Alexander Nevyle’s [Neville’s] Oedipus and John Studley’s Agamemnon, Medea and, subsequently, Hippolytus [Phaedra] and Hercules Oetaeus. The various translations, together with others by Thomas Nuce [or Newce] and Thomas Newton, were published as Seneca, His Tenne Tragedies in 1581, so all could have been known to even the least educated of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Subsequent Senecas were seldom intended for performance either, at least up to the text of Oedipus ‘adapted by Ted Hughes’ which Peter Brook used for his wild and woolly production at the Old Vic in 1968. They need not detain us here. There is a curiosity behind all this. By the end of the sixteenth century, all the plays of Terence and of Seneca had been translated into English. It was

Play and translation  15 approaching two hundred years before the whole of Plautus was similarly acknowledged. Admittedly there are more plays of Plautus than of Terence and Seneca combined, but no full translation appeared in print until two volumes by Bonnel Thornton in 1767, revised in 1769, with a further three volumes translated by Richard Warner, in 1772 and 1774. The popularity of all six Terence plays, coupled with the uninspired quality of some of the Plautus fringe, may partially account for this; on a more positive note, so may the fact that the twenty Plautus that do survive have a surprising range of tone and morality, from the downright seedy to the pleasantly sentimental, something that critics tend to find alarming and off-putting. The other major difference between Plautus and Terence is that a Plautus script is a series of invitations to the actor, creative excuses for farce and physical comedy, where character depends on the needs of the moment rather than as part of a pattern of behaviour. This is not to suggest that Plautus is necessarily a worse or a better playwright than Terence. He does offer a very different challenge to the translator and is harder to appreciate on the page. The latter half of the eighteenth century caught up with Plautus, primarily because this was a new age of translation which was itself inspired by an act of dramatic translation. In 1730 Père Pierre Brumoy published a monumental study of Greek drama in Paris under the title of Le Théâtre des Grecs (Théâtre de Grecs in Lennox 1759). It is in three volumes. The first begins with a tribute to Greek plays and ‘leurs traducteurs’, following with essays on the origins, background and modern parallels of Greek tragedy and comedy. In the rest of this volume, and in the other two, there is a digest of all the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, as well as of the comedies of Aristophanes; the entire canon as we have it today, that is, with the exception of the plays of Menander, no remotely complete example of which was available until the twentieth century. All Brumoy’s plays have excerpts in French, some, complete translations, and additional comparisons with the work of Seneca, as well as some of the French neo-classicists, where a Latin play overlaps with a Greek (see Walton 2006: Ch. 2 and Appendix). The volumes are not organized particularly methodically. Beginning with a full translation of Sophocles’ Oedipe, complete with comparisons to other versions including that of Seneca, Brumoy proceeded to Sophocles’ Electre. He continued with sections of Aeschylus’ Coéphores, the whole of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, and two Euripides plays, Hippolyte and Iphigénie en Aulide. The second volume is a mixture of two whole Euripides (Iphigénie en Tauride and Alceste), parts of the remaining Aeschylus and Sophocles, with a note on the Antigone of Rotrou, and thirteen other Euripides abstracts. The final volume has very confused page numberings but deals with comedy, all the plays of Aristophanes (almost all of Les Oiseaux and Les Nuages, but a bare eight pages of Lysistrata), and Euripides’ satyr play Cyclops, with various associated essays. A translation of Le Théâtre des Grecs into English by Charlotte Lennox was published in 1759. Lennox was the daughter of Colonel James

16  Translation in English Ramsay, lieutenant-general of New York. She was New York–born but lived in England from the age of fifteen. Her literary output included a novel, The Female Friend, and at least one comedy, The Sister, based on her own novel Henrietta, which was staged at Covent Garden in 1769. She was, in other words, no pushover, and she knew people in society. Her Theatre of the Greeks was dedicated to the Prince of Wales. She was also at pains to acknowledge assistance where she had requested it, from a number of luminaries, amongst them, the Earl of Cork and Orrery. When it came to looking at comedy she translated Brumoy’s own reservations: I was in doubt a long time, whether I should meddle at all with the Greek Comedy, both, because the pieces which remain are very few, the licentiousness of Aristophanes, their author, is exorbitant, and it is very difficult to draw from the performances of a single poet, a just idea of Greek comedy . . . I may be partly reproached with an imperfect work, if, after having gone as deep as I could into the nature of the Greek tragedy, I did not at least sketch a draught of the comedy. (Lennox/Brumoy 1759: vol. III, 123) What taxed the conscience of a Jesuit priest, though inclining him to stern censorship, was decorously sidetracked by Lennox, who not only removed all comedy and the satyr play into a single volume, but also cunningly disowned it by handing most of it over to other hands: In this volume the discourse on the Greek comedy, and the general Conclusion are translated by the celebrated author of the Rambler [Samuel Johnson]. The comedy of the Birds and that of Peace, by a young gentleman. The comedy of the Frogs, by the learned and ingenious Dr. Gregory Sharpe, Esq; The discourse upon the Cyclops, by Dr. Grainger, author of the translation of Tibullus. (Lennox/Brumoy 1759: Advertisement to vol. III) Lennox made no claim to a familiarity with Greek and declined to apply any awareness of the requirements of the stage to her work as translator. But, then, if Brumoy showed more interest in whether a funeral pyre was appropriate for a hero who had been consumed by lightning (see the opening example taken from Euripides’ Suppliants) than how the scene might be staged, why should his translator into English be censured for a similar failing in curiosity? The first complete Aeschylus was that of Robert Potter, published in Norwich in 1777, eighteen years after the publication of the Lennox/Brumoy, which it is probably safe to assume he knew.1 This was not quite the first translation of an Aeschylus play, credit for which goes to Thomas Morell for his Prometheus in Chains of 1773, the first of nearly forty different translations of the play to be published by the end of the nineteenth century.

Play and translation  17 Amongst them are two entirely different ones from Elizabeth Barrett (1833 and 1850), one before and one after her marriage to Robert Browning, and one from Henry David Thoreau (1843). Morell had previously translated Euripides’ Hecuba in 1749, some years after the failure of Richard West’s Hecuba at Drury Lane in 1726. The Morell Prometheus shows some awareness of staging issues, including an exit for the Chorus before the earthquake which engulfs the protagonist. It was dedicated to David Garrick, the foremost actor of his generation and, by some accounts, the first to merit the description of ‘theatre director’. Garrick in 1773 was still managing Drury Lane, though reaching the end of his illustrious career. Though interested in Greek myth, he never put Prometheus into the repertoire. Potter would translate the whole of Sophocles in 1788, by which time his health was failing, but it did result in an offer of a belated appointment as Prebendary at Norwich Cathedral. The decision to leave Sophocles till last may have been in part accident, but it could also have been influenced by the fact that Sophocles had received earlier attention, whereas he was the first to make a concerted assault on Aeschylus and Euripides. George Adams produced the seven plays of Sophocles in two volumes in 1729, which predates the French translations of Oedipus [Tyrannus], Electra and Philoctetes by Father Brumoy, never mind the Lennox English versions. Adams did provide the first English Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus and The Women of Trachis, but others were already available as individual plays. Thomas Sheridan published his Sophocles Philoctetes in Dublin in 1725. Before that, Lewis Theobald, an editor of Shakespeare, had translated Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus, the first two published in 1714, the Oedipus a year later.2 Theobald also translated a couple of Aristophanes plays (see Ch. 2), but none of these ever received a stage production. Theobald was a busy, if not especially successful, original playwright too, something which introduces an awareness, as not seen previously, of the intention behind the work of the Greek tragedians; indeed, he claims an author’s liberties: I have ventur’d rather to make an agreeable Innovation on, rather than be a Faithful Translation of, a Passage which contains too tedious and Graphical a Description of the Pythian Games to be relish’d at this time of day; and cools the Passion which it should excite, and keep warm by its Conciseness and Distress. (Notes upon Electra 1714: 80) The passage to which Theobald referred is the Tutor’s Messenger speech in which he brings false news of the death of Orestes in a chariot-race, part of a plan which he and Orestes devise in the opening scene, to help the plot to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Theobald simply cut the speech from eighty-three lines in Sophocles to forty. A modern director might choose to do the same: but unwisely. This cut is a damaging example of Theobald’s inability to see the whole stage situation. The two recipients

18  Translation in English of the admittedly extended account of the race are Clytemnestra and Electra. For Clytemnestra the news brings relief from fear of her son’s seeking revenge for the killing of Agamemnon. For Electra it represents the final loss of hope that her tormented and abused life may find respite through her brother. Neither, of course, knows what the audience knows, which is that the real position is reversed. The plot is up and running and revenge close. The scene is prolonged to emphasize the stage situation, a striking example of the triangular scene which Sophocles perfected. All that Theobald can bring in his notes is to demonstrate his learning by arguing that the Pythian Games were not founded until five years after Orestes’ death, and an assumption that Sophocles thought his audience would be unaware of this. The rest of the translation shows evidence of the early eighteenth century stage, with characters seemingly exiting by the proscenium doors. Sophocles’ unique emphasis on the play as a mixture of revenge and monodrama, does, however, ring a bell with Theobald while Electra’s bitter lyric exchange with the Chorus might well come straight from a heroic tragedy: For if my noble Father unaveng’d, Must moulder into Dust, and be forgot; Whilst they, triumphant in their happy Guilt, Laugh at the lame revenge that cannot reach ’em, Farewell to Virtue; let religious Awe No more restrain Mankind, but Outrage flourish. (Theobald 1714: 245–50) Compare that to the sedate, if more accurate, version by Humphrey Kitto: For if the dead shall lie there, nothing but dust and ashes, And they who killed him do not suffer death in return, Then, for all mankind, Fear of the Gods, respect for men, have vanished. (Kitto 1962: 242–5) There had been an even earlier Electra, a wholly unexpected exhortation from Christopher Wase in 1649 to Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles the First, to follow Electra’s example and avenge her father (see Hall and Macintosh 2005: 163–5; Walton 2006: 36–7; also Ch. 9 for further detail of early translations of Sophocles). Charles had been executed in January of 1649 and Elizabeth was to die in prison the following year, aged fourteen. The translation as a translation, unsurprisingly, lacks a redeeming feature. What is often claimed as the first translation of a Greek tragedy into English of a Euripides play turns out not to be on two grounds. Jocasta by

Play and translation  19 George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmershe is based on Euripides’ tragedy Phoenician Women, the plot of which covers similar ground to Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes.3 There are bits of Euripides lurking in the Jocasta but, with some passages cut and others transposed, its status is unconvincing. There was an earlier play which has a far better claim to be the first Greek tragedy in English, also cut, though mainly in the choral odes. Lady Jane Lumley’s Iphigenia at Aulis is believed to date from around 1555, but was not published until 1909, as a Malone Society Reprint. This was all of two hundred and thirty years before The Complete Euripides volumes from Wodhull and (almost) Potter. Between, there were a number of individual plays translated in a variety of circumstances and for a variety of reasons, by Richard West (Hecuba 1726 and Iphigenia in Tauris 1749), Thomas Morell (another Hecuba 1749 – twenty-four years before his Prometheus in Chains), Charlotte Lennox (Alcestis, Hippolitus [sic], Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris 1759) and James Bannister (Phoenissae, Iphigenia in Aulis, Troades and Orestes 1780). Of these, West’s Hecuba is the most significant in the present context because it was actually performed at Drury Lane in 1726. Euripides’ play opens with the ghost of Polydorus informing the audience of his murder by the treacherous Polymestor. The play is set in the aftermath of the sack of Troy by the Greeks, as is Euripides’ Trojan Women. The central figure is again Hecuba, Priam’s queen in Troy, now reduced to the status of prisoner-ofwar and about to become a slave. She had sent her son Polydorus away from the city to the protection of Polymestor who has treacherously murdered him. Hecuba’s revenge on Polymestor, which includes murdering his sons and blinding him, forms the play’s climactic action. West decided that introducing the play with the ghost might be confusing to an eighteenth-century audience who were not necessarily familiar with the details of the Trojan War; or, perhaps, would detract from the eventual shock of the discovery of the boy’s body washed up on the beach. So he wrote his own exposition scene at the ‘Pavilion of Polymnestor [sic]’ where the plot is set in motion with Polymnestor’s lines: This Polydor, this son of Hecuba, Is now no more. Rise then, exult my Heart. Arise secure, his Life, his Treasure’s thine. (West 1726: 1,1. 1) No ghost, so Hecuba enters in Scene 2, with the lines a direct, if scarcely elegant, version of Euripides: Lead me, ye virgins, your unhappy Queen, Yes, once your queen, but now your fellow slave. (West 1726: 1,2. 6)

20  Translation in English West’s other innovation was to transfer the speaking role of the Chorus to a single character called Iphis, who concludes the play with a thoroughly un-Euripidean ending: Let not vain Mortals impiously pronounce The high decrees of heaven or good or bad. . . . But let us learn to bear, through every State Those pleasures and those Pains the Fates allot. In this short precept is our Duty seen; Do what you wish, may to yourself be done. (West 1726: 5,1. 36) These changes notwithstanding, the play can be claimed as a translation in a way that the next Drury Lane Hecuba could not. The version by John Dunlap used by Garrick for his production in 1762 had Polydore alive, and with plenty to say for himself, before dying on the final page. A mass of other characters unknown to Euripides include Eriphilus, Eumelus, Melanthius, Lycus, Cratander and Sigea – but no Polymestor. At least Dunlap’s version was received through to the end by its audience. Richard West, not entirely to his surprise (‘I foresaw there would be some Difficulty in making it agreeable in its original Purity, to the taste of an English Audience’), saw the production come to an early conclusion as a result of ‘a Rout of Vandals in the Galleries’ (West 1726: iv). Hecuba is of special interest as a sample play because, in terms of numbers of translations from Euripides, it holds a major position as one of the most popular for translators alongside Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus and Bacchae, all plays which revolve around a major female role. There were at least a dozen new translations of Hecuba published in the latter half of the nineteenth century alone (see Ch. 8: 126–8). The years 2004–2005 saw four new translations appear with London publishers, two separate ones from Faber and Faber only months apart, each related to a new production. This discussion is not the place for a review of these productions, or for speculation as to why this play should have featured so consciously in the public gaze at this time. It is exceptional, even in Euripides, in showing how concerted aggression can trigger a ferocious and fearsome backlash. As a number of modern scholars are beginning to trace, various plays, and not only those of Euripides, have acquired a vogue according to contemporary social and political circumstance. Translations have frequently adjusted not only to accommodate the language of the target time but also the reverberations of a particular situation or turn of phrase.4 Aristophanes, the most overtly political of all ancient dramatists, has travelled least well. The earliest versions, Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery from Thomas Randolph’s version of Wealth (1651) and Thomas Stanley’s Clouds (1655), barely qualify as translations (see Walton 2006: 145–6, 159). Despite the presence of theatre men such as Richard Cumberland,

Play and translation  21 Henry Fielding and James Robinson Planché amongst early translators, the temptation to modernize both reference and characters proved so compelling as to anchor Clouds, Wealth and Birds solidly in the translators’ own environment. Aristophanes’ perceived parochialism had ensured that his plays were exiled from the stage, if not immediately, at least by the time of New Comedy in the late fourth century bce, virtually never to return until late in the twentieth century. There were reasons of taste too. Aristophanes without the bawdy and the scatology is difficult to enthuse over and certainly was not to the taste of most of the translators previously mentioned. Lysistrata’s reputation for licentiousness was powerful enough to keep it off the British stage until 1957, and the first translation did not appear in print until that of C. A. Wheelwright in 1837, with only three other ‘free’ versions (i.e., bowdlerized) before the Samuel Smith edition of 1896 with the scandalous Aubrey Beardsley illustrations. Wealth (Ploutos), as a fable about the healing of the blind god of money, was a sound enough moral tale to appeal solely on the grounds of its plot, but most of the other plays, with the possible exception of Clouds and Birds, proved too insubstantial in edited versions to engage the reader and too coarse to merit publication in their entirety. As for Menander, the lack of a manuscript of any complete play until the late 1950s ensured that interest in his work was largely speculative. The several predictions about the outcome of the plot of The Woman from Samos from the segments available before 1969, all proved inaccurate when a more or less complete text finally surfaced. Translations of Menander have, unsurprisingly, all been in a modern idiom. The return of Greek plays to the British stage was in the original Greek, and inspired by the well-researched academic exercises at Oxford and Cambridge in the 1880s. The public theatre in Britain had to wait until Frank Benson’s The Orestean Trilogy at Stratford in April 1904 (see Ch. 3), and Gilbert Murray’s translation of Euripides’ Hippolytus with the Vedrenne/ Barker management at the Royal Court Theatre a month later, for the worlds of literature and professional theatre to combine. Others quickly followed. It is an interesting comment on theatre history that a tradition of re­ creating the plays of classical Greece, as opposed to the stories of classical Greece, is really only as old as is the emergence of the director in the theatre as interpreter/instigator/initiator. With the rise of the director came the interrogation of playtexts as working potential rather than completed artefacts. The classics of the world’s repertoire became available for renewal in contemporary contexts. This makes a demand for translators capable of seeing what is dramatic within the texts and rendering it in a manner that directors and actors can develop. There will always be room for radical readings and direct parallels, just as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides renewed myth for its novelty as much as for its familiarity. There is also a constant invitation to return to those initial texts to see whether they carry within them some essential qualities which will enable the theatre of the future to learn from, as well as build upon, the theatre of the past.

22  Translation in English What, then, may be learnt from looking at these first translations – and from a similar exercise which could easily have been mounted on the whole play translation industry that mushroomed during the nineteenth century? Though making value judgements on a play translation is the most inexact of exercises – each reader looking for something different from any other – for the most part, the ‘better’ translators are those who were aware of the nature of a dramatic script, and the manner in which it accommodated visual image, dramatic rhythm and performance potential, in addition to their having a solid knowledge of the source language. As translation may involve incorporating a means of expression which is either more or less (and sometimes both) than what appears in the surface source, then some liberty may need to be extended in favour of the target reader and player, and a greater liberty in favour of the audience as the ‘true target’. Horace offers us a classical precedent when he advises against ‘word for word’ translation ‘like the slavish translator’ (Horace Ars Poetica: 133). Right the way back to Lady Lumley and her Iphigenia, up through the inventive and manifold ‘versions’ of plays with Greek and Roman settings from Dryden onwards, ‘translations’ of classical themes and classical tragedies have been more inclined to demonstrate the concerns and priorities of the target culture rather than the source. If this is true for the reading public, how much more appropriate for a performance script of a tragedy or comedy. This does not necessarily imply downgrading of the language of the original, but a search for an equivalent, to use the term on which translators in any field must always resort, which recognizes, perhaps appropriates, the originals and dresses them in new clothes. If this means neologisms which a modern audience may understand only through association, then the precedent is there in Aeschylus and in Aristophanes. Some of that comedian’s single coinages last for several lines of text.5 Language is supremely important, of course it is, but it can afford to be today’s graphic language, a forceful language driven by character as well as by situation. The final issue addressed by these first translators is the individuality of the playwrights. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are so different that each merits a separate strategy if Greek tragedy is not to appear as some sort of literary conglomerate, with a single philosophy and a single intent. With comedy it is easier, partly because Greek old comedy, Greek and Roman new comedy are such individual forms. Ultimately, then, all previous translations (and there have been almost a hundred Agamemnons, eighty-nine Antigones and sixty Alcestises) point to the adaptability, flexibility and sheer capacity for resurrection of an art form that dies after every performance.

Notes 1 See Stoker (1993), for a comprehensive account of the circumstances surrounding Potter’s translation and the difficulty of his gaining recognition. 2 Thomas Sheridan was father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, theatre manager and author of, amongst other plays, The Rivals, A Trip to Scarborough and School for Scandal.

Play and translation  23 3 ‘It was presented at Gray’s Inn in 1566 and published as ‘Phœnissæ, English, Jocasta: a Tragedie written in Greke by Euripides, translated and digested into Actes by G. Gascoygne, and F. Kinwelmershe’, in. Gascoigne, G. (1572) A hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde up in one small Poesie, etc. London. 4 Euripides’ Hecuba, in a new version by Frank McGuinness (2004) from a literal by Fionnuala Murphy, Donmar Warehouse, Sep. 2004. London: Faber and Faber. Hecuba, translated by John Harrison (2005), Foursight Theatre, Oct. 2004. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hecuba, translated by Marianne McDonald (2005), Sixth @Penn Theatre, San Diego, Nov. 2004. London: Nick Hern Books. Hecuba, translated by Tony Harrison (2005), Royal Shakespeare Company at the Albery Theatre, March 2005; subsequently New York. London: Faber and Faber. 5 For example: lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimupotrimmatosil-­­ phiokarabomelitokatakachumenokichlepikossuphophattoperisteralektruonoptokephalliokigklopeleiolagôosiraiobaphêtraganopterugôn (a kind of multi-ingredient stew), Aristophanes, Women in Charge, 1169–75.

2 Theobald and Lintott A footnote on early translations of Greek tragedy Arion (2009)

The history of translating Greek tragedy into English is even more erratic than that of other extant Greek literature, whether poetry, history or philosophy. Until the tireless Robert Potter embarked on his mission in 1777, which saw him complete virtually the entire known canon in barely ten years, there had been nothing systematic beyond Charlotte Lennox’s English translation in 1759 of the French Le Théâtre des Grecs by Père Pierre Brumoy (1730). The earliest translation of Euripides, albeit abridged, Lady Jane Lumley’s Iphigenia at Aulis (c. 1555), was a private exercise unpublished until 1910. Christopher Wase’s Electra of Sophocles (1649) is of more interest as a peculiar polemic aimed at the thirteen-year-old daughter of the recently executed Charles the First. Around and between these special cases were significant numbers of adaptations or versions inspired by the classical tragedians, but few that would have satisfied the purist classical scholar (see Hall and Macintosh 2005, and Ch. 1). The gulf between what was regarded as suitable for a reading public and what might satisfy the rather different priorities of the public stage came closest to being bridged in the early years of the eighteenth century through the work of Lewis Theobald (pronounced ‘Tibbald’ and spelled that way in Pope’s Dunciad 1742: 1.106). It is to a concentrated period of translation between 1714 and 1715 that this short article is directed. Theobald was the son of an attorney, taken at the age of two, after the death of his father, into the house of his godfather, Baron Rockingham. Instructed in the classics, but without going to university, Theobald embarked on his late father’s profession of the law in a somewhat casual fashion while exercising more energy on a dramatic career. His non-classical Persian Princess: or, The Royal Villain was performed twice at Drury Lane in 1708 before Theobald was twenty, the second night an author’s benefit performance. Theobald was later to become a major Shakespearean critic and champion of the search for a ‘proper’ text of Shakespeare. More commercially, he wrote a number of pantomimes and burlesques, including an Orestes based, extremely loosely, on Euripides’ Iphigenia Among the Taurians, produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1731 (Hall and Macintosh 2005: n. 1, 58–9).

Theobald and Lintott 25 Before any of this, however, came the fertile few months between 1714 and 1715 when there appeared in print a number of translations of Greek dramas which have been attributed to him, though not without controversy. F.M.K. Foster (1918), the fullest cataloguer of classical translations up to his time, was happy to confirm Theobald as translator of Sophocles’ Ajax (1714), Electra (1714) and Oedipus, King of Thebes (1715), as well as Aristophanes’ Clouds (1715) and Plutus; or, The World’s Idol (1715).1 Peter Seary, on the other hand, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, discussing Theobald’s relationship with the bookseller and publisher Bernard Lintott, referred to Theobald’s 1713 translation of Plato’s Phaedo, but continued: Theobald also contracted with Lintot [sic] to translate the seven tragedies of Aeschylus, but the translation was never published. In April 1714 he undertook to translate into blank verse with annotations Homer’s Odyssey (book 1, 1717), Sophocles’ Electra (1714), Oedipus Tyrannus (1715), Oedipus Coloneus, Trachiniae, and the satires and epistles of Horace, all unpublished. (Seary 2008)2 That Theobald translated both Electra and Oedipus, King of Thebes can be in little doubt as they were reprinted in, respectively, 1780 and 1765.3 What is missing is any reference in Seary to Sophocles’ Ajax, confidently identified by Foster, but later questioned by William Henry Ingram (Ingram 1965: 91–6). The 1714 text of a translation of Ajax is listed in the British Library under Theobald, both in a single volume and another bound with Theobald’s Electra and his two Aristophanes translations. In Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660–1914, Hall and Macintosh include the engraving from the frontispiece of this Ajax, designed by Louis du Guernier, identifying the translation as likely to be a collaboration with Nicholas Rowe (Hall and Macintosh 2005: n. 1, 75–6). Richard Foster Jones, author of an entire book on Theobald, remained sceptical about his involvement with Ajax, citing the Biographica Dramatica of 1792 where Rowe is given sole credit, and referred to Theobald’s having translated the whole of Aeschylus, which was never published (Jones 1919). More revealing, if only because more immediate, is Giles Jacob’s The Poetical Register: or, The Lives and Characters of All the English Dramatick Poets. With an Account of their writings (1719). Under ‘Theobald’, Jacob mentions only Electra (1714) and Oedipus, King of Thebes (1715), plus his two Aristophanes translations (Jacob, 257–9). There is no mention of Ajax, but then there is no mention of Ajax under Rowe or ‘Mr Jackson’ either. On Theobald, Jacob then adds, ‘and has finish’d a Translation of the Seven Tragedies of AESCHYLUS.’4 Our information is clearly incomplete, but any questions of detail raised by such contradictory evidence must be subordinate to the broader issues of

26  Translation in English why there should have been this sudden rash of translations of Greek drama and why it was so short-lived. Both are answered by the lengthy address from ‘The Publisher [Lintott] to the Reader’ contained at the end of Electra and, in the composite volume, before the disputed Ajax. This gets a brief mention in Jones and from Adrian Poole (2000) in the Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, but is revealing in its entirety: The Reputation of the Ancient Greek Tragedy is so universally known, that there can be no occasion for an Apology to usher in a Translation of any of ’em. I will only beg leave therefore to acquaint you with my present Design in the prosecution of that Attempt, and the manner in which I intend to execute it. I have by me the Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Translated into English blank verse; they are all, as I have been assur’d by several Gentlemen of allow’d Judgment in these Matters, very exactly done from the Greek; the sense of the several Authors is every where very faithfully given; and where-ever the regard which was necessary to be had to our own Language would allow of it, the Translation is so near the Original as to be of use to the Learners of the Greek Language, by the assistance it may give them in the construction of these Authors; and where-ever the Translators have been obliged to take more than ordinary Liberty in de-parting from the words of the Text, Care is taken at the same time to give the literal Interpretation of the Greek in the Notes. Tho’ this Translation [Ajax] (as it is but a Translation, and by its nature consequently confin’d and cramp’d in the Diction) may not come up to that beauty of Language and Expression which is to be found in some of the best of our Original English Tragedies; yet it is hop’d that nothing will be found in the Stile, that is either Cold, Mean, or absolutely below this kind of Writing. For the rest, I am to inform the Reader, that the Notes which are added, are Critical, and Philo-logical. Among those of the first kind, Care is taken not to tire the Reader with stale Observations gather’d out of our own or the French Writers on these Subjects; nothing more being design’d than to point out plainly those Passages which are suppos’d Beauties, or Faults; and tho’ there may be but very few of the latter, yet it is hop’d that it will not be lookt upon as a piece of Presumption, to mark what is thought to be wrong; since these Heroes of the first and best Ages of Poetry, as venerable and as excellent as they are, are not always Infallible. For the other Notes that are Philological they are meant chiefly for Explaining and Illustrating the several Authors. And for that Reason, every thing in the old Greek Scholia’s, that may conduce to that End, will be Translated in the proper places. I have given the publick the AJAX of Sophocles as a Specimen of my Undertaking. If they think fit to encourage it, I intend to give ’em one every Month, till I have gone thro’ all the Greek Tragedies.

Theobald and Lintott 27 I had forgot to observe, that when the Works of any one Author (as Aeschylus) are compleated, there will be an account of his Life, and a proper Critical Preface prefix’d before ’em.5 (Ajax 1714: A3–5) There are a number of curious aspects to this manifesto. Lintott’s laudable ambition to publish the whole of Greek tragedy a month at a time seems based on the fact that he already has all the translations – and that he has had them vetted. At one a month he should have been able to complete the cycle of surviving Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides within three years. But who were the translators, apart from Theobald and Nicholas Rowe, as well, perhaps, as ‘Mr Jackson’, whose name appears handwritten on the title page as author of the notes in the single edition of Ajax? Though Lintott appears to be setting up Aeschylus as the first of his playwrights, he opens the series with Sophocles’ Ajax and follows up with two more Sophocles, Electra and Oedipus, King of Thebes. This at least is accounted for at the end of the 1714 Ajax where there is a list (as though already published when patently they were not) of ‘Books Printed by B Lintott’, the titles identified as follows (as laid out on the page, including erratic italics):

Sophocles’s Tragedies, viz. Ajax. Notes by Mr Rowe Electra Oedipus Tyrannus Antigone by Mr Rowe Oedipus Coloneus Trachiniae Philoctetes

Aeschylus’ Tragedies, viz. Prometheus chain’d Seven Captains Before Thebes The Persians Agamemnon The Coephorae The Furies The Suppliants

In Blank Verse With Large Notes

In Blank Verse With Large Notes

Below is written ‘PROPOSALS FOR PRINTING BY SUBSCRIPTION, a TRANSLATION of (HOMER [by Pope], VIRGIL, QUINTUS CURTIUS) SOPHOCLES, then AESCHYLUS’. It is hard to avoid feeling that if Lintott’s eyes were not necessarily bigger than his purse, at least his ambition sometimes outran his achievement. He was

28  Translation in English also aware that business was business. All the signs suggest that there simply turned out to be less money in the classics, or at least in classical drama, than in other fields. Publishing was an even less certain business in the eighteenth century than in our own. The fulsome, indeed grovelling, gratitude expressed by authors to patrons or dedicatees and the reliance on often quite sparse subscription lists bear witness enough. At the time of his impressive scheme for the classics, however, Lintott was the foremost publisher of contemporary plays, including on his lists Dryden, Farquhar, Congreve and Steele. By the time he dropped the second ‘t’ Lintott was thinking big money. The first of the six volumes of Pope’s Iliad came out in 1715, the others over the next five years. He may have miscalculated somewhat in that enterprise, but in 1718 he came to an agreement with his greatest rival publisher, Jacob Tonson, to carve up the Drury Lane repertoire between them. Theobald appears to have realized that three Sophocles (and it still seems to me that the Ajax probably is primarily Theobald’s work) was as far as the ‘complete Greek tragedies’ were going to get. His two Aristophanes plays, The Clouds and Plutus; or, The World’s Idol, were both published in 1715, but by Jonas Brown, who also published in the same year Theobald’s original play The Perfidious Brother. Theobald subsequently became a close associate of John Rich and his theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The only remaining question in the present context is why Lintott should have opted in the first instance for Ajax and two other plays of Sophocles to initiate his grand plan, rather than Aeschylus, or indeed, Euripides. Sophocles, one can only assume, was deemed more in keeping with the spirit of the tragic drama of the age, rooted neither in the Aeschylean world of deep myth and choral dominance nor in the iconoclastic reaches of Euripidean capriciousness. It is probably no coincidence that when, fifteen years after the Theobald Ajax, George Adams made the first complete translation of all seven of Sophocles’ plays (which he dedicated to the Duke of Manchester), his first volume should have consisted of Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus. All three, unfortunately, are decidedly prosy (including the choruses) and a sight more pedestrian than anything the working playwright Theobald would have tolerated. All this gives no more than a partial answer to the wider question of why nobody was attracted to publishing the entire Greek tragedies before Robert Potter in the 1770s. Several men of letters were interested. Why Greek tragedy got no further than ‘interest’ in the early part of the eighteenth century resides more in the history of publishing than in any lack of enthusiasm for the Greek dramatists.

Notes 1 Foster also identified Theobald as a translator of Plato (1713) and Musaeus (1721), but makes no reference to his Orestes. 2 Peter Seary, ‘Theobald, Lewis’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The spelling of both Lintott’s names varies, but his biographer here suggests that

Theobald and Lintott 29 it was around 1716 that he dropped his second ‘t’. His Christian name is also recorded as ‘Barnaby’ as well as ‘Bernard’. 3 Electra was also reprinted in a facsimile edition, though without the Publisher’s Address, by the AMS Press (New York 1979). 4 It throws no light on the present issue, but is, perhaps, a comment on Jacob’s accuracy that he includes Gascoigne’s Jocasta as ‘from the Greek of Euripides, digested into Actes’, a claim I have elsewhere dismissed (Walton 2006: 33–6). Jacob also includes the following anecdote, which is a startling but rather appealing variation on our own reading of Aristotle: ‘Sophocles, being once ask’d the Reason why in his tragedies he always represented Women good, and Euripides wicked; answer’d that Euripides describ’d them as they were and he as they ought to be’. 5 Lintott was also a pioneer in the field of advertising and founder of the Monthly Catalogue.

3 Benson, ‘Mushri’ and the first English Oresteia Arion (2006)

It is only in the past forty years or so [2006] that Aeschylus’ Oresteia has been regularly performed; as the accompanying satyr play Proteus failed to survive, it is arguable whether it has ever really been performed in its entirety since classical times. One reason for any reluctance to produce the three plays we do have is the sheer time it takes. Major European stage productions by Peter Stein (1980 and 1994), Peter Hall (1981) and Ariane Mnouchkine (1990) have lasted for seven hours or longer. Tracing the stage history of Aeschylus’ trilogy is made easier by the reluctance of the professional theatre in Europe and America to have anything much to do with any of the Greek playwrights until a hundred years ago, except as tangential influences on new plays from the late sixteenth century onwards which happen to feature Greek characters and settings; it is made more complicated by uncertainty over what constituted the first Oresteia in English, identified in two recent books as a Frank Benson production from 1885 (Hall and Macintosh 2005; Macintosh et al. 2005a). The significant document is a ‘programme’, the day and month of which are listed, but not the year. I believe, and hope to show, that a production by Benson was indeed the first English Oresteia, but that the document in question refers not to 1885, but to 1904, and that this 1904 production was a touring version of the performance that Benson first produced at Stratford-onAvon earlier that year. The production was subsequently revived at the Coronet Theatre in London in 1905. The context for this mis-identification is a broader issue, relating to the whole history of translating ancient Greek drama into English and to the difficulty of defining the difference between a ‘translation’ and a ‘version’. It is to that we must initially turn. By 1885 a dozen English translations of Aeschylus’ Oresteia had been published. None of them had been performed; none seems to have been aimed at performance. The first Oresteia in English, Robert Potter’s in 1777, was not quite the first Aeschylus to be rendered into English from the received Greek manuscripts, but before Potter no more than a handful from any of the Greek tragic repertoire had appeared in print (see Ch. 1). The publication of the exhaustive Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914 by Edith Hall and Fiona Macintosh (Oxford 2005) represented

The first English Oresteia  31 a major landmark in performance history by identifying not only Greek tragedy on the British stage – there was little before the Vedrenne/Barker Management at the Court – but also the influence of Greek tragedy and classical myth on the repertoire during the two hundred and fifty years between the re-opening of the theatres after the Interregnum and the outbreak of the First World War. In the course of this comprehensive account, they refer to the first British production of an Aeschylus play in English, Agamemnon, by Fleeming Jenkin in Edinburgh, using a translation by Lewis Campbell, Professor of Greek at St Andrews University.1 Hall and Macintosh also pinpoint what they identify as the first full production of The Oresteia in English from the company of Frank Benson in 1885. They further suggest that, were it not for Benson, the accolade would go to George Warr, whose The Story of Orestes was played in London at the Prince’s Hall, Piccadilly in 1886. The hows and whys of both productions, the dates, the eventual production by Benson in 1904 and its London revival in 1905 constitute an unusual chapter in the late Victorian and Edwardian theatre, revolving round the remarkable career of one of the most formidable of the last actor-managers, an untimely death and an eccentric schoolmaster. Frank Benson arrived at Oxford University in 1879, from Winchester public (i.e., fee-paying) school, to read classics at New College, the destination of many ex-Winchester boys at the time. Benson was primarily renowned in his first year for his athletic prowess as a middle-distance runner and enthusiastic player of hockey, tennis, rugby and cricket. He also found time to join a Shakespeare playreading society and, in 1880, initiated the celebrated production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in Balliol College Hall, which ranks as the first serious attempt to stage any play of Aeschylus in England. The idea took fire and many of the most celebrated classicists and artists of that generation – Benjamin Jowett, Walter Parratt, Andrew Bradley, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Edward Burne-Jones – found themselves involved in one capacity or another. Benson himself played Clytemnestra – it was an exclusively male enterprise. Even more illustrious was the list of those who saw the production, either in Oxford or in three subsequent performances in London – Gladstone, installed in office as Prime Minister for the second time only two months earlier; Alfred Lord Tennyson; George Eliot (the last public appearance before her death); Robert Browning; Edwin Booth (brother of the infamous John Wilkes Booth); Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, amongst them.2 The Oxford Agamemnon, unlike Fleeming Jenkin’s in Edinburgh the previous month, was in Greek. By 1880, the number of solo translations of Agamemnon had risen to twenty-eight and several were still in print. One of the most recent (1877) was by Edmund Doidge Anderson Morshead (1849–1912), the third of four sons of the Rev. John Anderson Morshead of Salcombe Regis and his wife, Alethea (née Yonge). Morshead will prove to be important for two reasons. First, he had been Benson’s Greek teacher at Winchester, after a brief period as a Fellow of New College; second, because it was to Morshead’s translation that Benson turned in 1904 for what I intend to show was the first English Oresteia.

32  Translation in English This, though, is to get ahead of the game. After the Oxford Agamemnon, Benson was invited in 1881 to stage-manage (that is ‘direct’) Euripides’ Alcestis at Bradfield College, also in Greek, the beginning of a triennial tradition at that school which is observed to this day. He subsequently founded his own professional company for the performance of ‘classics’, mainly Shakespeare. In London, meanwhile, Professor George Warr had initiated two Greek performances, the first of which was a wholly original work entitled The Tale of Troy, played at Cromwell House in 1883 in Greek and in English. This was repeated three years later, in 1886, together with The Story of Orestes ‘from Homer and Aeschylus’ at the Prince’s Hall in Piccadilly (Macintosh 2005: 158–62). Despite its Aeschylean genesis The Story of Orestes amounts to rather less than the ‘abridged version’ of The Oresteia claimed by Warr in the Introduction to the printed text (‘the portions omitted are those which least touch the essential significance of the drama’). The assumption of Hall and Macintosh that this was ‘King’s College’s first attempt to bring Aeschylus’ trilogy to the general public’ deserves at least a gloss (Hall and Macintosh 2005: 464–8). George Warr was Professor of Classical Literature at King’s College, London. His full The Orestean Trilogy was published in 1900 as the first of the three volumes of The Athenian Drama.3 The English text of 1886 was certainly derived mainly from Aeschylus, but consisted of a limited version of the scenes of action, interspersed by musical interludes and tableaux. Agamemnon, under the title of Nemesis or The Return of Agamemnon, runs to no more than nineteen printed pages; The Dirge at the Tomb (LibationBearers) to a mere five, with two short scenes subsequently for an elevenpage The Furies. In addition there is a ten-page un-Aeschylean Prologue entitled Atê or The Sacrifice of Iphigeneia.4 Warr’s full The Orestean Trilogy, though not published until 1900, does contain much of the earlier material of his The Story of Orestes, but in the 1886 Nemesis or The Return of Agamemnon, he condensed the action, omitting the Herald and Aegisthus altogether, though adding a Chorus of Handmaidens. Some of the nineteen pages contain as few as five and eight lines. The Dirge at the Tomb opens with Electra, removes the recognition scene, the Nurse and Pylades, moving rapidly to a confrontation between Orestes and Clytemnestra. Aegisthus is again omitted. The Furies begins with the Ghost of Clytemnestra, cuts Apollo and has a trial which might well meet Peter Quince’s definition of ‘tedious brief’. The music, composed by Otto Goldschmidt, Malcolm Lawson, Walter Parratt and Professor W. H. Monk (as Musical Director), consists of fourteen pieces in all, from the ‘Sacrifice of Iphigeneia’ to ‘The Furies’ Spell’, ‘The Furies’ Threats’, ‘The Furies Reconciled’ and, finally, ‘The Furies’ Blessing’. How long the whole performance lasted is not clear but the Introduction to The Echoes of Hellas (1887) does indicate that The Story of Orestes was performed as part of a double bill with The Tale of Troy, both of them in English. Reduction to the

The first English Oresteia  33 skeletal was inevitable, no more than ninety minutes, to hazard a guess. An anonymous review in The Athenaeum suggested that The Story of Orestes was ‘boiled down’ from The Oresteia of Aeschylus. When Warr responded (The Athenaeum 3057, May 29, 1886: 725–6) that this was not a series of tableaux but ‘a translation considerably abridged’, he provoked the original reviewer into commenting that ‘such boiling down of a great dramatic work cannot be defended on serious grounds’ (726). Perhaps he was right. Though an interesting reflection on Aeschylus, Warr’s condensed snippets cannot by any stretch of the imagination be counted as a full production of The Oresteia. The claim that Benson and his new company performed the Aeschylus trilogy in English at Cambridge as part of a provincial and international tour in 1885 (Hall and Macintosh: 476) is probably even more premature, but for different reasons. Benson’s company did play briefly in Cambridge in the Spring of 1885 (as they had in 1883). There is no full record of their choice of plays, but the company was then still young and its central repertoire at the time consisted of melodrama, eighteenth-century comedy and Shakespeare, with no play earlier than Romeo and Juliet (Trewin 1960: n. 4, 37–43). There was a production of Eumenides at Cambridge in 1885, the third ‘Cambridge Greek Play’, though this and subsequent Cambridge plays have always been played in ancient Greek. An extended article by Mowbray Morris in the periodical Macmillan’s might appear to suggest a performance in English too (Morris 1886: 205–12). Morris begins by saying how difficult it is to get much from Eumenides in isolation when it was written as part of a trilogy (207). He then quotes an extended passage from Athena’s speech to the jurors and appends the footnote, ‘ “The House of Atreus,” by E. D. A. Morshead. M.A., late Fellow of New College, Assistant Master of Winchester College; from which the translations of the play here used are taken’. That ‘here’ refers to the production itself, rather than to Morris’s review, might seem at first to be borne out by criticism of the quality of the language, both of the Priestess and of the Ghost of Clytemnestra, but his broad perspective, with quotations in Greek as well as in English, show it to be otherwise. Morris concludes, somewhat disparagingly, by saying that ‘. . . for the last word, one may say, without being impertinent or captious, that it was all a very pretty poem, if one must not call it Aeschylus’ (212). It is highly likely that this production is a red herring in the present context, though, as we shall see, a significant one because of its date. It certainly had nothing to do with Frank Benson and his still fledgling provincial company, though it may have triggered the claim that Benson produced the whole of The Orestean Trilogy in May/June of 1885 with his Shakespearean company. This is the production which, it is claimed, ‘proved enormously successful, both home and abroad’ (Hall and Macintosh 2005: 476), but evidence for either is hard to come by. Benson makes no mention of such a production in his Memoirs (F. Benson 1930). As significantly, nor

34  Translation in English does his future wife, Constance, who had joined the company the previous year (C. Benson 1926). Lady Benson’s reminiscences are characterized by a vagueness over dates and she condenses the timescale alarmingly at times. Nevertheless, her comments on The Orestean Trilogy at Stratford-on-Avon nineteen years later in 1904 clearly point to that as the first time Benson had involved his professional company with the Greeks: In April, 1904, a three weeks Festival was arranged in Stratford-onAvon, the pièce de résistance being the “Orestean Trilogy”, as translated by the late Professor G. C. Warre (sic) and D. (also sic) Morshead. A sad and most tragic event heralded this production. Professor Warre had long desired to see the “Trilogy” performed, and had been working incessantly with D. Morshead at the adaptation. One day he was sitting in Harold Logan’s room in the Temple, putting the finishing touches to the manuscript, when he rose with a sigh of relief, saying, “At last, the work I have longed to do all my life is finished”, and stretching out his arms he fell lifeless to the ground, a fine end to a splendid life, and perhaps one he would have desired. (Benson 1926: 218–9) Warr’s full translation of The Oresteia, as opposed to the text he provided for the 1886 The Story of Orestes, was not published until after his death, so Lady Benson seems to have condensed two different occurrences, one in 1900, the other four years later; but both of them firmly post-1900. Benson and his wife had been associated with Stratford and its Shakespeare festivals since 1886. His eventual production of The Orestean Trilogy opened at Stratford-on-Avon, as Constance rightly states, the evening before Shakespeare’s birthday, 22 April 1904, as a prelude to that year’s Shakespearean celebrations. It is this that I strongly believe was the first ever performance of Aeschylus’ Oresteia in English. The programme at Stratford asserts that ‘Mr Benson desires to acknowledge the kindness of Mr. E. D. A. Morshead in allowing his Translation to be used, also his indebtedness in this Production to the Oresteia of the late Professor G. C. W. Warre’. Benson’s memory appears to invoke both Warr’s staging of The Story of Orestes from 1886 and Warr’s later attempts to provide a suitable production text of the whole trilogy. Nonetheless, the programme states quite clearly that the translation used in 1904 was that of Benson’s old Greek teacher, Edmund Morshead. That this was an original production, rather than a rehash of some touring production from 1885, is confirmed by the notices, both pre- and post-first night. The intrusion of a Greek play into the Stratford Festival’s hitherto exclusively Shakespearean repertoire, caused a stir, but was generally applauded as justified and welcome. The Birmingham paper Black and White (23 April 1904) corroborates Constance’s subsequent version, giving

The first English Oresteia  35 some of the background to the production, reminding its readers of Benson’s Agamemnon: . . . afterwards rendered at Eton, Harrow, Winchester and St George’s Hall, London, and so great was its attraction that people who could not understand Greek went to see it several times. Mr Benson was about to give it at the opening of the London University when the tragic death of Professor Warre, who had translated the play, compelled the abandonment of the idea. Mr E. D. A. Morshead’s translation of the trilogy will be used at Stratford-on-Avon. The Birmingham Post noted, in a review on 23 April of the first night that: When we consider that this succession of dramas has never before been given in this country [my italics], and probably only once elsewhere – some years ago in Vienna – since its last performance in classical times, it will be seen that the event was a matter of more than local, or even national importance, for Aeschylus commands the suffrages of the whole of European literature. Two days later a review of the whole Festival in the same paper noted that: Mr Benson has already staged Agamemnon. He produced it at Oxford, in the original Greek, in 1880 . . . . It was subsequently played at Winchester, Eton, Harrow and St George’s Hall, London. The London Chronicle of 23 April mentioned that Benson’s Agamemnon at Oxford: . . . was also the beginning of all the revivals of Greek dramas which have been so frequent and so admirable; but since then Mr Benson has always hoped to produce the three successive dramas as a whole, and now the hope is accomplished. J. C. Trewin, critic and author of Benson and the Bensonians, claims that: While hunting a new idea, he decided to put on the entire Orestean Trilogy . . . . He had this venture on his mind during the winter of 1903 and when he acted for the first time in the spring of 1904 at the Coronet in Notting Hill Gate. (Trewin 1960: 143) If Benson really had included The Oresteia amongst the early productions of his company, nobody remembered anything about it.

36  Translation in English This 1904 production was abridged, but far less than Warr’s earlier effort, though not enough for The Daily Mail which complained three times in a shortish review that the whole evening lasted three and a half hours, rather than the advertised three hours. A ‘special correspondent’ for The Manchester Guardian explained that the three plays had been run into one (the hardpressed audience were afforded intervals of only eight and ten minutes) but adjudged that: whatever misgivings the idea of this abridgment may at first have caused, they must have vanished from the mind of everyone who saw tonight’s performance, which was a really thrilling revelation of the dramatic values of the trilogy as distinct from the single play . . . . The sensation was like what one might experience on hearing “Macbeth” or “Othello” acted entire for the first time after having seen only an odd act or two performed separately before. (23 April 1904) When the production was revived a year later in London at the Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill Gate (the venue only four years earlier for Edward Gordon Craig’s infinitely better known production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas), The Times noted that: We commented on the “cuts” when the trilogy was produced at Stratford and have no need to say more. If some scholars miss some of their favourite passages, they will be satisfied by the recollection that the stage is now shorn of many duties it once performed. Since cuts there had to be – for the trilogy is as long as Hamlet in full – it is Aeschylus the theologian, the philosopher, the politician, who has been sacrificed to Aeschylus the playwright. (5 March 1905) Elsewhere the review confirmed the novelty of the production compared with the Stratford opening the previous April. So unfamiliar was Aeschylus, according to Trewin, that it was variously described as ‘an Austrian Trilogy’, ‘an Australian Tragedy’ and ‘an Acetylene Trinity’ (Trewin 1960: 142). More, the anonymous Times reviewer offered a significant reflection on the pervasive perception of ancient Greek culture, coupled with a sneaking awareness that modern production methods in 1905 – the Granville Barker/Gilbert Murray Hippolytus had already been performed at the Lyric Theatre on 26 May 1904 – might be appropriate to make ancient plays live on the contemporary stage: Since Mr Benson produced the Trilogy of Aeschylus at Stratford-onAvon in the Spring he has elaborated and developed its scenic presentiment. It is now a beautiful and appropriate production, and the acting

The first English Oresteia  37 has improved with the stage management. The notion that a Greek man or woman was a statue rather than a human being is always a little difficult to shake off. One looks for immobility of limb and feature, or, at least, for broad, slow movement, and is tempted still to complain that Miss Gertrude Scott, for instance, as Cassandra, is too “modern” in her gestures and expressions of face, and to find her acting, broad and powerful as it is, lacking in the majesty of a classic figure. The value, as an acting play, of the Trilogy, which Mr E. D. A. Morshead calls “The House of Atreus”, is not merely archaeological, any more than that of “Hamlet” or “King Lear”. It would be a mistake, then, to say that Miss Scott or Mr Benson is modern because they do not try to play the parts as we may have supposed them to be played in Athens. The conditions have changed, and all this very adaptable and conscientious company have succeeded in a most interesting manner in emphasizing is the emotional appeal of the play, while remembering that it was written by Aeschylus 2000 years and more ago. (Trewin 1960) Benson, who also played Orestes – his wife, Constance, Clytemnestra – initially went back largely to the stage designs originally devised by his brother William for the Oxford Agamemnon. The stage was built up on two levels, one three feet higher than the other. Commenting on the décor at Stratford, Benson referred to: Yellow-plaster walls and timber, with sphinx pattern and tracery over the central arch of an effigy of Apollo, garlands of laurel, hangings of purple and soft saffron, and on the high platform two or three altars covered with fruits, garlands and blue lambent flames. (F. Benson 1930: 60) Of the other ‘external accessories’ the Guardian critic described them as ‘of a good classical scholar, just a little rusty’, which may have led to the greater elaboration for the Coronet revival. Much of this may be put down to the cramped space at the Coronet and some lack of imagination in handling both Clytemnestra’s ghost and the Furies, but The London Chronicle was content that ‘the scenery was quite sufficient’ while speculating that ‘something might be gained in future representations by following the rigorous archaic art of Athens, especially in the temples and statues’. None of this suggests a twenty-year-old makeover, however limited any 1885 tour might have been. The confusion may readily be put down to the ‘programme’ of Benson’s The Orestean Trilogy referred to by Hall and Macintosh (2005: 476, n. 45). This turns out to be not a programme, but a playbill for The Orestean Trilogy, housed within the single archive volume

38  Translation in English of the Cambridge Greek Play for the two productions of Eumenides in Greek, the first in 1885, the second in 1906. Its inclusion in the Cambridge Greek Play Archive might imply some connection between Benson’s Oresteia and one, or both, of the Cambridge University productions of Eumen­ ides. Nothing else, however, apart from the same venue, the New Theatre in Cambridge, indicates that there is any connection with either production. The Benson bill at Cambridge identifies virtually the same cast and credits as the 1904 Stratford production of The Orestean Trilogy. They would hardly have stayed together for nineteen years. The Stratford production revived the following year at the Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill Gate, opened on 4 March 1905, as part of the Benson Company’s three-week London season. The only major change to the cast was that at the Coronet the improbably named Roxy Barton had taken over the part of Athena. My first conjecture was that it was the 1905 Coronet revival which toured to Cambridge with exactly the same cast as at the Coronet, apart from Roxy Barton, now replaced as Athena by Dorothy Green; and that this was in May 1905. I have Amanda Wrigley to thank for demonstrating that the Cambridge production must have been in 1904 (post-Stratford and with Green replacing Miss Stennis as Athena – Stennis the victim of a poor review at Stratford) rather than 1905 (post-Coronet where Barton replaced Green). The Cambridge bill states only that The Orestean Trilogy played for a week at the New Theatre from Monday, 30 May: it does not, as is the way of many playbills, include the year. In neither 1885 nor 1906 (the Eumenides years) was 30 May a Monday, so the professional Benson production of the whole Oresteia was certainly not from 1885 or 1906: nor was it in 1905. In 1904, however, May 30th was a Monday. The Greek production was not reviewed in the local press, but a special May Week number of The Granta confirms the production of The Orestean Trilogy at the New Theatre Cambridge from Monday, 30 May 2004, to Saturday, 4 June.5 There is even an anonymous review in The Granta which states that: The audience never at any time betrayed any great enthusiasm . . . The chorus of Argive elders seemed somewhat lame and . . . in the English version one can’t help feeling that they are sometime de trop. . . . If the truth must be told, Greek tragedy loses so much when it is acted in another tongue and on a modern stage that the task of the translator and adaptor become Herculean. . . . We are grateful to Mr Benson for bringing this play, but one would have preferred the company in another Shakespeare play, in which they are undeniably excellent. Shakespeare, in his native tongue, is far better than Aeschylus boiled down and Anglicised. (The Granta vol. XVII: 16) To Frank Benson, minor classical scholar, actor-manager with a love of cricket, who was later to be knighted by George V in the Royal Box at

The first English Oresteia  39 Drury Lane while dressed as Julius Caesar, assuredly falls the honour of having directed the first full production of Aeschylus’ Oresteia in English, at Stratford in April 1904; subsequently at the New Theatre, Cambridge, in May–June 1904; revived, with some changes, at the Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, in March 1905. What remains is to account for the change of translators in midstream from Warr to Morshead. George Warr’s complete Oresteia was published, as we have seen, in 1900, while Edmund Morshead’s had already been available since 1881 and was republished in 1889, 1901 and 1904, and, indeed, 1924, 1928, 1961 and by Dover publications in 1996. Warr considered himself as a populariser, as Hall and Macintosh point out, with a mission to promote the classics amongst those who lacked Greek and Latin. Benson had intended, we are told, to present Warr’s Agamemnon, prepared in association with Morshead, at the opening of London University in 1900, in the circumstances recalled by Constance Benson, but Warr’s death put paid to the enterprise.6 And yet, four years later, when Benson decided to tackle the whole of The Oresteia at Stratford, he turned, not to Warr, but to the older translation by his former Greek teacher at Winchester, Edmund Morshead. Morshead, affectionately known at Winchester as ‘Mushri’, was regarded as so individual a translator and pronouncer of both English and Greek that some of his more precocious pupils had produced a parodic The Mushri– English Pronouncing Dictionary which was published in no fewer than seven editions, as Christopher Stray has diligently catalogued, between 1880 and 1901. Benson, perhaps, had underestimated the potential of Morshead’s version for stage performance; until, that is, he read the full Warr version. Generations of schoolboys may have made fun of Morshead for his west country burr, his tendency to pronounce an English ‘th’ as the Greek theta (as in ‘thick’ rather than in ‘this’), or ‘zz’ for ‘ss’, and to place the emphasis of various words on an unexpected syllable, EG ‘cáthedral’ for ‘cathêdral’ (Stray 1996). His The House of Atreus, however (as he preferred to call it), demonstrated a far greater awareness on Morshead’s part of what the actor might speak than did George Warr, whose translation is peppered with coinages such as ‘breedbate’, ‘malions’, ‘tarriance’, ‘stadles’, ‘dizzard’, ‘disseising’ and ‘germins’ which are not so much neologistic as incomprehensible. Here is Warr’s opening speech to the entire trilogy, delivered from the palace roof at Argos: WATCHMAN:



A livelong loathly year I have prayed heaven To end me this dog’s watch, while here abed With Atreus’ hoary housetop cuddling cold, From rise to set I have perused yon stars In conclave o’er the spangled firmament, Bright-crownèd majesties, who train to earth Winter and summertide. Still on my post I wait a fiery token, which shall light

40  Translation in English From Troy the timely rumour of her fall. Plague on this tyrant fancy, that have taken My lady’s lording heart! Oft on my couch – That dank uneasy bed, that hath for me No spell of gadding dreams; for slumber bilks me And terror stares upon me, lest I shut Mine eyelids past all waking – whensoe’er I think to purge my sleepy pate with song, Humming or whistling, as I shred the dose, I fall to poorly sobbing for our goodman And goodly occupation gone to bad. Tut, tut! No firedrake be it, that doth house, Mocking my scurvy watch, in yonder murk! All hail, thou flame, that darkling usherest Dayspring and ample jubilee of choirs, Which Argos shall array for this success! Huzza! Hark! ‘Tis no faltering signal in thine ear, Fair queen! Haste thine uprising and acclaim With matin joyance of the women’s tongues Yon ruddy pursuivant, who blazons me Proud Ilion’s defeat. Nay, I will tread A prelude privily. My master’s luck I score to mine account; ’tis treble-sice Yon beacon has thrown me. Ah, my lord, Thy household all impatient waits thy coming With welcome in our hands that itch for thine. The rest is hush, all hush; a lumping ox Hath poizèd down my tongue. My bedfellow Would voice it plain enough, if stones could speak. My closet he shall ope, who hath the key; To them who know not I’m a dummerer. (Warr 1900)7 And ‘Mushri’ Morshead for the same speech: A WATCHMAN:



I pray the gods to quit me of my toils. To close the watch I keep, this livelong year; For as a watchdog lying, not at rest, Propped on one arm, upon the palace-roof Of Atreus’ race, too long, too well I know The starry conclave of the midnight sky, Too well, the splendours of the firmament, The lords of light, whose kingly aspect signs – What time they set or climb the sky in turn –

The first English Oresteia  41

The year’s divisions, bringing frost or fire. And now, as ever, am I set to mark When shall spring up the glow of signal-flame, The bale-fire bright, and tell its Trojan tale – Troy town is ta’en: such issue holds in hope She in whose woman’s breast beats heart of man. Thus upon mine unrestful couch I lie, Bathed with the dews of night, unvisited By dreams – ah me! – for in the place of sleep Stands Fear as my familiar, and repels The soft repose that would mine eyelids seal. And if at whiles, for the lost balm of sleep, I medicine my soul with melody Of trill or song – anon to tears I turn, Wailing the woe that broods upon this home, Not now by honour guided as of old. But now at last fair fall the welcome hour That sets me free, whene’er the thick night glow With beacon-fire of hope deferred no more. All hail! (A beacon-light is seen reddening the distant sky) Fire of the night that brings my spirit day, Shedding on Argos light, and dance, and song, Greeting to fortune, hail! Let my loud summons ring within the ears Of Agamemnon’s queen, that she anon Start from her couch and with a shrill voice cry A joyous welcome to the beacon-blaze, For Ilion’s fall; such fiery message gleams From yon high flame; and I, before the rest, Will foot the lightsome measure of our joy; For I can say, My master’s dice fell fair – Behold! The triple sice, the lucky flame! Now be my lot to clasp, in loyal love, The hand of him restored, who rules our home; Home – but I say no more: upon my tongue Treads hard the ox o’ the adage. Had it voice, The home itself might soothliest tell its tale; I, of set will, speak words the wise may learn, To others, nought remember or discern. (Morshead 1877)8

At Stratford and in London, Morshead more than passed muster: ‘Mr. Moreshead’s (sic) translation stamps him a poet as well as a scholar’ (The Daily Mail); ‘Morshead’s excellent English translation . . .’ (The London Chronicle); ‘. . . it is really wonderful how this bright and scholarly

42  Translation in English writer, while preserving the flavour of the Greek author and his equipments, contrives to make the series of plays absolutely absorbing to the English ear’ (The Birmingham Post). For the modern reader Mushri Morshead clearly offers archaisms, as well as the odd passive structure, but he has worn better than most. It may be uncharitable to suggest it, but Warr’s premature demise might well have been a blessing for Benson, an actor well schooled in the emphatic diction of his period, but aware too, as any working actor-manager had to be, of an audience’s tolerance threshold for convoluted language. There can be little doubt, in the face of all the evidence, that Benson’s willingness to confront the general public with the whole of Aeschylus’ masterpiece was not at the beginning of his professional career, but only when his reputation was thoroughly established.

Notes 1 Hall and Macintosh (2005) draw attention to the practice of reading Greek plays at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, initiated and inspired by Lewis Campbell and Fleeming Jenkin and his wife, an enthusiastic amateur actress. Campbell’s translation of Agamemnon was produced by Fleeming Jenkin in his own private theatre a month before Benson’s at Oxford (see Macintosh in, Macintosh et al. 2005a: 154–7). 2 Benson (1930), Trewin (1960), Walton (1987), Hall and Macintosh (2005), Macintosh et al. (2005a). According to Benson, Ellen Terry told him that the Agamemnon was ‘one of the greatest things’ she had ever seen. 3 Two Euripides with Aristophanes’ Frogs from Gilbert Murray in vol. 3. A proposed fourth volume from Warr was never completed. 4 George Warr and Walter Crane, Echoes of Hellas: The Tale of Troy and The Story of Orestes from Homer and Aeschylus. . . presented in eighty-two designs by Walter Crane, London: Marcus Ward, 1887. The complete package brings to mind Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides for the Théâtre du Solei (1990–1993), which preceded Aeschylus’ Oresteia (of 458 bce) with Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Aulis (which was first produced posthumously fifty-four years later in 404 bce). 5 The review and programme details of this 1904 touring production were uncovered by Christopher Jakes, Senior Librarian for Local Studies at Cambridge Libraries. 6 See also Black and White, 23 April 1904, 154. 7 G. C. W. Warr’s translation of the opening speech of Nemesis or The Return of Agamemnon, an abridged version of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in The Story of Orestes (1886); reprinted in his full translation of The Orestean Trilogy (1900). 8 E. D. A. Morshead’s translation of the opening speech of Aeschylus’ The Agamemnon, published as a single play in 1877 and reprinted with the rest of the trilogy as The House of Atreus in 1880 and in frequent editions since. In 2006 it is still in print.

4 Business as usual Plautus’ Menaechmi in English translation Ancient Comedy and Reception (2014)

Playwrights are makers of plays, not merely writers of them. Ideally translators should be too: or aware, at least, of the obligation to function in such a role. What appears in print may be a complex piece of literature, but is in essence primarily a map for future interpreters. The better original dramatic manuscript will be full of clues to stage action or ‘business’ as well as words; to subtext as well as text. There are at least two further complications for the translator of a classic or classical comedy. One involves a juggling act between the original author’s social and artistic milieu and the translator’s own; the second, the uncomfortable awareness that interpretation needs to be sufficiently open and undogmatic as to allow for the creative input of directors, designers and players. It is to pinning down the latter of these constraints that this article is aimed. If such considerations make life difficult for the translator of tragedy, they are writ larger in comedy where the imperative to evoke tears of laughter from a contemporary audience is far more formidable than to massage modern emotions into tears of sympathy. For several reasons one play, the Menaechmi of Titus Maccius Plautus, serves especially well to illustrate the issues.

Plautus the translator Plautus holds a special place in Roman cultural history. His twenty complete and extant plays are the first Latin literature to survive, and, with the six later fabulae palliatae of Terence, amount to the only dramatic works in Latin which were specifically aimed at a public audience. All of them were based on Greek New Comedies from the fourth and early third centuries bce, but given a strongly Italian flavour. In a Rome that would refuse to allow the building of a permanent theatre for another hundred years, Plautus and Terence created their comedies for a temporary fit-up stage.1 Their originality was disputed in their own time, and has been ever since. The plays were consciously and confessedly ‘adapted’ or ‘translated’ from the Greek originals of such as Diphilus, Philemon and, in the case of Menaechmi, probably Poseidippus (see also Beare 1964; Duckworth 1951;

44  Translation in English Marshall 2006). Consequently the stage world of Plautus and Terence is a curious blend of Greece and Italy. What parallels there might be and what challenges this affords strike at the heart of what and where the translator stands in relation to cultural transference or ‘translocation’. Whether fabulae palliatae can be classified as ‘translations’ is a matter which requires its own context. In the Introduction to his translation of Terence, Peter Brown suggested that ‘Very little remains of the particular plays that Plautus and Terence adapted, but we know enough to be sure that they were creative adapters, not simply translators’ [my italics] (Brown 2006: xiii). While it would be impossible to dispute the originality of the two playwrights, this downgrading of Brown’s own function cannot be allowed to pass without some interrogation. The six Terentian prologues offer the most vivid and compelling picture of performance conditions in the Rome of the 160s bce, and it would be reasonable to extrapolate similar circumstances for his less thin-skinned predecessor. This is well-ploughed academic territory which needs no further rehearsing here. Apart from the light that Terence’s prologues throw on what he thought he was doing, there was clearly already a debate amongst the intelligentsia of the time as to what constituted plagiarism. Plautus and Terence, in consequence, can offer a sort of template by which to evaluate the difference between translations of fabulae palliatae into English from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first, and what may be regarded as ‘creative adaptations’. The notion of ‘translation’ meant little to the Greeks except as it might affect identification of objects and locations. No other civilization that they knew or cared about had literature which they might wish to share with their contemporaries. With the Romans things were very different. A major proportion of their culture, in its broadest sense, was derived from the Greek and the whole concept of translation was widely addressed. Several different Latin words were used for the act of linguistic translation and several of the words used had other meanings which spelled out the status of the transaction. Interpretari has listed amongst its other meanings in the Oxford Latin Dictionary ‘to expound, explain or interpret’; transferre ‘to transfer to a new context’; reddere ‘to give off the smell or flavour of’. For someone looking for a definition of stage translation, the second and third of these – ‘transfer to a new context’ and ‘to give off the smell or flavour of’ – best pin down that realm of latitude within any stage work which demands that the translator address issues of dramatic rhythm, mood and tension as well as the language. The most commonly used Latin words for ‘to translate’, though, are ‘vertere’ and ‘convertere’. The received two-character Prologue to Plautus’ Trinummus (Luxury and Penury) contains the following comment from Luxury: Don’t expect the rest of the plot here: I’ll leave that to the old fellows who turn up in a minute. The original Greek play was called Thensaurus

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 45 [sic]. By Philemon. Plautus turned it into a foreign language (vertit barbare) and called it ‘On Three Euros a Day’. (16–20)2 A hundred and fifty years later Cicero was still engaging with the translation debate when he commented on the kind of snobbery that he found in those who prefer Greek to Latin: Much harder, then, to counter the criticism of those who are so contemptuous of writing simply because it is Latin. What amazes me above all is why they should be so disparaging about their native language for matters of substance when they are quite happy to read plays in Latin that have been translated word for word from the Greek. Why should anyone be so hostile to everything Roman as to turn up his nose at Ennius’ Medea or Pacuvius’ Antiope simply because he is delighted by the Euripides plays, but can’t abide anything written in Latin? ‘What?’ he says ‘Would you want me to read the Andria of Terence or the Synephebi of Caecilius in preference to the original Menanders?’ I disagree so strongly with this point of view that, notwithstanding Sophocles’ Electra being a masterpiece, I still believe Atilius’ not very good translation (conversam) well worth reading. (Rackham 1914: 1.43)3 Cicero’s comment has a bearing on exactly what it is that Terence was doing when he took a Greek original and ‘converted’ it into a Latin play. Was it a ‘translation’ or a ‘version’ or Brown’s ‘creative adaptation’? Terence and those around him clearly made strong distinctions. A defence of his approach is lodged firmly in the Prologues to four, arguably five, of his six plays. All deal with the accusation of plagiarism. In the prologue to his first play, Andria (The Girl from Andros), he records that Menander wrote two plays which were very similar and that he has made of them a single play. He has been roundly criticized for this, but maintains that Naevius, Plautus and Ennius took the same approach. In Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law), the prologue to the play appears to be delivered by the director, Lucius Ambivius Turpio, who hopes to make Terence as famous as he has Caecilius. In Heauton Timoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor) the same Turpio is defending Terence for changing a Greek original and defending him from the charge of ‘contaminatio’, the condensing of a number of Greek originals into Latin.4 The Prologue in Eunuchus (The Eunuch) amounts to little more than an attack on a rival playwright (whom we can identify as Luscius Lanuvinus) ‘for ruining Menander’s Phasma (The Ghost) and Thesauros (Treasure) by turning a good Menander play into a bad Latin one’. This appears to have been in response to Lanuvinus’ interruption of a rehearsal of The Eunuch by shouting out that the author had pinched a couple of his characters from Naevius and Plautus. Terence’s ‘enemies’ crop up again in the prologue to Adelphi (Brothers) with

46  Translation in English an accusation that Terence ‘stole’ a scene from a Diphilus comedy which Plautus had left out in his Latin version. Terence claims as justification that he has included the scene as an act of ‘recovery’, ‘reprensum’.5 The pedigree provided by this mix of stage worlds, Greek and Italian, underpins much of early Renaissance drama, especially in Italy where the throughline from Plautus (or the fabula Atellana where Plautus learned his trade) may be disputed in detail, but is impossible to ignore. The Commedia dell’Arte scenarii, are rooted in masked comedy, and masked comedy traces its family tree back to the first exports of Aristophanes to the Greek communities of southern Italy, two hundred years before Plautus and Terence.

The first English translation Classical comedy in English began, unsurprisingly, not with the Greeks but with the Roman writers of fabulae palliatae.6 The first Plautus play to be translated into English was Menaechmi. This is something of a landmark in theatre history as well as being the cause of considerable academic contention. The translation was published in 1595 by W. W., confidently identified as William Warner.7 Whether Shakespeare was influenced by this translation is still debated.8 The date for the writing of Comedy of Errors is somewhere between 1588 and 1593. It was certainly performed at Gray’s Inn over the Christmas of 1594: that is, a year before the publication of Warner’s translation. If Shakespeare knew the translation he must have seen a pre-publication manuscript. If he did not, then he could have been aware of the Plautus from the original Latin. The Shakespeare is a much more complex and serious piece. Not only does Shakespeare concentrate on the Antipholus (Menaechmus) who comes from abroad, but he also supplies a frame plot so that a man’s life – the father of the two brothers at that – is at stake, unless everyone can stop fighting time or wasting it, and allow their lives to submit to the timescale of a decidedly Christian world view. Plautus created a marketplace farce and that is what Warner translated, balancing the input of the translator against the original playwright’s language and stage world. Warner wrote on the title page that this was ‘MENÆCMI. A pleasant and fine Conceited Comaedie, taken out of the most excellent wittie Poet Plautus: Chosen purposely from out the rest, as least harmefull, and yet most delightfull. Written in English by W.W.’9 Plautus wrote in a complex series of verse structures, some of which point to cantica, what we can call ‘songs’. Warner was celebrated as a poet whose best known work was Albion’s England: A Continued Historie of the same Kingdom and the first Inhabitants thereof, which ran to sixteen volumes in a revised posthumous edition. His verse was in a strict fourteen-syllable form. Nonetheless, he chose to translate Plautus exclusively into prose. If Warner makes no attempt to replicate the verse of Plautus, he does allow himself some licence in the choice of language which is very much of

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 47 the sixteenth century. Prose it may be but far from being prosy. Menaechmus I’s opening lines to his wife (back in the house) have a striking directness: If ye were not such a brabbling foole and mad-braine scold as yee are, yee would never thus cross your husbande in all his actions. ’Tis no matter, let her serve me thus once more, Ile send her home to her dad with a vengeance. I can never go foorth a-doores but shee asketh mee whither I go? what I do? what business? what I fetch? what I carry? As though she were Constable or a Toll-gatherer. (W. Warner 1595: I. 2, 118) Here is that quality of dynamism, identified by Julius Caesar as ‘vis’, which distinguishes driving comedy from the more thoughtful kind (Rolfe 1914).10 This is more than the difference between ‘low’ comedy and ‘high’. You can find vis in Aristophanes, Molière, Sheridan, Wilde, Chekhov and Stoppard. When Julius Caesar – not the first name that springs to mind as a drama critic – used the word it was to identify the difference he found between Menander and Terence: Menander had it. Terence did not. It was the same word that Caesar used to describe the power of a storm. There is a relentlessness about dramatic vis, a sense that a playwright has written a plot and characters who are driving forwards and nobody is going to deflect them: dramatic energy. Though Warner is not known to have written any plays of his own, this offers much of the muscular clarity of Elizabethan dramatic language. Warner also offers a good example of how barriers of taste may have been broken down today over sexual matters, but that this freedom has been counterbalanced by the raising of others, as when Menaechmus II tells his slave Messenio that he will never give up searching till he finds his brother, and Messenio replies with the graphic, but no longer acceptable, metaphor for the impossible: ‘This is washing of a blackamore’ (II. 1, 124). Menaechmi may be a Roman play metamorphosed out of a Greek play, but it reads like an English one. Messenio is convinced that Epidamnum is ‘full of Ribaulds, Parasites, Drunkards, Catchpoles, Cony-catchers and Sycophants’ (II. 1, 124). ‘We are here in a tickle place, master; ’tis best to be circumspect’ (II. 1.127). Parasites are Roman enough, riba[u]lds and drunkards universal enough, but catchpoles are Elizabethan bailiffs and con[e]ycatchers are poachers of rabbits or swindlers.11 This is a very Elizabethan Rome, with a very Elizabethan turn of abuse. Accosted by the persistent parasite Peniculus, Menaechmus II tries to send him packing with the splendidly offensive, ‘Away, filthie mad drivell away’ (III. 1. 133). When Menaechmus I is locked out by both his wife and then his mistress, he complains: What, gone in chafing, and clapped to the doores? now I am everie way shut out for a very bench-whistler; neither shall I have entertainment heere nor at home. (IV. 1. 141)

48  Translation in English ‘Bench-whistler’ is usually assumed to be a term for a lazy man, but I suspect it may have a further theatrical connotation, as the sort of man who gets thrown out of a theatre for barracking. This would certainly make more sense in Warner’s context. Here the first ever translation into English of Plautus moves into the language of the ‘spirited translator’, rather than the ‘faithful’ one, to use terms later coined by the nineteenth-century statesman and translator of Aristophanes, John Hookham Frere. It was Aristophanes that Frere had in mind (and was later to translate) when he wrote about the ‘Spirited Translator’ of which he doubtless felt he was one: The Spirited Translator, on the contrary, employs the corresponding modern phrases; but he is apt to imagine that a peculiar liveliness and vivacity may be imparted to his performance by the employment of such phrases as are particularly connected to the modern manners; and if at any time he feels more than anxious to avoid the appearance of pedantry, he thinks he cannot escape from it in any way more effectually than by adopting the slang and jargon of the day. The peculiarities of ancient times he endeavours to represent by substituting in their place the peculiarities of his own time and nation. (Frere 1911: xvii) This is from an essay that appeared first in The Quarterly Review in 1820.12 Apart from the general sentiment in favour of ‘the peculiarities of his own time and nation’, he also uses the word ‘performance’ for the act of translation at a time when the stage performance of an Aristophanes play was unthinkable. In 1820 few plays of Aristophanes had been translated into English at all and the corpus had to wait until 1837 (see Walton 2006, 144–61). There can be no argument over the sixteenth-century Warner’s ‘spiritedness’ in his Menaechmi, especially over the question of anachronism. When Menaechmus asks Erotium to prepare a dinner he demands ‘oysters, a mary-bone [marrowbone] pie or two, some artichockes and potato rootes’ (I. 2, 122). In 1595 the potato was still newly arrived in England from the New World, to considerable resistance from the faithful because there was no mention of it in the Bible. Here, one might conjecture, is the first concrete example of ‘product-placement’ in a classical translation. Anachronism was never any problem to Shakespeare. Geography, locations, foreign languages, clothes, properties and terms of reference are all aspects of a stage world, answerable only to the conditions the playwright has established. The Comedy of Errors has Dromio of Syracuse reaching for his rosary and crossing himself, in ancient Ephesus; the description of Luce comparing her to England, Scotland and America; the Merchant arranging a meeting for five o’clock. There is a character, Dr Pinch, who is a medieval memento mori, and an Abbess from a Priory to resolve the issue as a Christian dea ex machina.

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 49 Warner’s Menaechmi meets the three central imperatives for modern translations by being speakable, actable and funny. The dialogue is brisk, the action clear and uncluttered. There is, however, no evidence that it was ever staged in Warner’s lifetime.13 Nor am I aware that it has been performed since. There is a curiosity behind all this. By the end of the sixteenth century, all the plays of Terence and of Seneca had been translated into English. It was approaching two hundred years before a second translation of Menaechmi would be published. Admittedly there are more extant plays of Plautus than of the whole of Terence and Seneca combined, but no full translation of Plautus appeared in print until two volumes by Bonnell Thornton in 1767, revised in 1769, with a further three volumes translated by Richard Warner (no relation of William), in 1772 and 1774. Between the two Warners’ Menaechmi Shakespeare has come and gone. So has the Civil War. The theatres of London have been closed and reopened. The Restoration Comedy of Congreve, Wycherley and Vanbrugh has given way to sentimental comedy and, despite the oppressive restrictions of the 1737 Theatre Licensing Act, drama has been rescued from such vapid stuff by David Garrick. Goldsmiths and Cumberland are writing and Sheridan is about to: The Rivals reaches the London stage in 1775. To a greater extent than is usually recognized the fate of dramatic translation from the classical period, tragedy and comedy, is dictated by theatrical as well as broad social trends and tastes (see especially Hall and Macintosh 2005). The years 1595 to 1767 were not entirely translation-fallow. In 1694 the twenty-four-year-old Laurence (or Lawrence) Echard (or Eachard), amongst whose literary achievements translating Latin plays was little more than a youthful aberration, produced two volumes of Prefaces, one of Terence, the other of three plays of Plautus, Amphitryon, Epidicus and Rudens, ‘made English: with critical remarks upon each play’, and all in prose (Echard 1694).14 The range of authorship of the Terence volume of translations is disputed, but the Introductions to both that and the Plautus plays throw interesting light on the whole priority of dramatic translation at the time, and the reasons why Plautus would be unlikely to have been performed during the Restoration. In the year 1694, Congreve’s The Double Dealer was first performed at Drury Lane. Echard’s translations clearly show the influence of Restoration Comedy, similar to that of the late Elizabethan theatre in Warner’s Menaechmi. In his original Dedication to Sir Charles Sedley, Echard suggested that: The Translation of the old Dramatick Poetry being as yet in its Infancy, requires the indulgent Patronage of some Eminent Person, whose Wit and Judgment intitle him to a Right of Saving or Condemning it; but especially one whole own Performance has abundantly convinc’d the World that it may be done, and that better by us than our Neighbours. (Echard 1694)15

50  Translation in English Echard confesses to finding Terence ‘the most Natural of all Dramatick Poets’, but in Plautus he admires ‘Wit and Spirit’. Plautus is ‘fitter for action’, Terence ‘fitter for Reading’. ‘. . . [C]onsidering what Persons they copied, as the later [Terence] was called the HALF MENANDER, so the former may be stil’d the HALF ARISTOPHANES’ (Echard 1694: A.2). Perhaps the most interesting part is where Echard dissects why neither playwright could find a place on the Restoration stage. This amounts in brief to a difference between the Roman and late seventeenth-century audiences in ‘Customs’, ‘Humors’, ’Manners’ and ‘Theatres’, plus the range of plot and character of his own time.16 Despite his limited target, and a lack of ambition or, like William Warner, practice as a playwright, Echard did have a lively turn of phrase: Euclio, the miser to Staphila, ‘Out-a-doors, I say; Come out. I’ll fetch ye out with a Horse-pox, for a damnable prying, nine-eyed Witch’ (Aulularia, 40–1); Amphitryon’s slave Sosia, ‘Our Army’s upon the march Homewards, the bloody campaign over, and the enemy routed and dispersed, who before had made so many wet Handerkerchiefs in Thebes’ (Amphitruo, 188–90). It was, perhaps, a symptom of its time, for all he never followed it further. But his work had sticking power too.

Menaechmi in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries When in 1790 Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler, delivered his series of lectures on translation to the Royal Society which would be published as Essay on the Principles of Translation, he used examples from Echard in sections on ‘modernising’ and ‘coloquial phrases’ (Tytler 1790: 77–8 and 139–43). Echard’s Amphitruo was singled out for ‘seeing no distinction between the familiar and the vulgar’ in the following exchanges involving Sosia and Mercury: SOSIA:

I think there never as such a long night since the beginning of the world, except that night I had the strappado, and rid the wooden horse till morning; and, o’ my conscience, that was twice as long. By the mackins, I believe Phoebus has been playing the goodfellow, and ’s asleep too. I’ll be hang’d if he be’nt in for’t and has took a little too much o’ the creature. (Act I. 1, 279–83)

MERCURY:

I’ll to her and tickle her up as my father has done. (Act I. 3, 515)

SOSIA:

You’d as good p–ss [sic] in a beehive. (Act II. 2, 707)

Tytler later accused Echard of ‘vulgar petulance’ in his handling of Terence. There was little need for Tytler to return to Echard. By 1790 the Bonnell Thornton/Richard Warner translations of Plautus were well established. Their 1772 translation of Menaechmi echoes its own time, and the theatre

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 51 of its own time, in the same way as did William Warner’s Plautus and Echard’s Terence and Plautus. Richard Warner acknowledges that the 1772 Menaechmi from volume three is only partly his. The Prologue (omitted by William Warner) is by Thornton, as are the whole of Acts I and II. This Menaechmi is more polite than the Elizabethan one. It smacks of the genteelization that made the domestic comedy of Menander so much less rude than the rowdy and raucous Aristophanes. It shows much of the difference between English comedy of the Restoration and that of the late eighteenth century. Richard Warner, indeed, dedicated his Menaechmi to David Garrick. The translation is less a collaboration by Thornton and Richard Warner than a continuation from a second hand. Warner wrote in a footnote at the close that: There is also, as Mr Thornton has observed in his preface, p. 11, an old translation of this Comedy, printed 1595, by W.W. and called Menaechmi. . . . It is in many places a pretty strict translation, though in a few the author is only imitated; and, in many, abridged. (Bonnell and Warner 1772: 99) Thornton and Warner’s translation is itself stricter than W.W.’s. It is in verse, but nothing like the verse of Plautus which is complex and varied, and indicates the cantica, the musical sequences whose closeness to the songs in a modern musical is only a slightly misleading analogy.17 There is not much to tell Thornton and Richard Warner apart, which may or may not be a good thing. Thornton renders Menaechmus I’s appeal to the audience as:    Where, where are all The intriguing husbands? why do they delay To bring me gifts, and thank me for my prowess:– I’ve stol’n this robe here of my wife’s, and mean To carry it to my mistress.–So we ought To trick these crafty husband-watching dames (Thornton 1772: I. 2, 23–7) Warner has, for the same character’s complaints against the client system: How troublesome it is, thus to indulge Ourselves in foolish custom! yet the great, Those petty gods, too much come into it. All wish to have a number of dependents, But little care whether they’re good or bad (Richard Warner 1772: IV. 2, 1–5) Not a lot of vis here in passages of direct address to the audience which invite it. There are no anachronisms. Puns tend to be indicated and explained in footnotes rather than in the text – never a good sign in the translation of

52  Translation in English comedy, one might think. On the other hand, Thornton/Warner’s copious footnotes are often enlightening, covering all manner of topics, mythology, geography, pronunciation, Roman life and mores, natural history and textual criticism with linguistic parallels to Ovid and Pliny. Such echoes are extended to Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, plays by Ben Jonson and George Colman and Vanbrugh’s The Relapse which in five years’ time (1777) Richard Brinsley Sheridan will successfully rewrite for Drury Lane as A Trip to Scarborough. Here too Richard Warner, wary as he is of the occasionally crude language of Plautus, confesses to his expurgations: on Ganymede (I. 2, 47) ‘The original is Catamitum. Why Ganymede is so called the learned reader need not be informed’; and for omnis cinaedos esse censes tu quia es? (III. 2, 56) which might today be translated ‘Do you think we’re all homos, just because you are?’ his ‘Cause you’re a rogue, think you we all are such?’ merits the footnote ‘This is not translated literally; the learned reader will see the reason’. Menaechmi in the nineteenth century begins with a curiosity. It is one of a set of seven comedies by Plautus ‘translated into English literally and grammatically and cleared of objectionable passages’. This may be expected as the translation was by the Rev. George Sackville Cotter, a priest of the Protestant Church of Ireland who took his degree at Trinity College, Dublin. His translation of Menaechmi was dedicated to Robert Peel. Less expected is Cotter’s description of himself as ‘translator of Terence, formerly captain of Westminster School and an actor there in three of Terence’s comedies’. In his Preface Cotter is at pains to stress that the translation is ‘made fit for acting’. He goes further, claiming an ambition to ‘comprehend the dramatic spirit of the plays, which is often veiled in dark obscurity’ (Cotter 1827: ix–xi). This is a promising beginning, but his resistance to ‘objectionable passages’ reaches far beyond sensibilities of taste however refined. He omits the prologue – though so did William Warner and so, in 1958, did Peter D. Arnott, a distinguished man of the theatre as well as translator. This is not enough for Cotter. In the first hundred and twenty lines of the play proper, he manages to excise sixty-three; and there are more to which he does not confess. It is far from easy to see what could possibly have caused offence to even the most fevered imagination in some of the missing passages, especially when he has no problems in calling a ‘harlot’ a ‘harlot’ and a ‘brothel’ a ‘brothel’. After this initial excess of zeal Cotter calms down a bit and censors his own text. His version of the ‘cinaedos’ line, referred to above (Cotter: III. 2, 56), emerges as ‘Do you think that all men are jugglers, because you are one?’. Captain of Westminster or not, Cotter makes mistakes with his Latin, the reference to his taking the dress to the phrygio, ‘the embroiderer’ (IV. 1, 563), ending up as the meaningless ‘carrying the cloak to Phrygia’. The same error is repeated in each of the next two scenes (lines 617 and 681). The Wife has a lot of business with her fan, a nice idea for 1827 if the play is to emulate Plautus in mingling the properties and cultural accoutrements of older Sicily and his own time, but hardly effective

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 53 in 1827 as an isolated anachronism with the sole exception of the Doctor’s taking snuff. By this time Cotter is wilfully removing lines ‘on account of tediousness’: a director’s prerogative, perhaps, as we will see subsequently, but hardly a translator’s. Twenty-five years later, in 1852, a Bohn edition is published, translated by Henry Riley, which offers a straightforward rendering of the Latin into English.18 Exits and entrances are marked and there are a few indications of which character is being addressed. ‘Asides’ are usually indicated and a number of stage directions, even on one occasion, for Menaechmus’ wife ‘shaking her fist’. There is also some indication of the stage action in the fight between Menaechmus and the four slaves into which Messenio joins with misplaced though effective enthusiasm: ‘The Servants gather round Menaechmus’; later, They seize and drag him; He lays about him; fighting with them; Three run away; giving the fourth one a punch; They all disappear. It is around this particular issue of stage directions that we can now look at some broad questions about translation of comedy, and especially classical comedy, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Modern Menaechmi Plautus and Terence went to Greek New Comedy as a guarantee of quality. Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors appears to be a personal slant on two Plautus plays. Musicals like Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse (1938) and Sondheim, Shevelove and Gelbart’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966, see Ch. 15), perhaps even Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers (1988) or the 1970s television series Up Pompeii and the 1971 film from the series, all belong comfortably and charmingly within a long and fruitful dramatic genealogy. They are independent original works taking their inspiration from previous sources. But, inspired as it may be, that is not translation. When John Hookham Frere made his distinction between the ‘Faithful’ and ‘Spirited’ translators, he was placing the original author centre stage. He also offered a salutary warning against translations where the reader was ‘constantly reminded that he was reading an admirable translation’ (Frere 1820: xv). Many of the translations of Menaechmi, from the past hundred years, too numerous to mention individually, have successfully walked the comic tightrope where the word becomes subordinate to ‘the atmosphere of the word’ (Belloc 1931). But the twentieth century has also witnessed an earlier-identified tendency to cut passages that were thought inappropriate. Translation has been overtaken by an enthusiasm for over-interpretation, or explicit attempts to ‘improve’ Plautus by additions. Some of these might seem to exceed the translator’s mandate. Ultimately a modern production owes allegiance to a modern audience; ultimately, but not exclusively. Translation of comedy may offer a licence to translate the gag as well as the word,

54  Translation in English but there must surely be some obligation in claiming the role of translator to honour the flavour and texture of the original. The case for the defence of added stage directions, especially those which describe a character’s state of mind, is that most readers are not sufficiently aware of stage action to be able to comprehend what is going on without having it explained to them. If the reader is not capable of understanding what is going on from the text, then perhaps it is the translator who is at fault. The objection to adding too many stage directions in classical comedy is that they do not merely enlighten the stage situation. They determine it. The big question in translation of a play, which distinguishes it from any other literary translation, is defining exactly what decisions the translator should be making. In recent years many of the Loeb editions of classical drama, with the Greek or Latin and English on facing pages, have been replaced by more modern ones.19 Plautus is still with Paul Nixon, a professor from Iowa who died in 1956. His Menaechmi dates from 1917, though reprinted many times. The problem with Nixon is less that he had no dramatic intuition than that he was determined to dictate the interpretation of every speech and every joke. So, in a typical early passage of dialogue in Menaechmi Peniculus, the parasite, has successive lines signposted by ‘suspiciously’, ‘listlessly’, ‘with a sigh’, ‘indignant’ and ‘eagerly’. In a later encounter between the Father and the Doctor the six speeches are presaged by six stage directions: ‘ponderously’, ‘sharply’, ‘lightly’, ‘distrustfully’, ‘reassuringly waggish’ and ‘looking down street’. These are simply intrusive. The translator has taken it upon himself to inform not only the reader, but any teacher, director or actor, how the scene ought to be played. My own resistance to such an approach is not that Nixon has necessarily misunderstood the characters and the situation as that he has assumed that there is a single ‘best way’ to interpret it, and that that way is his way. Douglass Parker (1999) goes further in his approach to Menaechmi, offering the title as Double Bind in a text that has some of the qualities of a modelbuch. Late in the play, there is a fight when four slaves set upon Menaechmus I who is rescued by Messenio, slave of Menaechmus II. For clarity Parker sets out to orchestrate the fight. His slaves become rebellious, then ‘They reach him’, ‘surround him’, ‘lay hands on him’, ‘hoist him high in the air’, ‘ . . . as he calls to the audience’, ‘ . . . as he struggles to no avail’ (986–1019). There are thirty-five stage directions in thirtythree lines. Translators ought to question such an approach. Stage business tends to be other people’s business – directors’, actors’. Some stage directions may be helpful, necessary even, to indicate entrances and exits or a particular sequence of action, but Frere was, I believe, speaking not only for his own time when he implied that the translator’s job should not be too dictatorial. There are other issues raised here too. Several twentieth-century translators have chosen to change names from anglicized Greek or Latin into

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 55 what are themselves translations. Apart from the two brothers with the same name, Menaechmus I and Menaechmus II, the cast of Menaechmi includes Peniculus, a parasite; Erotium (variously described by translators as ‘a lady of pleasure’, a courtesan, a harlot, a ‘woman of ill repute’, ‘the whore next door’ and ‘a fancy woman’); Messenio, a slave; Cylindrus, a cook; Menaechmus I’s Wife, and his Father-in-law; and a Doctor. For Parker the brothers become Clueless Maximus I and II; Peniculus, Diddley; Erotium, Loveykins; Messenio, Smug; Cylindrus, Spatula; the Wife, Dovey; the Father-in-Law, Antiquides; and the Doctor, Dr Klyster. Palmer Bovie sticks closer to the Latin with the exception of the less intrusive Brush for Peniculus, Désirée for Erotium and Mixmaster for Cylindrus (Bovie 1962). Peniculus is an interesting case in point. The word literally does mean ‘brush’, or ‘sponge’, suitable for a parasite. The character introduces himself as such ‘so-called, because when I eat, I clean the whole table’ (I. 1: 77–8). Peter Arnott (1958) and Lionel Casson (1963) call him ‘Sponge’. The word ‘peniculus’ also means ‘little penis’. Plautus, apparently, does not create a comic pun from this, though Parker, one of the few translators to acknowledge the secondary meaning, opts for Diddley in what he helpfully describes as a way to combine the ‘gustatory and sexual areas’. Characters in numerous classic, never mind classical, comedies have names that identify their personalities. No one will have much doubt about the dominant traits – physical, social or moral – of Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, Lady Wishfort, or Lady Gay Spanker (though the latter from Boucicault’s London Assurance may be a prime example of how words will change their associations over time). Frankie Howerd’s slave in the British TV series Up Pompeii was called Lurcio, his master Ludicrus Sextus, his mistress Ammonia. Any reservation over Parker’s choices are, then, less a matter of principle than a concern about interpretation. ‘Clueless’ and ‘Smug’ are character definitions to which Plautus does not subscribe. This may be a quibble, but it can be tempting for a translator to invent a scenario, and translate up to it. At the end of a fractured Prologue, Parker’s stage direction reads ‘Somehow, mercy is taken on the audience, and Prologue’s exit is effected – preferably by mild violence from someone off-stage’. It must remain a moot point the extent to which the translator should prescribe so much stage action to the director. The bigger risk, and more misleading, is a translator re-casting farce as slapstick. Plautus mostly wrote farce. His early career was spent as an actor in farce. But farce, in common with comedy of manners, and, arguably in contrast to slapstick or burlesque, depends on a continuity dictated by internal consistency. The characters of Plautus’ Menaechmi are neither admirable nor wholly plausible, but they do take their situations seriously. They subscribe to a fundamentally calculated dramatic and theatrical tone. A proper sense of a play’s comic nature offers translators considerable freedom; it also determines their limits. Situations and characters remain

56  Translation in English recognizable, but how people speak changes. It is the patterns of language that alter. Rather than compare translations and make a judgement that is ultimately personal, let me offer some scenes from Plautus’ Menaechmi in translations from various periods which demonstrate how translation of a play will tend to adjust to suit and reflect the period of its target, however extended that target may be.

Ancient and modern A few examples from the various translations from the sixteenth century to the present day should serve to throw light on the changing priorities of the translators.20 Three passages are as many as space will allow; there could be others. The first is purely linguistic; the second a matter for actors – whose gag is it?; the third is for directors and actors, a change of tone that affects the development of the rest of the play. In the first scene proper between Menaechmus I and Peniculus, Menaechmus invites the parasite to smell the dress he has stolen from his wife: MENAECHMUS I: PENICULUS:

Quid igitur? quid olet? responde. Furtum, scortum, prandium. (I. 2, 170)21

Peniculus’ response, unusually, uses a kind of rhyme with the ‘um’ ending, and invites at least a similar concise wordplay from the translator. William Warner (1595) cut the lines. Cotter (1827) cut the entire sequence as ‘unfit’. Other translators have been less sensitive: Thornton (1772) MEN: PEN:

What does it smell of? answer. It smells strong Of theft, of whore, and dinner.

Nixon (1917) MEN: PEN:

Well now? What does it smell of? Answer. A raid! a jade! a meal!

Arnott (1958) MEN: Come on, smell this gown I’ve got here. PEN: It smells of theft; it smells of mistress; it

What does it smell of? smells of dinner.

Bovie (1962) MEN:  Oh,

puffle, come on and say, Say what it tells you. What sort of smells you deduce? PEN: Phew, what a naral escape! I’m glad to produce my solution.

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 57 This is my diagnosis: you steal a jeune fille for a meal; You purloin a fräulein for some sirloin; you flirt with a skirt And alert your tastebuds to a smorgasbord; a distress And theft, and this dress is left for your mistress to drape around Her; gleaming napery; conjugal japery, all very vapory. The whole deal, From my point of view, leads straight towards an excellent meal and I’m joining you. Casson (1963) MEN: SPONGE:

Well? What does it smell from? Tell me. Loot, lechery – and lunch.

Watling (1965) MEN: Well, what does it smell of? PEN: It smells of . . . (knowing Menaechmus’s

intentions) stolen goods, secret amours and a free lunch. I hope there’ll be –

Segal (1969) MEN: Well? What do you smell? Well – PEN: [quickly] Grabbing, grubbing, rub-a-dub

dubbing. Hope I’m

right. The second passage comes at a crucial turning-point in the play, morally and dramatically. The much put-upon Wife of Menaechmus I sends for her father, hoping for his support against a husband who goes off wining, dining and having it off with the conveniently next-door Erotium. At the opening of the play he is discovered smuggling one of his wife’s dresses out of the house to give to her. The Wife pours out her troubles to her father who is remarkably unsympathetic and blames her for trying to tie down her husband. When she tells him that he has stolen a dress, however, the father is shocked. Dresses cost money and money is the only morality in this Rome. Money and possessions are the spine of the whole play. Reader and players may need some assistance here to get the point across, but only some translators offer it. SENEX:  quando te auratum et vestitam bene habet, ancillas penum recte

praehibet, melius sanam est, mulier, mentem sumere. ille suppilat mihi aurum et pallas ex arcis domo, me despoliat, mea ornamenta clam ad meretrices degerit. SENEX:  Male facit, si istuc facit; si non facit, tu male facis, Quae insontem insimules. (V. 2, 801–06) MATRONA:  At

58  Translation in English William Warner (1595) SENEX: [Y]e

want nothing, apparrell, money, servants, meate, drinke, all things necessarie. I feare there is fault in you. MULIER: But he filcheth away my apparrell and my jewels, to give to his trulles. SENEX: If he doth so, tis verie ill done; if not, you doo ill to say so. Richard Warner (Thornton) (1772) OLD MAN:

But when I see he keeps you richly cloth’d, Allows you servants, and a plenteous table, A wife thus treated, should in my opinion Bear towards him a more equal mind. WIFE: But he Pilfers my gold, my robe from out my chest; Robs me and carries to his courtesans My richest ornaments. OLD MAN: If he does this, He acts amiss: if not, you act but ill, When you accuse one that is innocent.

Watling (1965) FATHER: He

keeps you in clothes, jewellery, and all the servants and provisions you could possible need; your best plan is to accept the situation sensibly. WIFE: Even if he robs me, steals my clothes and jewels out of my cupboards, empties my wardrobe behind my back to make presents to his strumpets. FATHER: Ah well he has no right to do that – if that is what he is doing. But if he isn’t you have no right to accuse an innocent man. Parker (1999) ANTIQUIDES:  The

Facts are these: our husband keeps you chic and jingling, dressed to the nines, ringed beyond the elbows, covered with allover gilt, provided with maids in profusion, provision in positive scads. Your only sensible recourse to a flood of goodies like that is common sense, or Putting Up With. DOVEY: He’s stolen my gold, and robbed my garb direct from my chests at home, and delivered the loot to prostitutes on the sly! (Antiquides is deeply shocked.) ANTIQUIDES: But those are worth money! Felony! Theft! he’s committed a CRIME! (He recovers himself.) – provided, of course, that he has actually done . . . well, what you said. If not, then you,

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 59 of course, have committed the crime – defaming the name of an innocent man. The third sequence is from the entrance of the Doctor, where the focus of attention is differently assessed as being either on the character of the Doctor, or on the response of the Wife’s Father. The key is the punchline: SENEX:  Lumbi

sedendo, oculi spectando dolent, manendo medicum, dum se ex opere recipiat. odiosus tandem vix ab aegrotis venit. ait se obligasse crus fractum Aesculapio, Apollini autem brachium. nunc cogito, utrum me dicam ducere medicum an fabrum. atque eccum incedit. move formicinum gradum. MEDICUS:  Quid esse illi morbi, dixeras? narra, senex. num laruatust aut cerritus? fac sciam num eum veternus aut aqua intercus tenet? SENEX:  Quin ea te causa duco, ut id dicas mihi atque illum ut sanum facias. (V. 3, 882–93) William Warner (1595) SENEX:  My

loines ake with sitting, and mine eies with looking, while I staie for yonder laizie Phisitian. See now where the creeping drawlatch comes. MEDICUS: What disease hath hee, said you? Is it a letarge or a lunacie or melancholie, or dropsie? SENEX:  Wherefore, I pray, do I bring you, but that you shuld tell me what it is, and cure him of it? Richard Warner (1772) OLD MAN:

My limbs with sitting ache, my eyes with watering, While this same doctor from his patients comes. Scarcely arrived at home he’s telling me, He was oblig’d to set a broken leg Of Aesculapius, and Apollo’s arm. I’m thinking whether I am bringing with me, Or a physician, or a carpenter – But see, he comes, tho’ with an emmet’s pace. PHYSICIAN: What did you say was his disorder, Sir? Inform me, is he mad or is he frantick? Is it a lethargy or is he dropsical? OLD MAN: I brought you hither to know that of you, And that your art should cure him. Cotter (1827) OLD MAN:  My

loins are in pain from sitting, and my eyes from watching for the doctor, and waiting for him, until he can get away

60  Translation in English from an operation. The odious man scarcely at last is coming hither from the sick people. He says, that he has bound up a broken leg like Aesculapius, but a broken arm like Apollo. I am now thinking whether I can pronounce, that I am bringing a physician, or a setter of legs! (He looks round towards the back scene.) And behold him! He is stalking this way! He moves at the pace of an ant. (Enter from the back scene a Physician in great formality of dress, and stalking pompously along. The Old Gentleman meets him and they advance.) DOCTOR: Had you told me, pray, what disease he might have? relate it, my old gentleman! whether is he distracted, or frightened with fancies? Let me know this! whether does a lethargy seize him, or a dropsy? OLD MAN: Why I bring you here for that reason, that you may tell me that. and that you may make him sound stout and whole! Copley (1949) SENEX: My

backsides ache from sitting, my eyes ache from looking, all from waiting for the doctor to get back from his calls. Old Snooty! He finally dragged himself away from his patients and came. Said he’d had to set a broken leg for Asclepius, and a broken arm for Apollo. I wonder now – what have I got here? A doctor or bronze-foundryman? (He looks back. The doctor enters, stage left.) Ah, here he comes. “Can you walk a little faster, said the whiting to the snail?”22 MEDICUS What did you say was wrong with him? Tell me, sir: is he (POMPOUSLY): suffering from hallucinations? Would you say that he had a comatose hysteria? Or perhaps acromegalic hydrocephaly? SENEX: Now see here: I asked you here so that you could tell me, and could cure him. Bovie (1962) OLD MAN:  My

back’s stiff with sitting, my eyes nearly worn out with  looking, Hanging around waiting for God darn that darn medicine man To finish with patients and meet this emergency. Well, finally, he’s pulled himself away – not much urgency Either, from his victims. He’s his own worst pain in the neck! Such a specialist, in name-dropping at least, of who’s on his list Of big shots with big troubles only he can fix. When I insisted

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 61 He hike over here, he said, “Right away,” but first he must set This broken leg, to the Greater Glory of Aesculapius, And then put an arm back in place, On Behalf of Apollo. Which half of Apollo beats the Belvedere out of me: but I see Him racing over now, weaving down the track like an ant With lumbago. It’s just his ego slows him down, the hot airman. Putting those pieces together! What is he, a repairman, A tinker, a joiner at heart? Are his patients all coming apart? DOCTOR:  Now let me see, my man. . . . You described the case of the  diseased As larvated, id est, he sees actual, live, dead ghost spooks? Or cerebrated, id est, perturbated footzled left lobar cavity? Which is of course only a false hallucination and would show Some degree of mental inquietude. Would you be so good As to describe the condition again, so I can decide What to prescribe or proscribe, or just how to proceed? Did you mention a species of Hibernating coma, a kind of Tendency to feel sleep all the time? Or did you more plainly see A subaqueous subcutaneous slurpation, like say water on the  knee? OLD MAN: The reason I’ve brought you on the case is to find out From you just what’s wrong and ask you to cure it. Parker (1999) OLD MAN: Don’t

doctors make you well? Just sitting and watching for this one to make his appointment had made me a victim of vicious lower-back pain and a hideous squint. He finally made it back from his patients, but just. Mending a broken leg for Aesculapius, or so he said, and setting an arm for Apollo. I wanted a doctor . . . instead I got a sculptor. (He looks back, off stage left.) Oh, look: he approaches.    Speed! An ant walks faster! (Enter, stage left, the Man of Medicine, Dr Klyster. Very aged and slower than Antiquides, whom he joins down left.) DR. KLYSTER: Now, bring me up to date on the ailment’s nature: Schizophrenia – that what you said? Or good, old-fashioned  Possession?    Let me have the facts: Narcolepsy? Shingles? Possibly Gout? ANTIQUIDES: You’ve got it backwards. You tell me what’s wrong, and then you make him well.

62  Translation in English Walton (2007) FATHER: I

was so long waiting at the surgery for the Doctor to get back, I got cramp in the buttock and had to have a massage. What? The left one. That’s right. Anyway, he says he’s the best. Set a broken leg for Aesculapius and a collar-bone for Apollo. I’d probably have been better off with an undertaker. (He calls off-stage.) Get a move on, can’t you? A snail would have got here by now. (Enter DOCTOR.) DOCTOR: Tell me the symptoms again, would you? Would you say it was a case of divine possession or could he be hallucinating? Is he delirious? Might you describe him as ‘cataleptic’? Or would it be more ‘catatonic’? Had you thought of dropsy? FATHER: You’re the fucking doctor. If I knew what was the matter I’d have cured him myself. Readers may make their own judgements about individual translations, and their dependence on the morality, behaviour patterns and dramatic preferences of their own times. They may also supply their own definitions of what constitutes a translation. Sometimes in comedy, however, seductive it may be to pander to the next laugh, the translator may be advised to place more trust in the instincts of the original playwright.

Notes 1 For an authoritative assessment of the physical form of the Plautine stage (in contrast to those who posit a hugely wide playing area), see Richard Beacham 1991: 56–85; see also Ch. 14 on the stage at the Getty and Fig. 6. 2 My unpublished translation. 3 Cicero De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum: 1, 4–5. Dictionary definitions of convertere include ‘to reverse the natural direction of things’; ‘to modify the interpretation of’, as in ‘don’t turn a joke into something serious’ (Plautus Poenulus 1321); and ‘to translate [into the Latin] language from Greek’ (Cicero De Optimo Genere Oratorum, 14); see also Gentili 1979: 95–102. 4 For a broader consideration of contaminatio, see Duckworth 1952: 202–208 and Beare 1964: App. K, 310–13. 5 Apart from the Prologues to Terence’s Adelphi (Brothers), Andria (The Woman from Andros), Eunuchus (The Eunuch), Heauton Timoroumenos (The SelfTormentor), Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law) and Phormio, see Chs. 1 and 12; Goldberg 1986: 91–122; Sandbach 1977: 103–47; Ludwig 2001: 205–15; and introductions to various translations, especially Radice 1965: 11–34; Copley 1949: vii–xx; Brown 2006: vii–xxv. 6 Aristophanes was regarded as too obscene except when heavily expurgated. No complete Menander manuscript surfaced until Duskolos in 1957. 7 W[illiam]. W[arner] (1595), MENÆCMI. London: T. Creede; Rouse 1912: xi, described Warner’s translation as ‘largely a free paraphrase’, adding dismissively, ‘It is clear that Warner wrote with an eye to the stage’; see also Connely 1923/4: 303–305, who downgraded Comedy of Errors because of its ‘romantic frills’; and Bullough 1958.

Plautus’ Menaechmi in English 63 8 See especially Thomas Baldwin 1965, who gives the closest comparison of the two plays and the circumstances of composition; also Segal 2001b: 115–26; Riehle 1990; Miola 1994: 1–37; and Maltby 2009. 9 Warner’s original text is used here, but some anglicized versions can be found in Rouse 1912: xi n. 9 and Levin 1965, together with Warner’s Menaechmi. 10 Attributed to Caesar in Suetonius Life of Terence 3. 11 The first of a series of pamphlets about ‘coney-catchers’ was published in 1581 by Robert Greene, one of the University Wits, and identified by some as coauthor of The Comedy of Errors. 12 W[histlecraft] (John Hookham Frere) 1820: 474–505. 13 For details of European productions of Menaechmi, see Hardin 2003 and 2007. 14 Laurence Echard (1694); see also Edna C. Davis (2003–2009). Robert Graves, who edited the Echard translations (1962) believed they were undertaken in 1689 when Echard was still an undergraduate. 15 A dig at the French, Madam [Anne] Dacier having already produced translations of the same three Plautus plays. 16 Echard’s comparison, too extensive to be considered properly here, can be downloaded from the Gutenberg project based on the 1716 edition of Echard; corrected ed. 1813. 17 See especially Duckworth 1951: 369–83; Beare 1964: 219–32; and Marshall 2006: 203–44. 18 Henry Thomas Riley, Comedies of Plautus (London: Bohn, 1852). The many Bohn editions were planned and executed as ‘cribs’, or ‘literals’ (US ‘trots’), mostly taken up (against school rules) by schoolboys whose concerns were less artistic than aids to construing a difficult text. 19 Aristophanes has been the greatest benefactor, with the dated work of Benjamin Bickley Rogers (1924) giving way to the inspired four volumes of Jeffrey Henderson (1998–2002). 20 The most revealing, but also the most space-consuming, would be to see how the songs are handled. Such a major assessment must wait for a future occasion. 21 The Latin is included though it has not previously seemed necessary when the issues raised are more of dramatic translation in general than translation of Menaechmi in particular. As one of the translations considered is that found in the Loeb Classical Library, Nixon’s Loeb Latin text has been used throughout. 22 An intentional misquotation from the Mock Turtle’s song in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

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Part 2

Processes and issues

Introduction The first part of this selection of papers was about the history of translation into English of the surviving Greek and Roman plays first produced between 472 bce (Aeschylus’ Persians) and 160 bce (Terence’s Brothers). The second part, ‘Processes and Issues’, is more personal and more explicit, covering questions relating to censorship and the different priorities for translators, according to their brief. Included is the least explored but, for the practitioner, perhaps the most challenging aspect of stage translation, namely the relationship between translator and director, the two sandwiched prototargets between source and audience. Though Greek tragedy may seem to hold a more significant place in the world’s repertoire today than at any time in the past two thousand years, currently it is almost always as ‘an adaptation from . . . ’ or ‘a new version of . . . ’. Tempting as it is for the purist to lament the distrust of the original plays, there is a strong argument for the position as Theodore Savory saw it: ‘If ever there were a phase of translation in which the principle of the moderniser was uncontestably to be preferred, it is in the rendering of the Greek play’ (Savory 1957: 67–8). His reasons were a bit dubious in that he did not think much of the Greek playwrights by comparison with Homer, but he did point to the different imperatives of dramatic translation in the twentieth century. Modern theatre practitioners and critics often claim too that there are no rules in theatre. There may be no denying that those who find a prominent place in theatre history tend to be the men and women who break moulds, who find new ways of doing things, saying things, showing things. Nonetheless, the act of theatre involves an unwritten compact between playmaker and audience about what is, and is not, possible in this specific and particular context. Whether this is the same as suggesting that there are no ‘rules’ is a different matter. In classical Athens, clearly there were rules relating to place and time, not those later identified by Aristotle, but to do with a growing understanding of theatre practice. They relate to the relationship between onstage and off-stage. At its most obvious an audience can accept characters being told off-stage something that they then reveal to the audience, but only if this is information to which they have had plausible

66  Processes and issues access – as Clytemnestra in Agamemnon revealing through her ‘beacon speech’ that the war against Troy is over. Characters arriving from indoors frequently do not know what has happened out-of-doors; and vice versa: unless, of course, they are gods or immortals, arriving above the action and with divine authority. Other ‘issues’ of Part 2 cover what defines translation and to whom, if anybody, a play belongs which is both old (and out of copyright), a reflection of the mores and morals of a previous civilization (often politically incorrect) and filled with parochial detail and historical, sociological and cultural references. To the playmaker? The literary historian? The translator? The director? Actors and designers? Management (who hold the pursestrings)? Critics? Or the audience? And do any of these have an authority to override the claims of the others? To this must be added the fact that Greek tragedy, for all the differences between individual playmakers, had a formal structure. The first performances were presented on a special occasion. The expectations and understanding of those first audiences can never be replicated: Should they somehow be translated too? There are other concerns too. There may be a development from early Aeschylus to later Euripides, but there is less difference in the speech patterns of various characters than are to be found in Renaissance playwrights and those of most subsequent dramatic writing. Character, then, is something which translators of classical plays may see fit to emphasize or exaggerate, perhaps for the better, but none the less prescriptively. As has already been suggested (see Ch. 4), there is a point at which translation becomes interference. Some years ago I was taken to task in a review for mixing styles in a translation of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis because I used ‘polysllables like “insinuations” ’, which clashed with colloquialisms like “fire away” and “I couldn’t get a peep out of her” ’. My defence would be that it was the devious herald Lichas who used the terms ‘fire away’ and ‘I couldn’t get a peep out of her’, trying to conceal from Deianira that her husband Heracles was bringing home a concubine. A messenger suggests that Lichas is being evasive which provokes Deianira’s ‘I want to know what’s going on./I can’t follow these insinuations.’ Whatever the qualities of the translation there is a significant issue of principle here. If the characters in a Greek play, tragedy or comedy cannot have some sort of individuality determined by their, age, gender, status and situation, are they all meant to speak in exactly the same way? And is this true if they appear on the page to speak a similar Greek? Different circumstances dictate how different characters feel – consider only the various messengers in both tragedy and comedy – and a modern audience will surely expect that to be reflected in the language they all use. The Greek playwrights were not merely proposing an ancient and hermetic culture. They were makers of plays, establishing the rules and conventions of a blossoming art form. That is the challenge for the translator: to bridge two worlds without shortchanging either.

Processes and issues 67 If you pick up a copy of The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, with its subtitle of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Elegance, between ‘Tradesmen’ (described as ‘Thieves’), and ‘Transmography or Transmigrify’ (‘to patch up, vamp or alter’), you will find ‘Translators’. And Translators are defined as ‘Sellers of old mended shoes and boots, between coblers and shoemakers’. That strikes a chord. Translators are cobblers, however much we may lay claim to being treated as original artists too. The writer and biographer Michael Meyer, whose translations of Ibsen and Strindberg are justly renowned, claimed in his autobiography, Not Prince Hamlet: ‘Translation seemed an answer to my lack of creative drive’ (Meyer 1990: 168). Perhaps such may account for the current vogue for avoiding translation in favour of reworkings of classical myth from literals by contemporary writers. Full adaptation from Greek myth has a long and honourable history, all the way back to Aeschylus and from Shakespeare through to Anouilh, but revitalizing stories from the deep past is not the same as offering new ‘versions’ which will claim the authority of Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides while offering a personal signature. That is a kind of hubris which only a few can warrant. For the most part it should be up to directors to decide if and how Greek tragedies and comedies are worth renewing, and for an audience to take from them whatever they find which touches them in their own lives. Meyer also recounted his early experience of translating Ibsen into English and the excitement of two separate Norwegian actors, thirty years apart, tackling Ibsen in English for the first time. Norwegian had changed so much in a hundred years, one of them suggested, that what had seemed ‘modern’ language when Ibsen wrote it now sounded to contemporary Norwegian ‘as Sheridan would to us had he written tragedies’. Meyer’s response to this was dismay rather than endorsement, concluding: ‘I made it a rule never to use any word that would not have been current English at the time the play in question was written; apart from the intrinsic vulgarity of anachronisms, any attempt to update dialogue will date within a decade’ (Meyer 1990: 160). Such a declaration of intent is a challenge for translators, less for the assumption that translations are likely to date – this has always been a factor that isolates every country’s experience of their own particular Shakespeare, Molière or Gogol from that of any other country – but for the absurdity inherent in applying it as a model for all translation of every period. Where on earth does it leave the translator of Greek or Roman plays? Should we not anyway be aware of, accommodate and applaud the fact that all the surviving Greek playwrights, especially Euripides and Aristophanes, used their own anachronisms, in all their ‘intrinsic vulgarity’, as one of their liveliest weapons? The competent playwright of any period will leave enough flexibility for the director and the actor to bring new interpretations and fresh emphases according to the mood and sensibilities of a new occasion – one of the

68  Processes and issues reasons why any search for a definitive translation of a particular play can only be counter-productive. And a new occasion may take account of all manner of social, political and cultural circumstances which will feed into the director’s vision. In 1994 Peter Stein chose to relocate his 1980 Oresteia to a Russian context, seeing in Russia immediately after the fall of communism, a political struggle similar to that in the Athens of Aeschylus after the emasculation of the Areopagus. All manner of new associations and resonances emerge from a text which is open enough to accommodate them. The question of censorship is the first to be investigated in Part 2. The tyranny of the Lord Chamberlain and his blue pencil produced a number of absurdities and should make us aware of how each generation creates its own censorship which may still apply to the satyr play of Euripides or the comedy of Aristophanes. The other articles both relate, with apologies, to my own translations of Euripides. Chapter 6 compares a Rhesus and an Alcestis, one for publication, the other as an example of translocation to a different period and culture and a production in a Victorian setting. Chapter 7 relates to Medea for a known actor who would then repeat the role as a one-woman show in Delphi. Together they make a case for the translation of Greek tragedy as related to actual performance. As a director of tragedy or comedy, history or fantasy, fairytale or the absurd, the principal remit for me has always been to find a context in which such things can happen. This leads to more complicated questions, in translating or directing plays from the classical period, about cultivating a cultural milieu into which they will fit both theatrically and historically. How do you find that voice that will speak of centuries before Christ in tones that the twenty-first century of the Christian era will comprehend? How should an English-speaking Electra sound? Will that be the same in a play by Aeschylus, by Sophocles and by Euripides? And in London, Dublin or Los Angeles? As significantly, maybe more so, how does the contemporary translator tackle aspects of the stage play that only come alive through performance: iconography, nuance, subtext, irony? Are there any fixed parameters in trying to ensure that the plays from the classical repertoire are made to live for an audience of today? Or is it a free-for-all? Perhaps it boils down to what licence the translator should have to nudge, tickle or just plain sabotage the original? Translators and directors may claim that they have today’s actors, directors and audiences to answer to, and justify any liberty taken on the grounds that the play will still be there when they have finished with it. A little voice does make itself heard in a corner of my mind, warning that translators are also the keepers of the keys, the caretakers of a culture, the spirit voice, even, of the long-dead dramatist. There is one last general point for the translator of the Greek play which I and others have raised elsewhere. Greek drama was played in masks. The texts that we have are mask texts, created with the conventions of masked acting uppermost in the mind of the playwright. The problem is not simply that few actors today have much idea about playing in the mask, or

Processes and issues 69 directors to help them. It is much more that the composition of the mise en scène takes account of the stage picture the mask tends to propose. Actors in Greek tragedy have long speeches. Other actors and choruses have to listen to long speeches. The choruses have to listen to, and perhaps, interrogate long speeches: and maybe dance to a few long speeches of their own. If the speeches are not long, then they tend to be very short, dialogue in single- or double-line stichomythia. But the range of mood and emotion, and the pace at which one turns into another, as written for masked actors, are largely physical issues.1 Even if masked production is not part of the brief, the translator needs to take account of this performance factor, to accommodate it and render it into a range of non-masked performance potential. Many English language translations of Greek plays (Loeb, Chicago and Penguin amongst them), either lose sight of the balancing act required in making a scene ‘work’, to use that hackneyed but irreplaceable practitioners’ critical benchmark. In this, the distinctions between the responsibility of translator and director are separate, but intertwined. The translator needs to supply a legitimate engagement with the text as handed down, insofar as such engagement is possible. The director has to create a production, informed by the original, but not wholly dependent on it, of something for a contemporary audience, acknowledging the past but thrusting it firmly into the present. Would that it were always so simple.

Note 1 See Didaskalia VOLUME VII #1 WINTER 2007, http://www.didaskalia.net/ issues/vol7no1/contents.html (last consulted, 16 July 2015). See also Walton (2015), especially Chs. 9 and 10.

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5 ‘Good manners, decorum or the public peace’ Greek drama and the censor Modes of Censorship and Translation (2007) A copy of the following letter was published without comment in New Theatre Magazine believed to be from January, 1964:1

Mem. No profanity or impropriety of language be permitted on the stage. This licence is permitted for the play “Ubu” on the understanding that the following alterations are made to the script. Pages 1,2,3,4,5,6,12,15,16,18,21. Omit ‘shittle’, substitute ‘shickle’. Pages 1,2,3,12,17,19. Omit ‘Buggerer’/‘bugger’, substitute ‘plugger’. Page 4. Omit the name ‘Buggerlas’, substitute ‘Bougrelas’ wherever it appears in the script. Page 12. ‘Do you think I’ve come to preach in the wilderness.’ NO substitute. Page 19.  Omit the recital of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin and English. The prayer to be wordless. Page 23. Omit ‘crapper’, substitute ‘cracker’. Page 10. Omit ‘ . . . he pisses standing upright.’ NO substitute. ‘I. The Lord Chamberlain of THE QUEEN’S Household for the time being, do by virtue of my office and in pursuance of powers given to me by the Act of Parliament for regulating Theatres, 6 and 7 Victoria, Cap. 68, Section 12, allow the Performance of a new Stage play, of which a copy has been submitted to me by you . . . with the exception of all Words and Passages which are specified in the endorsement of this licence and without any further variation whatsoever. Given under my hand . . . ’ LORD CHAMBERLAIN

72  Processes and issues The ‘play’ referred to was a new translation by Trevor Vibert of a composite of the three Ubu plays of Alfred Jarry (Ubu Roi, Ubu Cocu and Ubu Enchainé). The first night of Ubu Roi, at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre in Paris on 10 December 1896, resulted in a riot when Fermin Gémier as Ubu entered, walked downstage to confront the audience and spat out the play’s first word not as ‘Merde’ but ‘Merdre’. All hell broke loose and it was at least fifteen minutes, legend has it, before Mère Ubu was able to utter the play’s next words, a reproof, as it happens, to her husband for his bad language. Amongst those who witnessed the scenes and the rumbustious reception which continued throughout the rest of the performance was W. B. Yeats. He recognized the significance of the occasion too, recording in his description of the evening the often quoted response ‘ . . . what more is possible? After us the Savage God’ (Yeats 1955: 349). That was 1896. Ubu was not immediately to take his place as the harbinger of Modernism, but that first night in Paris came to be seen as a beacon lighting up the path to twentieth-century theatre. By the time of the Second World War, Ubu Roi was recognized throughout almost all of Europe as a classic. This was not so in Britain, at least partly because of the mindset typified by the aforementioned letter, when in 1963 George Brandt proposed the English première of the play at Bristol University’s Drama Department. There was still in 1963 a legal requirement for any play intended for public production, even a seventy-year-old classic, to be submitted and vetted by the Lord Chamberlain.

Stage censorship in England Censorship of the English stage has a long and chequered history which stretches back at least as far as 1581 when Elizabeth the First extended the responsibility of the office of the Master of the Revels, at that time held by Edmund Tilney, from overseeing plays presented at court to protecting the interests of the sovereign in any performance anywhere in the kingdom. Richard Findlater would take the origins of censorship back further to the foundation of the Revels Office in 1545, or even earlier to the 1543 act ‘for the advancement of true religion and the abolishment of the contrary’ (Findlater 1967: 16). Shakespeare’s career was conducted within a theatre which suffered anything from disapproval to active control from crown, church and civic authorities. Protestant or Catholic propaganda was the main, though not the only, source of opposition. Theatres were meeting places. The South Bank of the Thames was not always as salubrious as it now is. Theatres, from the building of the first as a commercial venture in 1576, outside the city walls at Shoreditch to escape the regulation of the city authorities, tended to share their territory with all manner of alehouses, knocking shops and a variety of low-life activities. The subsequent mushrooming of theatres in the areas round Covent Garden and Shaftesbury Avenue meant that for the next

Greek drama and the censor  73 three hundred years the drama’s reputation for keeping bad company tended to be merited.2 Theatres may have been places of questionable morality, but the earliest censorship was far less concerned with morals than with sedition. This applied both to the control of premises and of the material presented to the public within them. James I, expert in the uncovering of the works of the Devil that he was, brought in a specific act ‘for preventing the great abuse of the Holy Name of God in Stage Plays, Enterludes . . . ’ etc. Under Charles I, the then Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert, had the power to licence any and every entertainment throughout the land. The closure of theatres for eighteen years in 1642, ended by the restoration of the monarchy, heralded the Patent System, restricting rights of public performance to two patent houses, and, as those familiar with the nature of Restoration Comedy will not be surprised to hear, it was still only political or religious reasons which led to plays being banned. The first of the major Acts dealing with censorship of the stage direct was passed in 1737. All new plays or ‘additions’ to old ones had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for a licence before performance.3 Plays were still confined in London to the patent houses though restrictions in the provinces appear to have been less stringent. To put this in the perspective of the classical Greek repertoire which will be my main subject here, by 1737 Aeschylus had not yet been translated into English at all. Lewis Theobald, himself a working playwright, had published three Sophocles translations, Ajax (1714), Electra (1714) and Oedipus Tyrannus (1715), but only Electra was to receive a stage production and that several years after Theobald’s death (see Ch. 3). A translation of Philoctetes by Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of the playwright and theatre manager Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was published in Dublin in 1725 but as a literary piece. The whole of Sophocles in English was first published by George Adams in 1729. Most of Euripides remained untranslated by 1737 or, at least, unpublished, the notable exception being Hecuba, ‘translated with alterations’ by Richard West and performed at Drury Lane in 1726. Aristophanes was treated rather differently. A strange ‘version’ of Wealth ‘translated out of Aristophanes, his Plutus by Tho. Randolph, augmented and published by F. J.’, under the title of Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery had been printed (1651) during the Interregnum when the theatres were closed; a closer translation by ‘H. H. B[urnell]’ in 1659. Lewis Theobald’s Plutus: or the World’s Idol followed in 1715. A translation of Aristophanes’ Clouds had also emerged during the closure of the theatres (1655) in Thomas Stanley’s The History of Philosophy, Part III (printed in London for Humphrey Mosley and Thomas Dring); another, again by the busy Lewis Theobald, in 1715. None of these received or would have been expected to receive a stage presentation. As for Menander, no whole play had yet been discovered, nor would be until 1957.

74  Processes and issues That was the sum of Greek drama in English by 1737. The next hundred years were to see a major upsurge in Greek drama translations, but virtually no recognizable performances: it is this phenomenon which I want to consider in greater detail (see Ch. 1 for further details). In 1843 Robert Peel’s Theatres Act replaced that of 1737. It affected England, Scotland and Wales, but not Ireland. The main effect of the new Act was to redefine a stage play as almost anything that appeared on a stage and contained a narrative. More significantly, the Lord Chamberlain could refuse, or revoke, a licence for anything which in his opinion threatened ‘the preservation of good manners, decorum, or the public peace’. In the years that followed, cuts were demanded in a numbers of plays and many whole plays banned in their entirety, without the need for the holder of the office to account for, or give an account of, his motives. Over the years of the twentieth century before the Strauss bill of 1968 which ‘freed’ the stage from the censor, four hundred and eleven plays were banned out of hand. They included, though sometimes only temporarily, translations of Ibsen’s Ghosts (venereal disease); Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness (infanticide); Schnitzler’s La Ronde (sex); Wedekind’s Spring Awakening (masturbation – also censored originally in Germany); Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna (immorality); various plays by Brieux (various reasons); Strindberg’s Miss Julie (sex and menstruation); Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (threatened incest in a brothel); Sartre’s Huis Clos (homosexuality); Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (incest again); and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (more sex). The reasons offered in brackets are, of course, no more than conjecture as no explicit cause for exclusion was required or had to be given. This Act of 1843 was still in force in 1963, if slightly more benignly operated, when Bristol Drama Department submitted Vibert’s Ubu and received the list of amendments without which Lord Cobbold would refuse to allow the public to view Jarry’s play in England, even though the production opened in Zagreb.4 The power of the Lord Chamberlain was already under strenuous attack and, thanks in the main to a couple of Edward Bond plays which could be seen in their entirety throughout Europe in translation, but not in the original language in England, a private members’ bill introduced by George Strauss finally passed through its third reading and received the Royal Assent on 26 July 1968.5 The Theatres Act, abolishing stage censorship, became law two months later. The new law did not, of course, free the stage from other relevant laws upon the statute book, but that is another story.

Censoring tragedy If a deal of time has been spent on the history of censorship in England, it has to be judged an essential backdrop to the last two examples quoted in the list previously given, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (or Oedipus Rex or

Greek drama and the censor  75 Oedipus the King), and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The Sophocles is easier and quicker to deal with, if only because the decision to refuse a licence to the translation can only have been taken as a measure to protect the perceived fragile sensibilities of an audience. From the time of Theobald’s first translation in 1715 until the first attempt by Sir John Martin-Harvey to have W. L. Courtney’s commissioned ‘version’ approved in 1911, some thirty-three translations of the play had been published, many by the most worthy and sober of clerics. Apart from the discovery that Oedipus and Jocasta have married and had children, though unwittingly son and mother, the play offers nothing salacious, decadent or even minimally corrupting. Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus, originally performed at the Dorset Gardens theatre in 1679, could have been revived had anyone wanted to do so because it was written before the passing of the 1737 Act: as, of course, was the Sophocles and it is a moot point whether the censor would have been able to prevent the production of the translation by Theobald or Adams. The play had been performed in England at Cambridge in 1887, but in Greek and in Greek there were no objections. The logic of this does not bear close analysis, but then, neither in this play nor in most of those listed previously, do the authors appear to be recommending a course of action that could by the wildest puritan be considered as an incitement to the improper. The Courtney version, it has to be admitted, was described as ‘free’ and included scenes which were not in the Sophocles, one reason, possibly, for Viscount Althorp to have rejected it. In 1905, Yeats, having recovered from the first night of Ubu, had asked Gilbert Murray to provide him with a translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus for the opening production at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin where the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain did not apply. Murray declined, only to reverse his position when given the opportunity to provide a translation for the Reinhardt production which, after a great deal of huffing and puffing, reached Covent Garden in January of 1912 (Walton 1987: 337–9). That is all that needs to be said about the censorship of Oedipus, or, indeed, about the revival of Greek tragedy which was never otherwise pressurized by the authorities. It is worth noting that Murray’s translation of Euripides’ Hippolytus, a theme regarded as so risqué in its first manifestation in Athens, we are told, that Euripides had to withdraw it and write it more decorously, passed onto the stage of the Court Theatre in 1904 without disturbing the censor. This was not even the play’s first presentation, having been played at the Lyric Theatre the previous May under the auspices of William Archer’s New Century Theatre (Walton 1987: 336–7). Medea, which might also be viewed as a candidate for suppression with its portrait of the regicide and infanticide who escapes the consequences of her action, was seen in a number of versions, mainly from the French, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The only self-censorship exercised there was in the burlesque versions of the story which could not quite stomach the murder of the children. A possible political dimension was not overlooked

76  Processes and issues when Murray’s translation of Medea was to tour to South Africa and Rhodesia in the 1920s in a production which did not shirk from the possible parallel to colonialist oppression.

Censoring comedy Comedy was something very different, especially when it consisted of a satyr play, Euripides’ Cyclops, with its chorus of priapic satyrs, and Aristophanes, whose eleven plays are sufficiently full of jokes about bodily functions for it to be almost impossible to detach the sociopolitical comedy from the scatological. Cyclops is the only play of its kind to survive in its entirety though all the major tragedians composed similar and they were a standard part of the tragic submission of four plays to the archon in charge of the Great Dionysia. The titles we have suggest a connection to the themes of the preceding three tragedies, as though the inverted and comic view of disaster was less a means of cheering up the audience than an essential alternative view of the pattern of life. The satyrs of the chorus, half-human, half-animal supporters of Dionysus, were the common factor. Cyclops follows the story of Odysseus and his men as told in Book IX of The Odyssey when they arrive on the island of the one-eyed, man-eating Polyphemus, in search of provisions. The Chorus, with their leader Silenus, have been captured by the monster and are forced to look after his sheep. Their main interest in Odysseus on his way home from the Trojan War is from his association with Helen, the cause of it. The play was an uncomfortable one for early translators and commentators. The three volumes of Charlotte Lennox’s The Greek Theatre of Father Brumoy (1759) follow closely the French original, but only a small number of whole plays were translated either into French or into English. The rest have extracts with a digest of the plot. Some of these were handed over by Mrs Lennox to male hands. Cyclops comes at the end of vol. III, with the introductory ‘Discourse’ translated by John Burryau in which Brumoy admits that his decision to include the play at all was a late one: Although I did not intend to surprise those that are unacquainted with it, yet I must own that I could not be without some apprehension, lest a poem so repugnant to our modes of thinking, should at once efface from the minds of persons undetermined what value to set upon the ancient theatre, those impressions which that taste of beauty and nature so well expressed in their tragedies might have made. In short, I was afraid lest the grossness and barbarity of a Polyphemus should make them forget the tenderness of an Iphigenia, or the well-expressed passion of a Phaedra: not that I thought it impossible for the same poet to produce two species of theatric writing of so different a nature, without forfeiting the esteem of the polite age of Athens. (Lennox 1759, vol. III: 441)

Greek drama and the censor  77 This is, of course, less a comment on ‘the polite age of Athens’ than on the polite age of, not even the London of 1759, but the Paris of 1730. As becomes clear to any historian of translation, each age recreates the ancient world in its own image, finding reasons, where possible, to account for what is uncomfortable, or ignoring it altogether. The Rev. Robert Potter, who almost managed to be the first to translate the whole of Euripides, chose to omit Cyclops and leave the corpus at eighteen plays. The 1782 translation of Cyclops by Michael Wodhull is the first in the English language. Brumoy’s attempts to account for the satyrs ‘though we are justly offended by their grossness and obscenity’, is an interesting extension of his understanding of the culture of Athens. When it comes to the sections he translates, as opposed to summarising, he is careful to exclude anything ‘gross’ or ‘obscene’. Some of the incidental pleasures of being drunk are glossed over and when Silenus (the Chorus in the Oxford text and all later translations) asks Ulysses (Odysseus), ‘Have you then conquered Troy and brought back Helen?’ Brumoy/Grainger breaks off the dialogue with the comment, ‘the greatest part of what follows in this dialogue is indeed worthy of a drunkard or buffoon, and fit to make the populace laugh; for Silenus carries his questions to an indecent length.’ (Lennox 1759, vol. III: 457) Full translations – and there have not been many of note – cannot be so coy. In Wodhull the exchange goes as follows: CHORUS:

Was Troy By you subdued? was Helen taken captive? ULYSSES: And the whole house of Priam laid waste. CHORUS: When you had laid hands on the transcendent fair, Did ye then enjoy her in your turn, Because she enjoys a variety of Husbands. . . .



Ah! would to Heaven no women had been born But such as were reserved for my embraces. (Wodhull l782: 177–87)

The Greek word translated here simply as ‘enjoy’ is ‘diekrotêsat’, a rather cruder metaphor of ‘breaking through’ or ‘knocking on a door’, but Wodhull makes it clear enough what they are talking about. Shelley’s translation of 1819 is far better known, but cheats here by lifting the Wodhull, word for word. The first Loeb translation by Arthur Way in 1912 had a satyr sounding more like a British major at the time of the Raj than a force of nature: ‘Look here, Odysseus; let me ask some questions. . . . Well, when you’d caught the naughty little jade,/Didn’t each man whip out his ‘vorpal’ blade/And thrust her through . . .?’ ‘Vorpal blade’ is an unusually blatant anachronism.6 Edward Coleridge (1891) has the sedate ‘were you all her lovers?’

78  Processes and issues Sir John Sheppard’s Cyclops ‘freely translated and adapted for performance in English’ is even more innocuous, the Chorus suggesting mildly that ‘ . . . when you did get hold of her, I suppose you all took plenty of kisses. . . . One husband not enough for her’. In defence of Sheppard the date must be emphasized, 1923. This play certainly had to pass before the watchful eye of the censor, at that time the Earl of Cromer, who, as figures of plays refused a licence altogether suggest, was amongst the most diligent defenders of our civilization. Roger Lancelyn Green in the first Penguin edition (1957) asked only ‘Did you all share her then?’7 More recent translations have opted for the full frontal ‘ . . . did you all line up and give her a good fucking?’ (Economou, Ohio University Press 1980); or the slang of the Euripides’ metaphor, ‘ . . . did you all give her a bang? Did you?’ (Walton 1991); ‘ . . . didn’t you all take turns banging her?’ (Kovacs for the new Loeb 1994 and virtually the same, John Davie in the new Penguin 2002). It is a small point but a fair illustration of how censorship in stage translation into English has usually been an issue of taste and morals, not political message. It also shows how simple it might be to second-guess the censor, but at the cost of vitality. There is another similar section in Cyclops where the drunken Polyphemus grabs Silenus and carries him off into his cave as his ‘Ganymede’. Dealing fairly explicitly with homosexual rape the scene is very delicately handled by translators. The pattern of evasion, propriety and frankness is repeated from the Helen sequence and need not be pursued here except insofar as the raising of the issue of ‘homo-’ as opposed to ‘hetero-’ eroticism becomes more of an issue in the work of Aristophanes to which we may now turn.8 In Birds two Athenians, Peisetairos and Euelpides, who have had enough of Athens and are looking for something and somewhere better, discover Tereus, the Hoopoe. Tereus asks them what sort of city they are really looking for. Peisetairos answers with some reference to being invited to parties and Tereus then turns to Euelpides: TEREUS: How about you? EUELPIDES: The same sort of thing. TEREUS: What sort of thing? EUELPIDES: The sort of place where you’d run into some fellow in the street,

the father of a pretty little boy, and he’d start grumbling about how he’d been insulted by you. ‘Shining example you set! What a way to treat my lad! You meet him coming from the gym, all nice and clean. Then what? You never kissed him. Never propositioned him or tried to seduce him. You didn‘t even give his balls a squeeze. And you, an old friend of the family!’ (136–42)9 This problematic exchange is not just a sexual reference which might be inappropriate in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century publication. It is,

Greek drama and the censor  79 comedy or not, a declaration of pederastic ambition from the central character in the play. Times have changed so that references to gang-banging Helen may be expressed in the most direct manner. Child sexual abuse is in a different league, today, as much, maybe more so than in Regency or Victorian times. On this issue morality has reached the far side of an apparently expanding universe of licence and is on its way back. In a production there are many directors and actors who would be only too glad to exercise their own censorship and cut the lines. It is instructive to see exactly how the passage has been represented over the years. Charlotte Lennox was uncomfortable with all Aristophanes, despite his inclusion by Brumoy, and handed over the ‘discourse’, ‘A Dissertation upon the Greek Comedy’, to ‘the celebrated author of the Rambler’ [Samuel Johnson], who had his own reservations: I was in doubt a long time, whether I should meddle at all with Greek Comedy, both, because the pieces which remain are very few, the licentiousness of Aristophanes, their author, is exorbitant, and it is very difficult to draw from the performances of a single poet, a just idea of Greek comedy. (Lennox vol. III 1759: 123–61) Lennox passed the translation of Birds to ‘a young gentleman’ who simply cut the whole sequence as though it never was. The first full translation was also published anonymously by ‘A Member of One of the Universities’ (Aristophanes 1812). The translator reversed the identity of the characters at this point and called one of them Pisthetaerus, but this makes little difference. So it is Pisthetaerus to whom Epops (the Hoopoe) addresses his question: EPOPS: What is your opinion? PISTH: This suits my palate too. EPOPS: What? PISTH:  When the father of some

pretty wench shall reprove me for my treatment of her in terms like these: ‘You acted nobly, Stilbonides [a name invented by Aristophanes meaning ‘brilliant’], and consistently with your character as my father’s friend, in being proof to all mischievous temptation, though you might have jostled with my daughter at random in the dark’. (A Member of One of the Universities 1812)

So the translator not only has his character looking for a place where he will be praised for his restraint (rather than castigated for it), but also turns the son into a daughter, ‘jostling’ a young girl being, apparently, that much more respectable than doing the same to a young boy. Even so, several readings of the foregoing have not made it wholly clear to me what Pisthetaerus

80  Processes and issues is talking about. Perhaps this ‘member of one of the universities’ should not be taken to task for appreciating the sensibilities of his readers, especially in the first ever translation of the play into English.10 John Hookham Frere, a political and satirical writer of note, did subsequently find fault with Thomas Mitchell’s translations of Aristophanes, two of which (Acharnians and Knights) were published in 1820. Frere wrote a review in Critical Quarterly for July 1820 where he complained of Mitchell’s ignoring the burlesque element of tragic writing to be found in the plays, concluding: Now as these passages are perfectly distinguishable in the original, they ought undoubtedly to be at least recognisable in the translation; and here we think that the choice Mr Mitchell has made of a style borrowed from our [my italics] early comedies, has subjected him to particular disadvantages. (cited in Aristophanes 1911: 2 xiii)11 Indeed, it was his adverse reaction to Mitchell that provoked Frere to his own translations (Frere, published in 1839). It may be unfair to tar Frere with his own brush, but his conviction that passages from the original should be ‘recognisable’ offers a very watered-down version of our passage: HOOPOE: PEISTHETAIRUS: HOOPOE: PEIS:

And what say you? My fancy’s much the same. How so? To find a place of the same sort; A kind of place where a good, jolly father Meets and attacks me thus ‘What’s come to ye With my young people? You don’t take to ’em. What, they’re not reckon’d ugly! You might treat ’em As an old friend, with a little attention, surely, And take a trifling civil freedom with ’em.’ (Frere 1839: 164–70)

What Frere does do here is follow sufficiently closely on the original for someone who does read Greek to recognize his euphemisms. But is such bowdlerization – Thomas Bowdler died in 1825 – censorship? Nahum Tate’s King Lear, with a love affair between Edgar and Cordelia, and Lear’s eventual restoration as King, was the only version of the Shakespeare to be seen on the English stage between 1681 and 1838, the year before the publication of Frere’s Birds. This is truly ‘good manners’ and ‘decorum’, if not a lot to do with ‘the public peace’. In the climate of the times Aristophanes got off lightly. Censorship over language was self-imposed, but as the only realistic response to the age. The suggestion that Aristophanes might be offering a parable in Birds, or any of his other plays, which could be seen as a comment

Greek drama and the censor  81 on contemporary politics, never occurred to anyone because the plays were not staged and translations were confined largely to the educational arena. An intriguing alternative was offered by what may just be claimed as the first production of Aristophanes on the English stage, James Robinson Planché’s The “Birds” of Aristophanes, ‘A Dramatic Experiment in one act, Being an Humble Attempt to Adapt the said “Birds” to this Climate, by giving them New Names, New Feathers, New Songs, and New Tales’ (Planché 1879). After a modernized version full of contemporary references, the final scene has the King of the Birds reveal himself as Jupiter, offering a moral and political warning against any who might dare to challenge the authority of the gods. This is, of course, not censorship, but censorship’s elder brother, propaganda. Religious orthodoxy, albeit represented through the pagan Olympians, triumphs over hubristic mankind. No boat is rocked that may not be steadied. No arse is kicked that may not survive unbruised. Nevertheless the Planché does have an inoffensive charm to go with a highly competent pre-Gilbertian gift of the gab (for a fuller account see Ch. 13). By the beginning of the twentieth century the lines about the encounter with the neighbour’s young son cease to be contentious. Benjamin Bickley Rogers published his first translations of Aristophanes in 1902. These were later to become the first Loeb editions (in four volumes) in 1924. At this point his Peisthetaerus longs: To have the father of some handsome lad Come up and chide me with complaints like these, Fine things I hear of you, Stilbonides. You met my son returning from the baths. And never kissed, or hugged or fondled him, You, his paternal friend! You’re a nice fellow. (Rogers 1924: 136–42) To which a surprisingly ‘camp’ Hoopoe responds ‘Poor Poppet, you are in love with ills indeed’. So, more huggery than buggery, but Jeffrey Henderson, in the new Loeb (2000) can add little except the English ‘fondle his balls’ for the Greek ôrchipedisas. That might be the last word on this particular aspect of the censorship of taste but for a quick postscript. Peter Arnott, in a translation for AppletonCentury-Crofts (Arnott 1958) of Birds and Plautus’ The Brothers Menaechmus cut the speech altogether.12 More remarkably, so did Sean O’Brien in his commissioned translation for the National Theatre in 2002. Might it be that we are in the process of a return to a new censorship of taste where Aristophanes may again be regarded as offending certain public sensibilities? As with the majority of decisions made in the latter days of the Lord Chamberlain’s authority it was single words as much as ideas that were deemed likely to offend or corrupt the nation’s theatre-goers: thus, ‘shickle’, not ‘shittle’ for merdre; ‘pluggerer’ for ‘buggerer’ in the Bristol Ubu. ‘Lover’,

82  Processes and issues ‘adultery’, ‘impotence’ and ‘hips’ were all banned at one time or another. ‘Bloody’ was never used on the English stage between Eliza in Pygmalion in 1912 and Noel Coward’s short piece Red Peppers in 1936 (see Findlater 1967). As late as 1966 the Lord Cobbold demanded that ‘arse’ be removed from Pinter’s The Caretaker, even though he had permitted it in My Fair Lady, the stage musical based on Pygmalion, ‘because [in My Fair Lady] there was a lot of noise at the time’ (Findlater 1968: 197). John Osborne’s The Entertainer was only given a licence by the Earl of Scarbrough after the excision of ‘rogered’, ‘screwed’, ‘shagged’, ‘turds’, ‘balls’, ‘had “in a sexual sense” ’, ‘ass-upwards’, ‘poof’, ‘camp’ and the phrase ‘the vicar’s got the clappers’ (Findlater 1968: 214). Give or take a diseased cleric, this is precisely the language of Aristophanes. His characters are variously but regularly afflicted by misogynistic and homophobic tendencies; bowel disorders of assorted kinds; and instant and immediately obvious lust (male characters and choruses wore phalluses whose versatility appears to have been a triumph of the costumier’s ingenuity). Eighteenthand nineteenth-century translations of his plays, such as they are, tend, therefore, to be shorter than the original, as well as blander. The extent of the problem of Aristophanes for the stage censor was fully explored in Jeffrey Henderson’s The Maculate Muse: obscene language in Attic comedy (1975), a definitive study which is every bit as comprehensive as its title would suggest, with chapters which cover not only the varieties of obscene expression but the function of obscenity within the plays.13 Peter Jones, in a feat of cultivated imagination, located English equivalents for no fewer than thirty-nine words for the penis, amongst them, ‘eel’, ‘chickpea’, ‘sparrow’ and ‘soup-ladle’; and even more for the vagina and adjacent parts, including ‘rose’, ‘meadow’, ‘thicket’ and ‘sea-urchin’. ‘Beat that’ he says, with ‘justifiable pride’ (Jones 1998: 74–5). The point about Professor Jones’ list is that every single one of his ‘translations’ is a metaphor, some celebratory, some elevated, some plain earthy, a tendency which Henderson had already explored. Only the context provides the sexual dimension. On some occasions Aristophanes is more direct. The word peos means penis. The directness may prove an intriguing exercise for the translator, but, as Peter Green suggested, is unusual in Greek literature except in the poetry of Archilochus of Paros and Hipponax of Ephesus from the seventh and sixth centuries bce; and Aristophanes of Athens from the fifth. In the new Loeb edition of Acharnians the translator (Henderson again) explains an otherwise obscure joke where Aristophanes does use the word peos. Dicaeopolis, the Athenian farmer who decides to make a private peace with Sparta, is confronted at the Assembly by a number of foreigners introduced by ambassador Theorus, including what Theorus introduces as ‘the Odymantian army’. Dicaeopolis responds: poiôn Odomantôn? eipe moi, touti ti ên? tis tôn Odomantôn to peos apotethriaken? (Acharnians: 157–8)

Greek drama and the censor  83 meaning, in an absolutely literal translation ‘What sort of Odymantians? Tell me, what is this? Who has stripped of its figleaves the penis [peos] of the Odymantians?’ Henderson’s racy translation runs as follows with, for once, a very necessary stage direction: DICAEOPOLIS: What the hell is this? THEORUS: A troop of Odymantians. DICAEOPOLIS: Odymantians, indeed! Pray

tell me the meaning of this! (he exposes their stage phalloi) Who’s pruned the Odymantians’ cocks? (Henderson 2000)

In a footnote Henderson explains that the Odymantians, like the Greeks, did not practice circumcision. So Dicaeopolis uncovers circumcized phalloi, and thus exposes the Odymantians as impostors. Early translators might have been expected to shy off this reference as they did to so many others. Not a bit of it. Frere (1839) had no qualms over translating the line, ‘ . . . and what has brought them here so strangely equipp’d, disguis’d and circumcised?’ while Rogers (in 1902) may keep the reader a little mystified but offers the actor the nice line (and potential for stage business), ‘Are Odymantians all equipped like this?’ In print, then, there was no objection, apparently, a hundred and more years ago to jokes about the circumcized penis as long as nobody suggested what you might want to do with it, circumcized or not. But this is a sight gag, more than a verbal one and neither translation from Acharnians would have passed the censors of stage plays who saw to it that Lysistrata was banned entirely between the two World Wars. The Dudley Fitts version, however, was treated with leniency by the Earl of Scarbrough in 1957. What makes Lysistrata a special case in the present context is not so much that it is about sex as that people think it is about sex. The women of Athens decide to withhold sex from their husbands until peace is declared: as simple as that, and the fact that the men of fifth-century Athens on other evidence never relied over much on the compliance of their wives for gratification is neither here nor there. The consequent deprivation experienced by the women, never mind the men, has to be measured – and how difficult it is to write anything critically about this play without the language of double entendre – against the fact that it was written for a cast of men. Lysistrata is a drag play. Apart from one scene and a few references to the visible signs of arousal it is not really much more sexy than most plays by Feydeau, translations of few if any of which, so far as I know, were much of a target for the blue pencil. As in the best farces, give or take Joe Orton, and certainly as in Feydeau, Lysistrata is more about men not having sex than having it, as are similar scenes in Aristophanes’ late play Women in Power. But Lysistrata is the one with the reputation and, as a result, has been treated in England as the first play of Aristophanes with any commercial potential, probably the only one. All the comedies of Aristophanes

84  Processes and issues involve what might still be described as dirty jokes, but to the Athenians were simply jokes. The 1957 production for the English Stage Company by Greek director Minos Volonakis opened in Oxford before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre (where many ancient Greek plays had their first English performances), and subsequently to the Duke of York’s in the West End where it enjoyed a succès de scandale. Frances Stephens, reviewing it for Theatre World, was curiously ambivalent about the production: ‘savagely pornographic’, as she put it. ‘But who are we to quibble that some of these ancient Greeks had the mentality of aborigines (or do we do the latter a disservice?)’ (Stephens 1958: 8). Peter Roberts in Plays and Players addressed the whole question of censorship, in or out of translation: When is a dirty joke not a dirty joke? When it provokes an honest-togoodness belly laugh and none of your sniggering titters maybe. Certainly this is a distinction the Lord Chamberlain might bear in mind when he has his red (sic) pencil poised over some nice new play that is not bent on being merely ‘nice’. After all, was public morale so seriously undermined when Horner, the soi-disant castrato went through his ‘china’ scene in The Country Wife at the Royal Court Theatre a few months ago? And is it now when an audience has an honest laugh in the same theatre at the spectacle provided by Aristophanes of Athenian warriors so reduced [an interesting choice of word] by sexual frustration as to be no longer capable of walking without embarrassment? (Roberts 1958: 16) Evidently one can be as bawdy as one wants so long as one wrote before the Victorians taught that, if hypocrisy was not next to godliness, it at least came long before honesty. Tragedy was much more circumspect in the language it used. As Peter Green put it: Tragedy, even the work of an ‘advanced’ playwright like Euripides, remained circumspect almost to prudishness in its language and subjectmatter, though euphemistic metaphor (then as always) was a great standby: . . . a serious Greek poet was not allowed to call a cunt a cunt, but he could, and did, talk about ‘the split meadow of Aphrodite’. (Green 1989: 139) Green was of the opinion that there was a general censorship within the Greek theatre, according to genre and that may well have been true because of sexual content (see on Hippolytus Walton 2006), if less so for violence of which there are frequent examples within the surviving tragedies and comedies. But in Athens it may have been inappropriate to identify physical functions in tragedy, but not from any sense of prudery about what

Greek drama and the censor  85 an audience might be allowed to witness. It is quite possible that on the same day, at the Great Dionysia in fifth-century bce Athens, an audience could have witnessed three tragedies of high emotion, including passions both murderous and adulterous, but with nothing seen which lowered the ‘decorum’ of tragedy. After these three there might have been a satyr play by the same author, with the same cast of actors (all male), followed by a comedy from a different author, in both of which the costumes displayed the sexual attributes of either sex. In these the characters could be sexually harassed and assaulted while the playwrights relied for many of their laughs on farting and shitting. It was the eighteenth, nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries that oversaw the genteelization of the stage which, for better or worse, made the repertoire of much classical comedy unacceptable. How typical it is that early translation from the classics should translate the rude bits into Latin, a sure sign to generations of public schoolboys that here was a bit to repay some real study of the original. In performance, comedy depends more on the playing than on the language. Eels, soup ladles and thickets are only as rude as the occasion and the way in which the lines are played always make the stage a more dangerous place than the page for instant subversion. Certain words or topics acquire a sensitivity in certain periods. Agatha Christie’s classic 1939 ‘whodunnit’, Ten Little Niggers, was issued under the same title in Britain in René Clair’s 1945 film. In America they changed the name to And Then There Were None. A 1974 remake was issued in Britain as And Then There Were None, but for US distribution became Ten Little Indians. Currently there is a taboo on certain references to gender, race, creed, physical or mental handicap and child abuse. Most are subjects for comedy somewhere in Greek drama. The aftermath of 9/11 or the tsunami disaster imposes severe limitations on international taste, but not for ever. Censorship tends to be balanced against the immediate mood of the times. The remark of Frances Stephens about ‘aborigines’ might well cause more offence today than any of Aristophanes’ sex references. At a domestic level a personal trauma may serve to raise a private barrier to what is one of the stock comic situations. There is a balance of sensitivity which ensures that, one way or another, every period has its own ‘decorum’ and its own boundaries. My question at this point is how far translators, those most of all who deal with other eras and other cultures, should or need to take note of such sensitivities when they set about bringing the past into the present. Aristophanes was one of the great iconoclasts; so let another, Robert Burns (1785), offer one answer, in a sentiment to which the first great comedian might well have subscribed: Life is all a variorum We regard not how it goes. Let them cant about decorum Who have character to lose.

86  Processes and issues

Notes 1 New Theatre Magazine was published by the Department of Drama at the University of Bristol. This letter was in vol. V.1, p. 3., undated, but probably issued in January, 1964. 2 The history of stage censorship has been well charted, notably by Richard Findlater in Banned (1968); John Johnston in The Lord Chamberlain’s Blue Pencil (1990) – Johnston had worked in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office from 1964; Nicholas de Jongh, Politics, Prudery and Perversion – The Censoring of the English Stage 1901–1968 (2000); Dominic Shellard, Steve Nicholson with Miriam Handley, The Lord Chamberlain Regrets – A History of British Theatre Censorship (2004). 3 Most Shakespeare was barely recognizable by this time and, despite the efforts of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century actor-managers Garrick, Macready and others, remained so till Henry Irving. 4 It is an unexpected aspect of age for a theatre historian to find oneself as a part of theatre history, however marginally. The production was performed, as required, initially in Zagreb where, of course, the censor had no jurisdiction, before its English première in Bristol. Playing both King Wenceslas and the Tsar of Russia in the production, I had to subscribe, or listen, to the required changes. I would defy any audience member anywhere to be able to identify whether an actor is saying ‘shickle’ or ‘shittle’ for Jarry’s neologism ‘merdre’. 5 Edward Bond’s Saved was refused a licence in 1965 unless two scenes, one of a baby being stoned to death in its pram, the other in which a young man darned the stocking of a middle-aged woman while she was still wearing it, were removed. The play was presented as a ‘club’ performance but the Royal Court Theatre management was arraigned and found guilty of performing an unlicenced play. They were given a conditional discharge on payment of token costs. The same author’s Early Morning, a fantasy which included cannibalism and a lesbian affair between Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale, became the last play to be banned in its entirety. One of the characters in that play is the Lord Chamberlain, see Findlater 1968; Johnston 1990; de Jongh 2000; Shellard and Nicholson 2004. 6 ‘Vorpal blade’ is a reference to a poem of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), who died in 1898. The Loeb translations of a huge range of Greek and Latin texts have been published over a period of more than a hundred years by Harvard University Press and William Heinemann. They have the source text on the lefthand page, with the English on the right. Most are literal but these particular volumes of Euripides (1912) suffered by being forced into a scheme of rhyming couplets. The replacements by David Kovacs (1994) opted for prose. 7 Two Satyr Plays was published as a single edition, in 1957, linking the complete Cyclops with the fragments of Sophocles’ Ichneutai. These latter end at line 439 but were ingeniously turned by Tony Harrison into a complete play about the discovery of the manuscript entitled The Trackers of Oxyrhinchus, which recreates much of the spirit of the original, complete with satyrs both over-endowed and erect. 8 See also Walton (2006, Ch. 8) for a detailed discussion of the Ganymede scene. 9 My translation. See Henderson (1975), 84 and 215–9 for examples of pederastic inclinations here and elsewhere in Aristophanes. 10 Twenty-five years later A. C. Wheelwright, in the first translation of all the Aristophanes plays, followed the first translator’s lead over this passage. 11 This edition included Mitchell’s Wasps and Cumberland’s Clouds (each incorrectly ascribed to the other) as well as Frere’s Frogs and a repeat of his 1820 Introduction from which this quotation is taken.

Greek drama and the censor  87 12 As Arnott also sanitized a slightly unpleasant reference to sniffing at his wife’s dress, such decisions may well have been dictated by the publisher for a pocketbook edition. 13 This thorough piece of academic scholarship could hardly be found titillating by the most desperate of readers but was, nevertheless, held on the ‘restricted list’ for many years in at least one university library.

6 Vacuum or agenda The translator’s dilemma Classical and Modern Literature (2007)

Michael Meyer (see the Introduction to Part 2, 67) recalled in his memoirs being in the pub after the first night of the celebrated production of Ibsen’s Brand in London in 1959. A girl came around with an autograph book, gave it to lead actor Patrick McGoohan, to director Michael Elliott, and then to designer Richard Negri, before handing it to Meyer, who said, mockmodestly, ‘I’m only the translator’. Whereupon the girl replied, ‘Oh, sorry, I thought you were an actor’, and took her book back (Meyer 1990: 166). Recent years have seen the status of the classical translator come under closer, and, perhaps, more welcome scrutiny as more and more people begin to find an interest in the ancient world, even as fewer and fewer are learning the original languages. Such readers and audiences have to rely on the translator to give them some impression of what the Greeks and Romans actually wrote. But the translator’s art and priorities are themselves far from cut and dried, and from a host of important issues relating to translation for the stage, several stand out as exclusive to a play in Greek or Latin. The question of the translator’s immediate target – reader or audience? – sets up different and sometimes conflicting imperatives, depending on whether the purpose is to create a generally stage-aware rendition of the original, or a piece for a specific and dedicated production. Even these suggest not two different ways of translating but three, the third being a translation fashioned both for the known circumstances of the production and for a particular actor in a particular role, as will be outlined in Chapter 7. All of which may, of course, reflect a number of issues that exercised the original playwrights in fifth- and fourth-century bce Athens, no less than it does those who try to create versions more than two millennia later, in languages whose whole structure and vocabulary are far different from ancient Greek. Questions relating to the allocation of individual actors in Athenian drama of the fifth century bce have never been fully answered and we have no way of discovering to what extent, if at all, a playwright may have created a role with a certain individual in mind. At the other end of the great period of the drama, one of the reasons that Lycurgus (ca. 390–324 bce) commissioned standard texts of Aeschylus,

Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma  89 Sophocles and Euripides was the predilection of certain star actors of his time to nudge, adjust or simply mangle the works of the previous century in order to show themselves to what they felt was their best advantage. In between, the system of prizes and the allocation of leading actors by lot suggests a restriction on the playwright, but it may be that arrangements were more flexible.1 In later times authors who did know the actors for whom they were writing, from Shakespeare on, were at something of an advantage and could certainly work more quickly. Maybe the same is true for translators. There are some general points to restate about translating plays before looking at particular examples. Translation of works for the theatre is not merely a matter of linguistic transfer. In most ancient literary texts the gulf of language may be bridged by reproduction of the original’s imagery, by adopting the length and configuration of the poetic line and even by adhering to the verse structure of the original. In a play there is something more important at work: the manner in which the playwright has adjusted material theatrically to a stage language of visual image and mask to match any poetic image; the performative values within the framing of the line and dialogue; the temporal and spatial concerns in setting up a dramatic scene; and, above all, the challenge of subtext.2 There is a whole raft of concerns here, from the nature of ‘faithfulness’ to the original author, to the translator’s responsibility to contemporary players and a contemporary audience. Where does the translator of the stage play begin? It is worth recalling Peter Green’s stricture that ‘Translation is not, at any level, an ideal art; it is a crutch for human infirmity’ (Green 1960: 185). Green’s remark may be a little demeaning, but it does point to the identity crisis amongst translators, torn between a fascination for the work of the Greeks – their stories, characters and situations – and a personal voice, dictated, perhaps, by what the translators want to say and, too often, by what they wish that the original author had said, but that he never did. How important it is to remind ourselves as classicists of another remark of Michael Meyer’s, that the translator ‘should keep himself out of it, to resist leaving his thumbprint’ (1990: 172). The issue is one of interpretation: translators can find themselves in a position to decide what a play is about and to translate up to that idea. The following scenarios relating to my own translations of Euripides are proposed as means of considering the issues further, initially publicationspecific, then concept-specific, or ‘translocation’: Chapter 7 looks at Medea from both perspectives as well as for a particular actress. The play chosen for the publication-specific scenario, or ‘translating in a vacuum’ (i.e. translating with the text, but with no production in mind), is Rhesus. Alcestis was concept-specific: a translation for a particular production in which the action would be moved from its own time to Victorian England in the 1870s.

90  Processes and issues

A Rhesus about professionals The Rhesus is a play with an unusual production challenge. It is set during the hours of darkness – the final scene heralding the dawn – and is rarely performed. Production possibilities are still significant and even a literary translation cannot avoid addressing them. The play’s structure is immediately theatrical. The action takes place in the defenders’ camp outside the city of Troy during the course of a single night late in the Trojan War. The Chorus are given an identity as military guards, which requires them to perform military duties. The plot revolves around disguises, treachery, spying and passwords. In addition, we have the bizarre appearance of the goddess Athena, pretending to be Aphrodite in order to fool Paris, and Greek heroes Odysseus and Diomedes, pretending to be Trojans in order to get away with an assassination. Nothing and nobody is quite what they seem, one feature which argues in favour of the play being by Euripides rather than some otherwise anonymous playwright.3 In translating the play, the implications of these thematic issues are central. Verbal images are predominantly of light and dark, appearances and deceptions, rashness and cunning, but much comes down to a context that is both military and militaristic. This is a professional world. Thus in my version metôpois hippikoisi (307), literally ‘on the fronts of the horses’ is translated as ‘chamfrons on the horses.’ ‘Chamfron’ is certainly not a common English usage. It is a fourteenth-century technical term for the front part of the armour of a warhorse. This is more explicit than the Greek, but the Messenger who uses it is a man whose language shows he knows about horses and might well be expected to use a technical term. Today’s readers or audience members who know nothing of horses can still be expected to pick the word up as being a technicality, even without recognizing its precise meaning. Elsewhere, the parlance of the characters is more familiar as part of soldiers’ jargon: ‘bivouac’ for nuchian . . . koitên (21–22) and for koitas (576); ‘pallet’ for en eunais (581); ‘garrison’ for hoi sôizontes (329); and for skolopas (116) ‘palisades’. The decision not to include longer extracts in Greek, or transliterated as when this piece was first published, has been dictated by the number of possible readers such usage excludes. Instead, the following three passages are taken from Arthur S. Way’s Loeb edition of 1912, and still being republished as late as 1966. Way’s translations are somewhat archaic, though close to Euripides’ Greek apart from an occasional tendency, championed by Gilbert Murray, to impose rhyme onto lyrical passages. Each Way translation is followed by my own, as published in 1997 for Methuen Classical Greek Dramatists. This is not an exercise in one-upmanship. Readers may well prefer Arthur Way. But translations tend to date and these comparisons are examples of how a literal translation may be overtaken by one intended to reflect the abrupt and aggressive attitudes of the main characters who are soldiers.

Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma  91

Aeneas to Hector (105–30) AENEAS:



AENEAS:



Would that thy prudence matched thy might of hand! So is it: one man cannot be all-wise, But diverse gifts to diverse men belong – Prowess to thee, to others prudent counsel. Thou hear’st of these fire-beacons, leap’st to think The Achaeans flee, dost pant to lead thine host Over the trenches in the hush of night. Yet if, the foss’s yawning chasm cross’d, Thou find the foeman not in act to flee The land, but set to face the spear, beware Lest vanquished, thou return not unto Troy. How shall we pass in rout their palisades? How shall thy charioteers the causeway cross And shatter not the axles of the cars? Though victor, thou must still meet Peleus’ son, Who will not suffer thee to fire the ships, Nor take the Achaeans [Greeks] captive as thou hopest – That man of fire, in valour a very tower. Nay, leave we sleeping under shield in peace Our host, at rest from travail from the strife. I counsel, send to spy upon the foe Whoso will go, and, if they purpose flight, Forth let is charge, and fall on Argos’ host. But if these beacons lure us to a snare, We from the spy our foes’ devices learn, And so confer: this is my mind, O King. (Way 1912) I would you had brains to match your brawn. One man can’t have everything, I suppose. We all have different talents. Yours is fighting. Leave the thinking to others, eh? You heard some story of beacons. Instantly the Greeks are in retreat. There’s you, tongue hanging out to chase them Through the trenches, and all at dead of night. What if you found your way through – And they’re deep, those trenches – And the enemy weren’t retreating at all But waiting for you, you and your spear? You mightn’t come out of that one a hero. Their palisades are spiked. How’s an army to get back? How do you get your chariots across the parapets

92  Processes and issues

Without smashing their axles? Even if you win, there’s still the son of Peleus. I can’t see Achilles letting you fire the ships, Nor taking Greeks prisoner, as you fancy. He’s a beacon himself, that man, a tower of strength. No. Leave the army be, sleeping on their shields. They deserve to nurse their wounds a little. I suggest we send a scout, a volunteer. If they really are in retreat, we’ll attack. We’ll hound that Argive army right enough. If these fires are a trick, The scout can tell us all. Then we can adjust our plans. That’s how I see it anyway, my lord. (Walton 1997)

The first confrontation between Hector and Rhesus (388–403, 420–453) RHESUS:

Brave son of brave sir, prince of this land, hail, Hector! I greet thee after many days. I joy in thy good speed, who see thee camped Nigh the foe’s towers. I came to help thee raze Their ramparts, and to fire their galleys’ hulls. HECTOR: Son of the Songful Mother of the Muse, And Thracian Strymon’s flood, I love to speak The truth: no man am I of double tongue. Long, long since thou shouldest have come to aid This land, nor suffered for all help of thine, That Troy should stoop ’neath the spears of Argive foes. Thou canst not say thou cam’st not to thy friends, Nor visitedst for their help, for lack of bidding. What Phrygian herald, or what ambassage, Came not with instant prayer for help to Troy? What splendour of gifts did we not send to thee? . . . Thus, that thou may’st know Hector’s plain blunt mood, I blame thee and I speak it to thy face. RHESUS: Even such am I: no devious track of words I follow: no man I of double-tongue. I for my absence from this land was vexed, Chafing with grief of heart, far more than thou. But Scythia’s folk, whose frontiers march with mine, Even as I set forward, Troyward bound, Fell on me, even as I reached the shores Of Euxine, with my Thracian host to cross . . . There upon Scythia’s soil great blood-gouts dripped From spears of Thracian slaughter bent with Scythian.

Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma  93

Such was the chance that barred my journeying To Troyland’s plains to be thy battle-aid. I smote them, took their sons for hostages, Set them a yearly tribute to my house, Straight sailed across the sea-gorge, and am here. I passed afoot the borders of thy land, Not as though proudly tauntest, with deep draughts Of wine, nor lying soft in golden halls: But what the icy storm-blasts are that sweep Paeonian steppes and Thracian sea, I learnt By sleepless suffering, wrapped but in this cloak. Late is my coming, timely none the less; For ten full years hast thou been warring now, Yet hast achieved nought, dost from day to day Against the Argives cast the dice of war. For me one sun’s dawning shall suffice To storm their towers, to fall upon their fleet, And slay the Achaeans. So, thy toils cut short, From Ilium on the morrow home I pass, Of you let no man lift in hand a shield: I ruining with my spear will still the vaunts Of yon Achaeans, howso late I come. (Way 1912)

RHESUS:

Hector, lord of your country, noble son of noble sire, I salute you. A little late, but greetings. Congratulations. You’ve prospered, made such inroads On enemy strongholds. Here I am, reinforcement, To raze their ramparts, burn their ships to ash. HECTOR: Son of Terpsichore, dancing Muse, And Thrace’s river Strymon, I speak straight. I’m no diplomat. Late. You’re late. You should have been here To help this land, to save Troy From falling under the Argive spear. You can’t say we never asked. Your friends Begged you for support. You took no notice. Was there any Trojan herald, any ambassador We didn’t send to plead for assistance? Did we fail to send some gift? . . . There, now you know Hector’s mind. I’ve nothing to hide. I accuse you, to your face. RHESUS: I’m a man like yourself. I don’t mince words. Like you, I was not born a politician. My absence from this land grieved me, Gnawed at my heart more than it did at yours,

94  Processes and issues

But as I set out, heading for Troy, those Scythians, Close neighbours, mounted an attack. I had reached the Black Sea shore, The Thracian army was ready to embark. Now blood lies thick on Scythia’s soil, From Scythian spears, ours too. That’s what happened. That is what prevented me From joining you in Troy as your ally. I hammered them, took their sons hostage, Set an annual tribute for our family. Now I’ve crossed the sea, Skirted your borders on foot and here I am. I’ve not been lolling about drinking, as you claim, Living in gilded luxury, But facing a howling Black Sea gale, As it sweeps, ice-bound, across Paionia, Sleepless with no more than this cloak for warmth. Late I may be. Apparently not too late. Ten years you’ve been at war, Achieving nothing, day in, day out, Dicing with death in your fight against the Greeks. A single sunlit morning’s all I’ll need To storm their towers, catch the fleet at anchor, And kill off the Greeks. Troy saved in a day. Then I can go home after sorting out your problem. And none of you need lift a finger. I’ll crush these vaunting Greeks beneath my spear, However late I’ve come. (Walton 1997)

The same, though to a lesser extent, applies to the tone of the Chorus, grumbling because they have not yet been relieved from guard duty, then suddenly stopped in their tracks by the call of a nightingale – a masterstroke of dramatic mood.

The Chorus on guard duty (528–564) CHORUS:

Ho, warders, to whom is the next watch given? Whose warding followeth mine? For the stars that were high in the evening sky are setting: uprisen   ye see The Pleiades seven: in the midst of heaven the Eagle’s broad wings  shine. Ho, comrades, awake from your slumber! Why do ye linger?   Hither to me! Ho, ye. Ho, ye, from your couches leap, for the sentinel-tramp  appear!

Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma  95 Do ye see not afar where the silver car of the moon o’er the   sea hangs low? The dayspring cometh – break off your sleep, for the dawning   is near, is near. Lo there in the east where gleameth a star – ’tis her harbinger:   rouse ye, ho! SEMI-CHORUS 1: For whom was the night’s first watch proclaimed? SEMI-CHORUS 2: For the scion of Mygdon, Coroebus named. SEMI-CHORUS 1: Who then? SEMI-CHORUS 2:    The Paeonians roused the folk Of Cilicia: us the Mysians woke. SEMI-CHORUS 1: High time is it then that we hasted to call The Lycians; to them did the fifth watch fall, When the lot to our stations assigned us all. CHORUS: I hear, I hear – ’tis the nightingale! The mother that slew   her child – As broodeth her wing o’er the fearful thing, the eternal   murder-stain – By Simoïs chanting her heart-stricken wail; the voice of her   woe rings wild, As passions, a lute of many a string, – winged poet of hopeless  pain! Hark! flocks to the pasture are going: they bleat as they   stray down Ida’s brow; And I hear it float through the dark, the note of the pipe’s   ethereal cry; And drowsihead with her witchery sweet is lulling mine   eyelids now; For to weary eyes she cometh, I wot, most dear when the   dawn is nigh. SEMI-CHORUS 1: Why draweth not near to us that scout Whom Hector to spy on the fleet sent out. SEMI-CHORUS 2: Long stays he: there haunts me a fearful doubt. SEMI-CHORUS 1: Is he slain, think ye, in an ambuscade? Manifest soon shall his fate be made. SEMI-CHORUS 2: I rede ye then that we haste to call The Lycians; to them did the fifth watch fall, When the lot to our stations assigned to us all.

Exeunt (Way 1912)

CHORUS:



Whose watch is next? Who’s my relief? The evening stars are down, The seven Pleiades rising.

96  Processes and issues

The Eagle at its height. Come on. What’s keeping you? Wake up. Sentry-time. Can’t you see the moonlight waning? It’s dawn, almost dawn. Look east, the dawn-star.



Whose watch is next, did you say? The one they call Coroibos, son of Mugdon. Then who? The Paionians woke the Cilicians, The Mysians woke us. Then fifth watch is the Lycians. That’s what they drew. They need waking, don’t they?



Listen. Do you hear that? Over Simois, a nightingale, Singing her murderous lament, The child-killer. Such a lovely song. There go the flocks, Off to graze on Mount Ida. Listen, shepherd pipes. I can’t keep my eyes open. Nearly dawn. Sleep. Wonderful.



Where’s that spy got to, The one Hector sent to the ships? I don’t like to think. He’s been a while. Ambushed, do you think, and killed? We’ll find out soon enough. I vote we wake the Lycians. They’re fifth watch. We’ve all done our stint.



Exeunt (Walton 1997)

The last scene revolves around a more formal but genuinely moving kommos from the grieving Muse, Terpsichore.

The Muse laments for her son (890–914) MUSE:



Trojans, fear not to look: the Muse am I, One of the Song-queens, honoured of the wise. My dear son, I behold in piteous sort

Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma  97

Slain by his foes. One day shall he who slew, Guileful Odysseus, pay fit penalty.

In moans that of no strange lips I borrow,   O son, my sorrow,   I wail for thee. What woefullest journey was thine, thy faring   Of ill-starred daring   To Troy oversea, Despite my warning, thy father’s pleading   Dear head! – O bleeding   Heart of me! CHORUS: So far as one may take on him who hath No tie of kinship, I too will wail thy son. MUSE: Curse ye, Odysseus and Oineus’ scion,   Through whom I cry on   My noble dead! Curse her, who voyaged from Hellas over   To a Phrygian lover,   A wanton’s bed, Who for Troy’s sake hath widowed homes without number   And bowed thee in slumber   Of death, dear head! (Way 1912) MUSE:



You may look, Trojans. I am the Muse, One of the Sisters, honoured by the wise. This is my son, pitifully murdered By the enemies. One day will his killer, Deceitful Odysseus, pay for this.

Instinctive Is my mourning song. I grieve for you, Dear child, a mother’s pain. Ill-fated road to Troy. I warned you not to go. Your father pleaded. Dear boy, my son, My dearest son. CHORUS: He’s not family, not related, But we mourn too. I pity your son. I pity you. MUSE: Damned be Odysseus, Damned Diomedes, Who left me childless.

98  Processes and issues

He was the finest of sons. And damned that woman, deserter From her Greek home for a Trojan bed, Widow-maker by arrangement To Troy, my dearest boy, And a thousand cities more. You wrung my heart in life, Thamyris, In death you break it. (Walton 1997)

In every case the aim was to recover the mood of the piece and its wartime context. The dominant features of the characters dictate the way they speak, perhaps more so than in the original, but still sufficiently clearly to make the dramatic action central, as well as to give the actors something they can get their teeth into.

A Victorian Alcestis Alcestis is my example of translocation. It was translated with a specific brief and for a production in 1995 that was taking shape while I was working on the English version. The play is an oddity that has often made traditional critics uncomfortable, partly because of its shifting tone, but more because of its recorded first production as the fourth, ‘satyr’ play in a group that also included the experimental Telephus. This mistrust extends to the bizarre adaptation by Ted Hughes, hardly a translation in even the loosest sense, with his incorporation of a number of additional characters in an attempt to accommodate the play’s purported satyr elements. The variety of stylistic registers in Euripides’ text poses a challenge to any translator. Death, uniquely in extant classical drama, is personified and appears in the prologue, debating with Apollo. Alcestis’ volunteering to die on behalf of her husband, is portrayed as a last resort when everyone else he has asked has turned him down. Her dying remarks to her husband are directed less to Admetus as her husband, than to Admetus as a widower, thereby ensuring that he will never remarry and thus threaten their children with a stepmother: indeed she refuses to entrust them to him until he has taken such an oath. She then dies on stage. The motives and attitudes of her husband, Admetus, are subjected to rigorous attention by the servants, the Chorus, his father Pheres and eventually by himself, when Admetus conceals from him that it is Alcestis who has died. There is also Heracles’ drunk scene and his sobering up when he learns the truth about the bereavement. Finally, after Heracles has wrestled with Death (off-stage) for Alcestis, and brought her back to life, there is the testing of Admetus’ resolve, before he and Alcestis are reunited. The similarities of the play to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale are close enough for it to be plausibly argued that Shakespeare did know the Alcestis,

Figure 6.1  Pheres and Admetus over the coffin of Alcestis, Hull 1995 Reproduced courtesy of the University of Hull Photographic Department.

Figure 6.2  The veiled Alcestis with Heracles and Admetus, Hull 1995 Reproduced courtesy of the University of Hull Photographic Department.

100  Processes and issues perhaps in a Latin translation encountered in the library of the Earl of Southampton. Themes of repentance and redemption, selfishness and selflessness, restoration and renewal occur in different guises in each play, but are at root the same. Much of the perplexity in the critical literature on Alcestis stems from a perceived ambiguity over whether Euripides was portraying Admetus as an honest man who is rewarded for his goodness, or a selfish one who learns and grows as a result of the death of his wife. The production brief on the occasion of my Alcestis translation invoked a context where both the act of sacrifice (if not its immediate cause) and the concern for family and for good name were socially feasible. The production was to be set firmly in England in the 1870s and to be played as sentimental melodrama of the kind that was immensely popular on the English-speaking nineteenth-century stage, often in adaptations from equally popular novels: serious, yes, but part heroic, part comic, part domestic. In such circumstances the turn of phrase of an Admetus or a Pheres, of a Heracles, or the Servant who reveals the truth about who has died in the house, become issues of period and class as well as of status. Such was the brief as translator and director. In line with this translocation, the characters underwent their several transformations. The prologue set up Death as a spectral but seductive figure who would later dance Alcestis into the next world. Admetus, Alcestis and the children appeared on occasion in tableau as a sepia family group, posing for a family portrait. The kingship of Admetus was absorbed into the respectable authority of a Victorian paterfamilias. The Chorus became female, family friends unsure whether yet to be wearing mourning, while Pheres appeared in a full frock coat with a top hat. Heracles was a slightly world-weary soldier-of-fortune whose change from drunken philosopher to heroic saviour held greater resonance in its melodramatic context. Here is how Arthur Way’s Heracles sobered up (837–60): HERACLES:



O much enduring heart and hand of mine, Now show what son the Lady of Tiryns bare, Electryon’s child Alcmena, unto Zeus. For I must save the woman newly dead, And set Alcestis in this house again, And render to Admetus good for good. I go. The sable-vestured King of Corpses, Death will I watch for, and shall find, I trow, Drinking the death-draught hard beside the tomb. And if I lie in wait, and dart from ambush, And seize, and with mine arms’ coil compass him, None is there shall deliver from mine hands His straining sides, ere he yield up his prey. Yea, though I miss the quarry, and he come not Unto the blood-clot, to the sunless homes

Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma  101

Down will I fare of Cora and her King, And make demand. I doubt not, I shall lead Alcestis up, and give to mine host’s hands, Who to his halls received, nor drave me thence, Albeit smitten with affliction sore, But hid it, like a prince, respecting me, Who is more guest-fain of Thessalians? Who in all Hellas? O, he shall not say That one so princely showed a base man’s kindness. (Way 1912)

The speech of the Victorian Heracles became more terse, but more consciously heroic and underscored (Schumann, Fantasie in C): HERACLES:



Come now, brave heart and hand, Show what Alcmene’s son, Her son by Zeus, can do. For I must save her, save The dead Alcestis, Return her to her home And redeem Admetus. I go to watch for Death, Black-cloaked keeper of corpses, Who haunts tombs, lapping up the oblations. There may I lie in ambush, jump out And grab at Death, pin Death in my arms. Once I hold Death, crushing rib to rib, Nothing will break my hold until I win her back. If I miss my prey there, If blood proves poor bait, Then I’ll go down to the sunless underworld, And demand her back from Hades and his wife. I’ll bring Alcestis back. I know I can. Return her to my friend who welcomed me And, at a time of raw adversity, Declined to turn me from his door. He concealed his feelings, good man that he is, From respect for me. Where in Thessaly Will you find that sort of courtesy? In what Greek home? He deserves his reward. He will not find such virtue misdirected. (Walton 1997)

The question is not which is the ‘better’ translation – always a dubious exercise – but whether both are reasonable representations of the original:

102  Processes and issues the first for the reading public of the first half of the twentieth century; the second for this Victorian production, was subsequently published as a pure translation (1997) when the immediate imperative was sidelined. The setting for the production was a neoclassical ballroom with a grand piano, cello and violin pre-set, and, in due course, a huge, ornate coffin over which Admetus and his father confronted each other. The stage design overall emphasized that this was not a classical play – it was a Victorian play in Victorian language. As befits Victorian melodrama, certain speeches such as the one just quoted, Alcestis’ actual death, and the entire restoration, as well as the choruses, were played precisely to a musical score, mainly Schumann, with some Arensky and Bortkewitz for the final scene. The scoring was extended into an ambiguous ending, where Alcestis was faced with the three possibilities of a return to her family; a return to Death, back again on stage; or departure with Heracles, who had saved her from Death. Alcestis froze on the question of which way she would turn, while the rest of the cast waltzed to a festive conclusion. The whole of the original text was included, with only small variations. The most significant of these relates to pre-echoes of Shakespeare discerned in the play’s theme and language, heightened here by proactive references. Hermione, thought by Leontes, King of Sicilia, to have died sixteen years earlier, has been kept concealed by Paulina, who in the last act presents him with a statue of her likeness so real that ‘the very life seems warm upon her lip’. Smuggled into the dialogue of Alcestis, albeit briefly, were actual quotations from The Winter’s Tale. The first of these is from the penultimate scene of the Shakespeare where the Third Gentleman tells the First and Second Gentlemen about the statue which Paulina has kept hidden, ‘by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom’ (V.2. 95–8). My Admetus tells the dying Alcestis: ‘With you gone all my joy in life is dead./I’ll have a statue made by some rare master,/Beguiling Nature of her custom’ (347–9). Euripides, as it happens, goes rather further than Shakespeare will by having Admetus tell Alcestis he intends to keep her statue in his bed as ‘cold comfort’. Translation and production overlap more closely in the scene where a veiled Alcestis is restored to her husband by Heracles; in The Winter’s Tale the statue of Hermione turns out not to be a statue at all and she is reunited with Leontes. Way’s translation of Alcestis runs, omitting the stage directions: HERACLES: ADMETUS: HERACLES: ADMETUS: HERACLES: ADMETUS:

Unto thy right hand only I trust her. King, thou dost force me, sore against my will! Be strong: stretch forth thine hand and touch thy guest. I do, as one who doth behead a Gorgon. Hast her? I have.

Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma  103 HERACLES:

ADMETUS:

HERACLES: ADMETUS: HERACLES:

Yea, guard her. Thou shalt call The child of Zeus one day a noble guest. Look on her, if in aught she seems to thee Like to thy wife. Step forth from grief to bliss. What shall I say? – Gods! Marvel this unhoped for! My wife do I behold in very sooth, Or doth some god-sent mockery-joy distract me? No so; but this thou seëst is thy wife. What if this be some phantom from the shades? No ghost-upraiser has thou ta’en for a guest. (Way 1115–28)

My ‘translation’ of this scene does take some liberties, Shakespearean quotations identified by italics: HERACLES: ADMETUS: HERACLES: ADMETUS: HERACLES: ADMETUS: HERACLES:

ADMETUS:

HERACLES: ADMETUS: HERACLES:

I entrust her to your right hand and yours alone. My lord, you compel me against my will. Do not shun her. Nay, present your hand. Like a man cutting off Medusa’s head. Are you holding her? I’m holding her. Then take care of her. And in future you can say What a generous guest the son of Zeus has proved. Take a look. Now, tell me if she resembles your wife a little. And change sorrow to happiness. What can I say? If this be magic, Let it be an art lawful as eating. Strike all that look upon with marvel. Is this truly my wife I look upon Or some god’s illusion sent to mock me? She’s real. It is Alcestis. Some phantom, maybe, stolen from the dead. I’m not some witch-doctor you welcomed here.

In The Winter’s Tale Paulina stage-manages the ‘resurrection’ of Hermione: PAULINA:

Music, awake her, strike! ’Tis time: descend; be stone no more; approach; Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come, I’ll fill your grave up. Stir; nay, come away. Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs. (Hermione descends) Start not: her actions shall be holy as You hear my spell is lawful. Do not shun her

104  Processes and issues

Until you see her die again, for then You kill her double. Nay, present your hand. When she was young, you wooed her: now, in age, Is she become the suitor? LEONTES: O, she’s warm! If this be magic, let it be an art Lawful as eating. POLIXENES: She embraces him. CAMILLO: She hangs about his neck. If she pertain to life, let her speak too. (Shakespeare The Winter’s Tale: 5.3.98–113) The aim was something rather more than a tricksy device. The translocation of the production warranted the translocation of the translation itself – different, to be sure, but no less specific. Stage translation and production have in common that they deal as much with the conversion of dramatic tempo, silence and sound, split-level writing, and the relationship between object and speech within the stage picture, as they do with mere words. Any translator becomes used to rendering the sense of one language into another, and sensitive to the problems that this may raise. That the Inuit have between a dozen and four hundred different words for snow may be no more than urban myth: so may be that they lack any word for ‘joy’, the best equivalent, apparently, being ‘wagging the tail’. True or not, translators of Greek and Roman drama have to do a lot of ‘wagging the tail’. Sometimes, I think, it can be justified.

Notes 1 Pickard-Cambridge (1988, 93–95) gives the standard account, but the subject was revisited in detail, with extensive quotation of the original sources, by Csapo and Slater (1994). 2 These issues are considered in more detail in Walton (2006: especially Chs. 6 and 7) and 2009 (Ch. 10). 3 The issue of authorship is still widely argued over but is irrelevant to the play’s translation.

7 Transfusion or transgression The translator as director in Medea Proceedings of the X and XI Meetings of the ECCD at Delphi

Though this paper was not published until 2008, it was originally delivered in the year 2000. It refers back initially a further ten years to an event held in the Stadium at Delphi in 1990. The European Cultural Centre hosted ‘The Theatrical Competition on Ancient Greek Drama for Young People’, organized by the Greek Ministries of Tourism and of Culture. The only requirement was that all the cast, though not director or support staff, had to be under the age of thirty. The European Community had given additional financial backing, and nine countries entered productions, with a panel of seven judges to decide the prizewinner; seven judges, not nine because Germany and Italy chose not to send a delegate. The languages of the productions were, in alphabetical order, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portugese and Spanish. The judges were practitioners or academics, or both. The Portugese judge spoke French, but nobody else spoke any Portugese. The Greek judge spoke English and some French. The Danish and Dutch judges were fluent in English and also in German, but the Danish and Spanish judges knew no French. Most knew some ancient Greek, and a little modern, but not enough to hold a critical discussion. So we conducted our business in a variety of languages, principally English and French. As president of this diverse group, I gave the adjudication in English, but learnt, just before I started, that what I said would be translated into Greek, not simultaneously, but one sentence at a time, a challenge for the speaker which I had not previously encountered, though I have since. This, and simultaneous translation of speeches or conference papers, have raised issues in Athens, Thessaloniki, Epidaurus and Elefsina as well as in Delphi which I want to transfer here into the broader debate over translating ancient Greek plays. The focus will be a Medea in modern English for a particular actor, Nike Imoru, performed initially in England in 1998 as a complete production where the rehearsal process was a living part of the translation. The eventual, and subsequently published, version was revised and cut down to a one-woman show in 2000 for the tenth ‘International Meeting on Ancient Greek Drama 2500 Years: Tradition and Perspectives’, under the auspices of The European Cultural Centre of Delphi.

106  Processes and issues All the productions to be seen in Delphi during that meeting, and during the various international festivals held there from the 1980s onwards, are or were ‘translations’. Even were one of the productions to be presented in classical Greek, because of the nature of stage production, it would still be a ‘translation’. Over recent years the critical issues raised in Delphi and elsewhere in Greece have concentrated on interculturalism and audience reception, as well as on dramatic and theatrical priorities.1 The emphasis here will be on the role of the translator in the creative process of a Medea where, in addition to the translator as the director, the actor playing the leading role was pre-cast and would also be the choreographer. The translation was, accordingly, both aimed at her at the time of writing, and as part of the process of defining the production, rather than the more usual way of working, which is for the translator to explore the text in the largely unfettered vacuum between source and receiving languages or cultures. There are three specific points to be raised, one related to translation of character, one to casting, and one to directing. The translator of the classical play has to accept, and may indeed be consoled by, the fact that what is thought of as the original text is itself hedged by the vexed practice of transmission and the sheer difficulty, on many occasions, of being sure exactly what the playwright wrote. Those whose special expertise is in textual criticism have identified large sections of extant tragedies, indeed, whole plays in the case of both Prometheus and Rhesus, which they believe may be spurious, or added to by a later hand. The intriguing thing for the translator is less which these passages are than why they should have been changed in the first place. Was it fourth- or third-century bce actors improving their own role – or forgetting their lines? Was it directors of revivals cutting and adjusting to performances in locations far from Athens? If Lycurgus had to pass a decree (as he did late in the fourth century bce) identifying a fixed text of the works of the masters, how sure could he be, seventy years after the death of Sophocles and Euripides, that the ‘official’ version was not as doubtful as some of the foul papers of Shakespeare: or that the lines first played on that one-off occasion in the Theatre of Dionysus were the same as what were now to be his authorized text? All this suggests, paradoxically, both a freedom and a restriction at the level of translation. There is a sense on which the translator is building a bridge from the original text to a destination which is both known and unknown. The translators of stage plays have a number of issues with which to contend, not least because they are trying to make available to directors, actors and designers, not the single truth of a fixed entity, but the multiple, perhaps cubist, vision of the playwright who allows for the interrelation of the practitioners and the nature of audience reception. In addition there is the requirement to create characters who are consistent enough for actors to play them. An example from Medea, relating to character, highlights the challenge. There is an early line in the Euripides, before Medea appears in person, where the Paidagogos, or Tutor, is speaking about Creon’s plans for her. He

The translator as director in Medea  107 has overheard the old men gossiping round the fountain, with that confidence in rumour that old men possess, and saying that Creon is planning to send Medea and her two boys into exile. This unseen, off-stage Chorus of men is intriguing in a play where the sympathies are for the most part so finely drawn and honed by women. But the Tutor, a man, and a representative of ordinary people, does not have a lot of time for his fellow men. The Nurse asks if Jason would tolerate Medea’s exile and the Tutor replies, transliterated from the Greek, palaia kainôn leipetai kêdeumatôn (76). Literally this means ‘old things are left (or abandond) in favour of new possessions’. This is a simple metaphor which, apart from being a suitable response, has the subtlety of reducing Medea to the level of property. It is hard for the actor, though, without turning a sympathetic personality into something of a cynic. Such a characterization accords uncomfortably with his later relief, followed by bafflement, when his news that the Princess has accepted the gifts of the dress and coronet, are greeted with such dismay by Medea. Turning the line into an aphorism ‘New shoes run quicker than old’, had the advantage of making the Tutor appear both commentator and pedant. To have left it as a literal translation of the original might have rendered the translator as pedant rather than commentator. A further implication is that, whether or not aiming at a particular performance, the translator is searching for a linguistic and aural equivalent, but also for the mise-en-scène or the subtext encrypted in the original. There were several instances in this Medea where contemporary English enhanced what was no more than a hint in the Greek by recourse to the whole situation rather than simply the sentiment expressed in the moment. The difference was exaggerated between formal and domestic conversation, so that Medea, as a foreigner, spoke, as she does in Euripides, to all the other characters, Creon, Jason, Aegeus, Chorus and Servants, in their language. Medea the actress, and the actress playing Medea, could appear to discover in each scene whatever approach proved effective in prompting Creon, Jason, Aegeus or the Chorus to follow the course of action that she was initiating. The rehearsal of a play, being as much elimination of alternatives as the homing in on a single ‘correct’ interpretation, will often gain its greatest freedom from a text that identifies these alternatives rather than opting for a preference. The practitioners will then be able to explore, select or reject. But when the circumstances of the production are already known, or are evolving as the play is translated, then it does allow the translator to be something more than a journeyman, indeed to become part of the creative process. Today, the interesting questions of translation arise less in the closeness to the original line formations, than in the relationship between the task of the translator and the task of the director. Where the director is also translator – more, where the translation is created with a specific actor in mind – then there may be major artistic decisions taken at the point of first committing

108  Processes and issues pen to paper: or, these days, finger to keyboard. It is worth noting that in the film industry the reputation of the writer per se is about as low as it could be, and that a number of directors insist on writing their own screenplays: or is it writers who insist on directing their own scripts? Medea offers the picture of a woman driven to the ultimate anti-maternal act, infanticide. Euripides, being Euripides, shows the shocking nature of that act, but demonstrates too the shocking set of circumstances that induce such an act. These may be interpreted as confirming Medea’s wickedness, or exonerating her from blame, or several alternatives between these extremes, according to that shifting perspective that is a production’s guiding principle or ‘spine’. The moral stance of Euripides is far from cut and dried. In approaching the play as both translator and director, several production issues have to be addressed before a line appears on the page. If Medea is a foreigner in an alien culture, a woman in a society that is male-dominated, and someone capable of a level of passion that is incomprehensible to anyone else in the play, man or woman, then the search is for a dramatic throughline across her planning the murder of both Princess and her own children. The death of Creon is an unforeseen bonus. Many playwrights over the years have written for specific actors. Shakespeare certainly did, and a host of others from Bertolt Brecht to Tom Stoppard. Aeschylus, like Molière, wrote parts for himself and it is at least possible that the other playwrights of the classical period, including Aristophanes, were sufficiently flexible to have adjusted their preliminary texts to the cast they were allocated. Knowing who was to play Medea did affect the translation. Nike Imoru, who played the role and reprised it as a solo performance in Delphi, is an experienced actor and director, but she had not previously played in Greek tragedy. Having worked with her as a colleague for several years made it easy to write lines specifically for her. Common enough an experience for the playwright; translators are less accustomed to such a privilege.2 From Euripides came the hint, which Imoru would build upon, that Medea only discovers during the course of her scenes with Jason exactly why he has rejected her: ‘That’s not it, is it? As time went on/ You found it inconvenient to have a foreign wife’ (591–592). Playing such a moment as an anagnorisis contributed to a portrayal that was both multilayered and sympathetic. At an early stage in the translation it proved possible to aim for Imoru’s personal speech patterns and, thereby, to emphasize the character’s versatility and her superior intelligence. Prior discussion suggested a family relationship that was rooted in a kind of playful paternalism on the part of Jason, almost echoing Torvald in A Doll’s House. Medea, though, rebels in their first scene together, and then uses Jason’s weakness during the second: JASON:

I’ve done everything I could, believe me. I never wanted you to have to leave. But denouncing them as tyrants, You must be off your head. Exile? Serves you right.

The translator as director in Medea  109

Anyway, I don’t bear grudges against loved ones. We need to think about your future. That’s why I’ve come. We can’t have you destitute, not with the children. It can be difficult, exile. All manner of problems. So, hate me if you like, but I bear no grudge against you. MEDEA: You bastard! Coward! Would there were words To describe your cowardice. You come here? You dare come here to me? Perjured, lying bastard. A real hero, aren’t you, bold enough To destroy your family and then face them out. A legion of diseases prey on men, But gall like yours is worse than a disease. I’m glad you came, though. It gives me the pleasure Of telling you what I think of you. Enjoy it. Where to begin, that’s the problem. I saved your life. There’s not a single Greek Of those who crewed the Argo would deny that, When you were sent off to tame fire-breathing bulls, To yoke them and sow that deadly field. Then there was the dragon, guardian of the Golden Fleece, With all its massive coils, never sleeping. Who killed it? I killed it and saved your reputation in the process. (455–82) And in the later scene: MEDEA: Oh



Jason, I’m sorry. Forgive me For what I said. I was angry – You know me. We were in love once. I’m so furious with myself. ‘What a fool you are, Medea’, I tell myself, ‘To get upset with those who want to help, Fighting the authorities, never mind your husband Who only wants to do what’s best for you, Marrying a princess so my boys can have some brothers. Control that temper of yours. You don’t know When you’re well off, that’s your problem. There’s the children, of course, but we’re friendless, On our own, living here on charity.’ So. I realise what a fool I’ve been, getting all upset. No point, is there? In fact I have to thank you. You did the sensible thing. I’ve been silly. I should have been offering advice, Giving a hand, making the new bed,

110  Processes and issues

Happy to be your new wife’s chamber-maid. But, that’s women for you. You know what we’re like. Don’t pay us back in our own kind. Please. Don’t pay back foolishness with foolishness. I give in. I’ve been very stupid. But I’m better now. Children. Children. Come out here a moment. Hurry. Out here. Your father’s here. Come and see you father. And say goodbye.

Enter CHILDREN with the TUTOR.

We have to go. But no hard feelings. We’ve made peace, your father and I. We’re friends again. Take his hand, then. And the future? Well, who knows? I’d rather not think about it. Oh children, Your whole lives stretching out before you . . . I’m frightened. I can’t stop crying today. There now. Quarrel’s over with your father. I can’t see. I’m crying again. CHORUS: And so am I. And so am I. Please god, let things get no worse than this. JASON: That’s my girl. I don’t blame you. A woman’s likely to get a bit emotional With her husband marrying again. Now you’re making sense. Better late than never, But you can see the way the wind blows. This is a reasonable woman talking. You see, boys? Your father’s had his thinking cap on. God willing, he’s sorted out your future for you. (869–915) But, though the character needed to be understood as real, the play is not naturalistic. Here the children proved the key. At Epidaurus in 1997 the two boys were represented by Bunraku-size puppets which could be passed from one character to another. Yukio Ninagawa’s children, in his celebrated and extraordinary production seen on the Olivier stage of the National Theatre in 2003, opted for unearthly creatures in fright wigs. The children are bound to be significant, not only because an audience can see what it is that Medea will destroy, but also because of the moments at which they are introduced by Euripides into the action. But they need to be both real and unreal if the issues of the play are not to founder in the grand guignol horror of the act of murdering them. In this production, in 1998, they were played by grown-up masked actors, the only characters in masks, already ‘little ghosts’ who haunted the play, from its opening when they entered before

The translator as director in Medea  111

Figure 7.1  Medea and the ‘little ghosts’, Hull 1998 Reproduced courtesy of the University of Hull Photographic Department.

the Nurse, chasing a ball, to the end where they were clearly blood-stained dolls draped over Medea’s chariot. The possibility of masking the children had also emerged during the translation stage. If this is principally a production rather than a casting issue, the third point, relating to the Chorus, is wholly so. In a number of Greek tragedies the Chorus side with the central character, or, in earlier plays, may be the central character. Aeschylus’ Eumenides is an exception and it is worth recalling from time to time just how innovatory the whole Oresteia might have been for its first audience in 458 bce. The Choruses of Euripides sometimes have a vested interest in the outcome of the play, as in Iphigenia Among the Taurians, Suppliants or Bacchae. In Medea their attitude is unusual, and it was from addressing this that a whole pattern of translation as well as production emerged.

112  Processes and issues Soon after the end of the Tutor’s speech about ‘new shoes’ in which Medea’s possible exile is discussed, Medea’s own voice is heard in the first of a series of off-stage speeches which are more howls of anguish and uncontrollable grief than coherent comment: Iô dustanos egô melea te ponôn iô moi moi, pôs an’oloiman? (96–7)3 Literally, ‘How wretched I am, full of sorrow. Should I not be dead?’ After a second, similar outburst, the Chorus enter, local women who are initially sympathetic. But when Medea again expresses a longing for death, their reaction is less charitable. In this translation: CHORUS:



Why seek to welcome death, Poor woman? It hurries quick enough. Why spur it on? Your husband’s deserted you for someone else’s bed. That’s not the end of the world. (151–6)

A stoic sentiment this will be echoed later by the Tutor when he says: kouphôs pherein chrê thnêton onta sumphorôs. You’re not the only woman to be parted from her children. You have to grin and bear it. People do. (1017–8) This is the culture of which Medea has become a part, a culture where it’s ‘not the end of the world’ if your husband leaves you, where you have to put up with it. When Medea finally enters, she seems to be surprisingly calm, not because she has learnt to ‘grin and bear it’, but because she has already started along the road which will enable her both to plot and to execute the murder of the Princess and her own children. She is not subduing her emotions, but learning, in this company, to harness them. Though their sympathies are engaged, the Chorus and other characters, Nurse and Tutor included, consider Medea to be over-reacting. She then sets out to win the Chorus over to what they think need only be tacit support: MEDEA:



If I hit upon some means, some stratagem To pay my husband back for what he’s done, The bride and giver of the bride he means to marry, Say nothing. (260–3)

The translator as director in Medea  113 They agree because saying nothing is easier than getting involved. But on the stage, as Medea well knows, silence can be eloquent and active. The ode the Chorus sing (410–445) after the Creon scene is all about the responsibility of men for what is wrong in the world, and the support the Chorus will offer Medea because of Jason’s broken marriage vows. By the end of the play the Chorus find they have become complicit, not only in the murder of the Princess, but also of the children. This was a difficult ambivalence to make convincing, either as translator or as director. The solution in translating involved a directorial decision, not to water down the conversion or apologize for it, but to have a Chorus which started as no more than three individuals, and gradually increased in number. Two of the first three were sceptical about Medea’s behaviour, but were won over. As the play proceeded, new members arrived, the first after Creon entered, others at various points in the action, almost as though word had spread around the city that something was happening which they were too inquisitive to miss. And, as the numbers increased, and the uncertain newcomers were converted, so Medea’s powerbase of support became ever stronger. Eventually, there were the fifteen which probably made up the Chorus of Euripides: and then one more, a sixteenth and last who did not arrive until the death-cries of the children are heard from indoors. This sixteenth was then a solitary voice cursing Medea and demanding that someone try to save the children.

Figure 7.2  Medea, Creon and the chorus, Hull 1998 Reproduced courtesy of the University of Hull Photographic Department.

114  Processes and issues But by that time this newcomer found herself facing an implacable group of fifteen others. One voice could not oppose fifteen, so she joined them. The details and the implications emerged only in rehearsal, but the basic decision to stagger the entrance of the Chorus made the play more interesting to choreograph – no two odes had the same number in them – but, more important, made it easier to reconcile what appear to be conflicting positions within the Chorus, from generalized support for Medea, to a condemnation of a world dominated by men; to a disavowal of passion; to refusing to prevent the murders of Princess and children; to the ultimate evocation of Ino, the only other infanticide of whom they have ever heard; and, at the last, to sympathy for Jason. Several of the choral odes took on a different resonance, none more than that between the exit of the children with the gifts, and the entrance of the Messenger with the news of what has happened. The second stanza goes: CHORUS:



And I say this: Those who miss out On experience, Who never have children, They’re the lucky ones. (1090–3)

This is as pessimistic as any speech in Greek tragedy and a universal coda to a personal tragedy. Spoken or sung by a Chorus who have been present throughout the action, it is a statement of such negativity as to disavow life itself. Spoken by a group of people, ever-changing and ever trying to convince one another that their complicity is acceptable, it invites a search for a similar frame of mind in the audience in which that complicity can be justified. A fluid and personal approach to the Chorus is hardly a novelty in Euripides. Indeed, it has greatly enhanced productions in recent years of Sophocles and Aeschylus, including the Oresteias of both Peter Stein and Katie Mitchell. In Medea it served as a lift-off point for addressing the other issues previously referred to. If the Chorus were to suggest individuals with possible, though unexplored, lives of their own through which they would view the tragedy, then they could represent one stratum of the structured society into which Medea and Jason had strayed, a society in which Medea came to feel more and more alien, but to which Jason aspired through his new marriage. Accordingly, the Corinthians were given a certain formality of speech which in rehearsal was translated into a matching etiquette. Medea, on entering after her initial off-stage outbursts, was less ‘self-possessed’ than ‘under control’, as she consciously took on the behaviour patterns of her adopted country, behaviour patterns which carried within them the germs of her revenge. CHORUS:



Perhaps she might come out. And then, perhaps, she’d listen To what we have to say.

The translator as director in Medea  115

We could suggest that she control That temper of hers. I can always advise a friend, I hope. Go on into the house And bring her out. Tell her we’re all friends here. Hurry, before she does something stupid. This sort of grieving gets out of control. (172–85)

Working on the play initially in the study it became harder and harder to divorce the notion of translation from that of direction and the rehearsal room. The deadliest of theatrical experiences have often been murdered by the literal or by the concept. But every aspect of the production process necessarily feeds into, or is fed by, the act of translation. A design meeting is an act of translation; casting is an act of translation; the process of creating a mise-en-scène is an act of translation; choreographing a Chorus is an act of translation. Perhaps it is more important than that, and perhaps I am suggesting that the production process should always involve the translator, not as someone who sits at a desk and works in isolation, but as a dramaturg, part of the creative team, with a creative role as essential as that of designer, actor or director. And so Medea’s speech patterns were built up of the extremes of passionate outburst, directed against Creon, Jason and even herself, and the formal patterns of ‘Corinthian’ behaviour which proved more effective in gaining her own way. Were there room, it would be possible to point to the original Greek to attempt to justify such a decision. It is, nevertheless, a decision of interpretation, more than of language, thus direction rather than simply translation. As it is, Medea wins her own way with Creon, with Jason and with the Chorus not through her impassioned, ‘uncivilized’ outbursts, but by reason and coolness, weapons which she employs equally carefully in the Aegeus scene, securing a refuge for herself. So, at the point of translation, emphasis was placed on how people spoke to one another. Some examples: JASON:



I’d best restrain myself, I think. . . . I don’t want to make an issue of it. The assistance you gave me was quite valuable, But you did get better than you gave, I think it’s fair to say (522 and 532–5)

This, a prelude to Jason’s parade of the Greek virtues of ‘civilization’ in contrast to Medea’s ‘savagery’: MEDEA:



I may be alone in this – I usually am. But for me he’s a double-dyed villain

116  Processes and issues

Who cloaks his weasel-words in sophistry. A tongue so glib and devious Will know no boundaries. Too clever by half.

And then she breaks out of the formality:

You can drop the rhetoric. (579–84)

Or Aegeus, half-seduced by Medea who has just told him:

I can cure your childlessness. I can make you a father. I know the remedy.

recovering himself sufficiently to reply formally: AEGEUS:



For several reasons, Madam, I’m inclined To grant you what you ask. (717–20)

Figure 7.3  Medea Complex, Delphi, 2000 Property of the author.

The translator as director in Medea  117 All this was balanced against exchanges between other characters, and, especially, between Medea and Jason, that were colloquial and contemporary. When it came to reducing the full 1998 production of Medea to a onewoman show for the millennium festival at Delphi, adaptation was largely cutting. Almost all of the other characters were reduced to disembodied off-stage voices with no more than a cue line or two, as though in Medea’s head. This was an internal challenge which affected much of her attitude. The production was staged in the courtyard at the back of the Sikelianos Museum, into which an audience of almost two hundred were crammed, with a hundred more ranged behind a wire fence on the hillside above. The décor consisted of a couple of folding tailor’s dummies with revolving tops on each side of which were masks of the main characters, including the children. Medea turned each to face her or the audience and switched them off once she had done with them. Downstage she had a prop box from which the poisoned dress was displayed. It also contained a knife, but when it came to the murder of the children she took out a pair of scissors and cut the children’s papier mâché masks into small pieces: murder translated into a stage metaphor. What remained may have been a severely edited version of the published translation, but not a line was added which was not from the Euripides. Aimed both at an audience who knew the original and any for whom it was a novelty, the power of the play still shone through. The difference from the full production was that the abbreviated version appeared less of a narrative than as Medea’s dream. If that detracted from Euripides it added a new dimension built around the primary text without intervention. The next chapter is adjusted from a paper given on different forms of translation according to its possible targets.

Notes 1 See especially Savas Patsalidis and Elizabeth Sakellaridou (eds 1999) and Iossif Vivilakis (ed. 2007). 2 Videos of this production of Medea (1999) and of the Alcestis discussed in the previous chapter (1995) are lodged in the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at the University of Oxford. 3 Following a practice worked out in collaboration with Kenneth McLeish, lines that were expressions of grief or fear were transliterated from the Greek but left as a possibility for directors. There can be little arguing that Io, moi, moi is more emotive as a cry of pain than in translation as ‘Ah! Ah! Woe is me!’

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Part 3

Greek tragedy

Introduction Edward Gordon Craig, visionary designer and procreator of many children, both flesh and blood and creative, founded a periodical called The Mask which flourished, intermittently, from 1908 to 1929. A huge variety of articles cover a range of artistic and theatrical issues relating to the visual arts and the theatre, historical and current but always with an eye to the future. Despite little formal background in the world of fifth-century bce Athens, Craig had, it could be argued, a more instinctive understanding of Greek theatre than any classical scholar of his time, including his contemporary Gilbert Murray. The difference between Greek theatre and Greek drama is a significant one for the theatre historian when set against the classical literary critic, for all there should be, and hopefully are, overlaps which both can respect. The translator needs to be both. Though the hundreds of articles in The Mask range widely over a broad spectrum of cultures and periods, there is a certain unity of approach. Craig wrote a majority of them, under at least sixty-six different aliases which range from Lilian Antler to Scotson Umbridge, Drury Pervil and – a personal favourite – Hadrian Jazz Gavotte. This way he was able to crossreference his own work and even write reviews of his own books. In 1910, anonymously for once, he reviewed a translation of the plays of Aeschylus shared out between brothers Walter and C. E. S. Headlam.1 Craig regretted that the translators ‘make no pretensions to any artistic form’, but ‘that they have been pleased to add stage directions’, proceeding to quote a Ming author (presumably translated from the Chinese): ‘Translation is always a treason and can at its best be as the reverse side of a brocade; all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of colour or design.’2 Greek tragedy was born from a corpus of myth that went back to the sagas of Homer and the other composers and reciters of epic cycles. This was a pre-history and pre-literary world and accordingly it was a flexible one. Stories evolved within an oral tradition. There was no one standard version of the past, no definitive chronicle, no fixed timescale, no urtext. A character like Heracles or Theseus could turn up in all sorts of places

120  Greek tragedy and periods, significant for his heroic reputation, not the accuracy of his curriculum vitae. The situations and characters of myth were a huge and pliable conglomeration of recollection, exaggeration and pure invention. For the poet and playwright they represented a series of ingredients which they could rehash in all sorts of variations, savoury, sweet or sour. The stories were enduring. The stories have endured. First the Romans, then every subsequent age in which drama has flourished, raided and pillaged the classics before introducing their own versions to suit their own tastes and their own social and political concerns. These stories were nothing if they were not indicators of how the world worked and how the men and women of the world led and misled their lives. Translation into other languages – a return to the actual plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, as opposed to adaptations on the dramatic or operatic on a Greek theme – had to wait, with a few minor exceptions, until the end of the nineteenth century (see Ch. 1). From then on a debate was launched about what was the ‘right’ way of rendering these ancient classics into a form that was speakable, playable and faithful to the original work (though not necessarily always with that order of priorities). As might be expected with a conglomeration of academics and critics – even creative ­artists – the result has often resembled Babel. Drama in translation tends to be more prone than poetry or prose fiction to inspiring the personal frame of reference. Constantine Trypanis gave an Exchange Lecture with the Academy of Athens to the British Academy in 1979 with the title Modern Productions of Ancient Dramas. He considered both the chorus and the use of masks, and their more recent use in Paris and in the Odeion of Herodes Atticus in Athens. He also suggested that each generation and culture should provide its own translations of the classics, concluding, most contentiously: Perhaps the most important of all is that we should not use the ancient plays as a vehicle for presenting our own problems, often so different from those of antiquity, on the stage. (Trypanis 1981: 496) This is an issue that will be addressed again subsequently but is particularly significant today. What the Greek myths have in common is their antiquity. What they also have in common is their novelty. What the plays have in common is their attachment to issues from then. What the plays have in common, whether or not Trypanis was happy about it, is their attachment to the now. What the Greek tragedians shared, however different their method, was their belief in the theatre as a serious place for ethical and political debate. What those first Greek audiences had in common was a willingness to welcome presentation of stories, conflicts and debates in the form of dramatic parable from a deep

Greek tragedy 121 and barely penetrable past. So powerfully were these issues presented, we are led to believe, that audiences were moved to tears of joy or sadness. Through a sense of total artifice the playwrights developed a sophisticated stage language of mask, music and dance, of the visual and the aural, of dramatic rhythm and theatrical device. The artificiality was enhanced by dramatic structure, verse formations, choice of individual words and metaphors, all in different ways according to the manner in which each playwright ‘played’ audience expectations in the name of Aristotle’s anagnoriseis and peripeteiai, ‘recognitions’ and ‘reversals’. Maybe, as translators, that is what we most need, the facility when faced with a potentially visual text to recognize the recognitions and revert to the reversals. Virginia Woolf may have had a point when she wrote: ‘It is useless, then, to read Greek in translations. Translators can but offer us vague equivalents’ (Woolf 1925: 45). Nonetheless, her observations on the sound and ambiguities of ancient Greek, the meaning ‘on the far side of language’, only go to show that this is not a reason not to translate Greek plays and present them for a modern audience. It is a challenge, that is all. Dramatic translation, either in isolation for the reader, or for a particular production, involves a reconstruction of the imagination, rooted in the original, but allowing for those contributions by actor and director. And that is where adaptation comes in too. All you need for a proper climate in which to present Greek plays are the social and political conditions which demand the special enlightenment that only the theatre can offer. There are moments in the tragedies, more so but certainly not exclusively in Euripides, that offer a subtext which may be rendered, and hence played, on the line or against the line. The reuniting of brother and sister in Euripides’ Electra or the welcome afforded to Aegeus in his Medea are obvious examples. There are sequences where the stage picture offers to the audience a contradiction to the reactions of the characters: Clytemnestra’s welcome to Agamemnon in the first play of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, or most of Sophocles’ Electra. There are understatements, overreactions, ironies, echoes, images, allusions. It is the task of the translator to make these apparent but not to define them, to open them up, not close them down. The translator will also have to get to grips with the ‘foreignness’ of a Greek play and, if you follow Walter Benjamin, eschew ‘domesticity’; if you prefer Theodore Savory, embrace it. But these are decisions which should be made according to dramatic rather than literary priorities. For the translator a play is an artefact. If it happens also to be a poem, or a piece of fine prose, well and good; but it was playwright Arthur Miller who suggested that there was no need for a great playwright to be a great writer. Greek tragedy may consist of pieces of great literature, but it is the dramatic qualities which today’s translator needs to address if the plays are not to take their place on the shelf rather than on the stage. This malleability is perhaps what makes the Greek canon so appealing to those who want to take advantage of the

122  Greek tragedy distancing that a classical setting may offer. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides went back time and again to the same sagas precisely because only the barest outlines were fixed. Jocasta was always going to be Oedipus’ mother, but Medea may well not have killed her children in earlier versions of her story. That could be a refinement attributable to Euripides. So for today the stories are only as familiar as they ever were. What Greek tragedy requires are bridges into the present built by critics, translators and practitioners. There are risks in being over-literary, but equally in the creation of a perspective so contemporary that the ‘strangeness’ of the original is submerged and diluted. What are Greek tragedies about? Acts of revenge, acts of treachery, acts of sacrifice, acts of resistance; so are most plays and most operas. Any of them can be generalized, inviting the audience to home in on a single issue. Or they can be made explicit, in a precise theatrical context, from which, again, the audience may draw the parallel they find most suitable. Those of us who translate are familiar with these issues and their ramifications. What ought to be true is that Greek plays are as amenable as any other classic playtexts to uprooting from their original context and relocating in a variety, not only of cultures, but also of periods. The Thebes of Antigone or the Argos of Orestes are as far a cry from fifth-century Athens as are the Ephesus of Comedy of Errors or the Sicily of The Winter’s Tale from Shakespeare’s London. Of course, classical plays are old. They come from a period some of whose terms of reference can be remote, if not unfathomable. It is not just the Greek pantheon, the oracles and the prophets, the sacrifices and the curses: Greek myth has a power of survival in metaphor and through paradigm that has no rival, apart, perhaps, from the Bible. The function of the translator in all of this may be complex, but the originals deserve better than to be abdicated to loose or simplistic adaptation. The question of a balance between translator and interpreter has been identified earlier, but is looked at in more detail in the chapters that follow. Chapter 8 draws attention to earlier critical studies, especially those of Hilaire Belloc and Sir Kenneth Dover, on establishing the parameters and priorities in translating Greek tragedy. Passages from early and more recent translations of The Oresteia, Antigone and Ion are compared to show how the differences in approach amongst Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been recognized and explored, up to and including the manner in which the later playwrights are seen to have varied the tragic tone by comic interchange. Chapter 9 investigates Sophocles more closely and the manner in which various translators have over the centuries, from the earliest through to Seamus Heaney, striven to pin down his individuality. The uniqueness of Euripides as an ironist follows in Chapter 10, showing how the most experimental of the Athenian playwrights opened up the door to a variety of interpretations. It also marks a recent softening, with age, of my attitude towards ‘Neutrality’. ‘Adaptation’ and the manner in which Irish playwrights have absorbed the work of all three tragedians and applied them to aspects of

Greek tragedy 123 their own history form the spine of the last chapter in this section. Trypanis notwithstanding, Irish dramatists have made the Greek myths speak for the tragedies of Ireland.

Notes 1 The Mask, vol. 3, Nos. 1–3, July 1910, 86–7. 2 On the topic of stage directions, see Walton (2006), 51–3 and 69–79; and Ch. 4 on Plautus.

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8 ‘Enough give in it’ Translating the classical play The Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions

Special and specialist areas of translation cover so much ground that their practitioners inevitably have clashing priorities. The poetry translator operates within a different constituency from the UN interpreter, the scientific journalist or the signer. The biblical scholar, the cultural historian, the gender critic, all have their agendas, agendas different because of their individual priorities and constituencies. Manchester University’s Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies [2005/6] had a programme which incorporated lectures on, amongst other topics, translation and conflict, video games, the language of young children, philosophy, journalism in Iraq, Italian fascism and computer technology. TRIO (Translation Research in Oxford) once devoted a full day to translating nonsense. All such translators enthusiastically rehearse and debate the issues of their discipline, sometimes fruitfully, sometimes in so arcane a fashion as to defy penetration. All have in common, though it does not always seem so, that their discourse revolves around a source and a target language and the transference from the former to the latter. Translating drama is different. A stage play on the page – any play of any shape or form from the long-dead Sophocles to the contemporary Botho Strauss – is still in transit, a potential only, its breath of life to be determined by directors, designers and players in as many different ways as there may be productions. My aim here is both to identify the parameters between a respect for the original text and the imperatives of a modern production, by considering some detailed moments from each of the Greek tragedians which highlight the transition in ancient Athens from the formal tragedy of Aeschylus to the more human and humane plays of Sophocles and Euripides. Overall, the intention is more to provoke discussion than to provide solutions to the problems. The nature of translation and the nature of the theatre both show there are no definitive systems and no easy answers, whether a translation is commissioned for a specific production by a specific director, or for publication, where it may lie comatose on the shelf waiting, like Princess Aurora, for her prince to fight his way through the forest and wake her with a kiss. The classical canon offers the worst of all worlds, that of trying to marry, at one

126  Greek tragedy terminus, a playwright whose every mindset was dictated by a sociopolitical aesthetic two and a half thousand years old, to, at the other, a contemporary audience who will expect to be touched, affected or amused within their own set of cultural references and expectations. Until the beginning of the last century, the translator of a Greek tragedy or comedy was not faced with as much agonizing because few if any of the translators had any expectation that their plays would ever be exposed to an audience. Many of these translators into English, and they numbered well over three hundred before 1900 alone, were clerics or schoolmasters with both time and occasion to publish. Some were playwrights, in Dryden’s case a playwright and poet laureate with a sophisticated interest in translation, for whom the writing of an Oedipus with Nathaniel Lee (performed 1678, published 1679), paid no more than the occasional lip service either to Sophocles or to Seneca. Classical scholarship has always tended to view the world of the fifth century bce through the preoccupations of its own time. This is inevitable. Perspectives shift and so they should. But if one thing about the Athenian drama may be regarded as certain it is that, had not The Oresteia been well received by its audience at the first production in the spring of 458 bce, we would not now have it. The corollary to this is that, had it not similarly appealed purely as text to generations of scholars and to translators from Robert Potter (1721–1804) onwards, we would not have seen, amongst a host of others, two full productions of the whole trilogy in English at the National Theatre (Tony Harrison’s sometimes free translation, 1981, and that of Ted Hughes, 1999); and outstanding European productions such as Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides (1990–2) and Peter Stein’s (1980 and 1994) (see Macintosh et al., 2005a for full details of these productions). There is something within The Oresteia and all the other extant plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander that accounts for their appeal to their original audience. It is up to the translator, not only to locate this factor, but also to reveal it in such a way that modern practitioners can find ways of renewing the plays on stage. Translation of a Greek play, then, involves the transference of a context and finding a balance of reference which will both keep faith with the original and allow for the creative act of performance. Reduced to a simple argument, it is not about translating ‘chariot’ as ‘motor-car’ or ‘bow’ as ‘rifle’, but rather finding a language that will allow a director to create a stage world where either chariots and bows, or cars and guns, could be appropriate. This is not the place for a more detailed consideration of the production of Greek plays on the contemporary stage. It may be a place to offer a challenge to the current thinking that the translator has little need to know the original language or cultural terms of reference. One of four English-language productions of Euripides’ Hecuba in 2004/2005 was ‘translated’ by Frank McGuinness, who does not work directly from ancient Greek. The three others were translated respectively

Enough give in it 127 by John Harrison, Tony Harrison and Marianne McDonald, all of whom do work from the Greek. Is the text of John Harrison (Cambridge University Press) or Marianne McDonald (Nick Hern Books), both eminent academics – McDonald also an original playwright – or of Tony Harrison (Faber and Faber), a poet and playwright in his own right, ‘better’, by definition, than that of McGuinness? McGuinness is a prolific and highly accomplished playwright (also published by Faber and Faber) who claims of his Hecuba only that it is ‘a new version’. W. B. Yeats had no Greek; neither did Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Brendan Kennelly. Does that make them worse ‘translators’ of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides as playwrights than those literal translators of the nineteenth century Bohn editions, or the Kelly’s Keys to the Classics, or, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Loeb editions, with Greek on one page, the English opposite? Robert Lowell’s The Oresteia of Aeschylus (published 1978) was picked out for intense criticism by Sir Kenneth Dover in an essay originally published in 1980 and reprinted in a slightly revised version as ‘The Speakable and the Unspeakable’ (Dover 1987: 176–81). Suggesting that Lowell’s plays in English bear ‘an intermittent resemblance to three plays which Aeschylus wrote in Greek’, Dover identified substantial cuts, imported material and a sense beyond either that Lowell ‘does violence to the Greek sense of occasion’. The words of criticism are carefully chosen and represent separate issues which he believed the translator should bear in mind. A major one concerns cutting the text. The Oresteia is certainly long, three plays which together tend to play for upwards of five hours – seven in the case of Peter Stein’s production – and are often spread over two nights. Even the first ‘full’ production in English, that of Frank Benson at Stratford in 1904, promised in the publicity to come in under three hours, with intervals of only eight minutes and ten, and incurred the wrath of several critics with deadlines by lasting for a full three hours and a half (see Ch. 2: 36). Aeschylus, intense and condensed in his language, is fiendishly difficult to cut. More to the point, one suspects, and with a few honourable exceptions, a poet’s loyalty is to his own work and it is here that Dover’s second concern, importation, most often showed its face. Though the question of whether verse should only be translated into verse, rather than into prose, has been debated at length, there can be little dispute that the later Greek playwrights, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander, are easier to render in prose than are the plays of Aeschylus. Translating any classical play demands an ordering of priorities. Dover gave licence to the poet’s claim to ‘fidelity to the spirit of the original’, but concluded that ‘What goes wrong in this genre of pseudo-translation is not just ignorance of the literature and culture to which the original work belongs, but narrowness of vision and indifference to character, plot and the intelligence and imagination of the original author’ (Dover 1987: 177). In a brief introduction to the published text, Lowell justified his personal approach as ‘to satisfy my own mind and at first hearing the simple ears of a theatre audience’. There is no denying that the better known the translators,

128  Greek tragedy either as poet or playwright or both, the harder they find it to resist the temptation to leave their own signature on the original. This is where Dover believed translators are at fault who get carried away by an emotional reaction to a single moment or incident and over-translate it at the expense of a play’s rhythm. Linking these concerns, and underlying them, was Dover’s conviction that translating ‘the spirit of the original’ depends not on ‘intuition’ but in finding out what the spirit of the original was. This is, perhaps, a parallel layer to the need to locate a dramatic throughline which will open up the original to the imagination of the practitioner, though for Dover this was optional: ‘The compulsory task is say what the author said; the option to be taken if he wants the play to be performed, is to say it in a way which actors will relish speaking and an audience relish hearing’ (Dover 1987: 179). If the questions raised by the Lowell translation are cut and dried, the answers are less so. The prolific Victorian playwright James Robinson Planché, whose almost two hundred stage works included numerous adaptations from the French and also what was arguably the first translation of Aristophanes’ Birds to be performed on the English stage (Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 13 April 1846, see Ch. 13), subsequently justified his own cavalier attitude to originals in his memoirs by stating that ‘There is much more art required to make a play actable than a book readable’ (Planché 1872: 246). And that was the extent of his heart-searching. Dover’s scholarly sense of dismay at liberties taken with the work of the first great playwright made him a proper apologist for the source text: Planché, the pragmatic actor-manager, conscious of his paying audience and his own security, spoke for the true target, a satisfied audience. So where do classical translators stand: are they the in-betweens or go-betweens? Three responses may help to provide a platform from which to find a significant example. Hilaire Belloc in his Taylorian lecture delivered in Oxford in 1931 first homed in on the phrase ‘the atmosphere of the word’. He began that lecture with the defensive suggestion that ‘The art of translation is a subsidiary art, and derivative’. He did not deal specifically with the classics, nor, except in passing, with the dramatic text, but offered a number of ground rules which can be applied to either field, leading him to the statement that, ‘ . . . [W]hat is . . . important when one is attempting the rendering of any great ­matter – great through its literary form or its message – is the atmosphere of the word’ (Belloc 1931: 17). Thirty-six years later, Theodore Savory, in a comprehensive study of translation from its early history, through translating poetry, the Bible and eventually science, included a chapter specifically on ‘Translating the Classics’. One of his key statements came in the first paragraph where he suggested that ‘ . . . the translation of Greek must be more than linguistic practice, because Greek is one of the supreme languages of the world . . . ’ (Savory 1957: 60). He proceeded to initiate the debate on ‘Hellenizers and Modernizers’ before concluding that ‘If ever there were a phase of translation in which the principle of the modernizer was uncontestably to be preferred, it

Enough give in it 129 is in the rendering of the Greek play’. This fighting stance, however, may be influenced by Savory’s unequivocal response to Greek drama that it ‘never reached the supreme perfection of Homer’ (Savory: 67–8; see also Walton 2006: Ch. 4). Tom Stoppard’s approach to his first real translation (see Part 1 Introduction: 3) was interesting: ‘The starting point is to be utterly faithful to the original. But if you abide by that completely you are doing the author a disservice. An absolutely strict translation would not have enough give in it’ (my italics and hence the title of this chapter). Here is surely the nub for classical drama, perhaps for any dramatic text, the amount of ‘give’ being dictated by the most careful of tightrope walking between the original (frequently disputed anyway by scholars of ancient Greek) and the kind of flexibility or fluidity required by actors and directors: what Fiona Shaw once described in conversation as ‘neutrality’. Writers with strong beliefs, it might be argued, make the worst translators. Poets want to write their own poetry; playwrights to write their own plays; critics to build in their own interpretation; philosophers to share their own recipe for living. The infliction of Christian virtues on Antigone, Alcestis or even Hippolytus may be feasible in production. But in the translator, a lack of attitude is probably more use than any strongly held conviction. What is necessary is the ability to ‘read’ a play properly. Anyone who can read can read a play on the page but alarmingly few, translators as well as directors, pick up on the dramatic rhythm that underpins any theatrical performance and is as present in Aeschylus as it is in Shakespeare. Greek tragedy is intense, but it is not so intense that it should be played relentlessly with all the stops out. So the following examples, comparing early and contemporary translations for their sensitivity to dramatic pattern, will not be from the most intense moments, the passionate speeches, the anagnorisieis (recognitions) and peripeteiai (reversals) that are the dramatic highlights of Greek tragedy, but the quieter moments where the everyday, the gently comic, the human touch is allowed to impinge on matters of moment.

Aeschylus and The Oresteia Starting with Aeschylus is logical, especially as only The Oresteia as a connected trilogy offers the opportunity to consider the full dramatic shape. Agamemnon opens, as does Hamlet, at a human level with a minor character and a night scene on the ramparts. Aeschylus’ Watchman is disgruntled and bored. The first translator of Aeschylus into English, Robert Potter, went straight to the point with the opening lines: Ye fav’ring gods, relieve me from this toil: Fixed, as a dog, on Agamemnon’s roof, I watch the livelong year . . . (Potter 1777: 1–3)

130  Greek tragedy Aeschylus refers to ‘the Atreidae’ here, ‘the sons of Atreus’, not to ‘Agamemnon’, but Potter’s licence is understandable in the cause of clarity. Anna Swanwick, some ninety years later, however, offered: I pray the gods deliverance from these toils, Release from year-long watch, which, couch’d aloft On these Atreidan roofs, doglike, I keep. (Swanwick 1865) Not only did she settle for the obscure ‘Atreidan’, but her opening was in the form of a prayer – the first word in Aeschylus is theous, accusative plural of theos, a god, whereas Potter, though a cleric and schoolmaster, opts for the monotony of the man’s task, rather than his piety. Gilbert Murray took a monotheistic stance, but was otherwise inscrutable to the point of requiring an additional translation: This waste of year-long vigil I have prayed God for some respite, watching elbow-stayed, As sleuthhounds watch, above the Atreidae’s hall . . . (Murray 1920) Richmond Lattimore had a similar struggle with elbows: I ask the gods some respite from the weariness of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake elbowed upon the Atreidae’s roof dogwise . . . (Lattimore 1953) Robert Lowell opted for: I’ve lain here a year, crouching like a dog on one elbow and begged the god to end my watch. A dog on one elbow? (Lowell 1978) Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish hit the boredom button immediately:

Gods, when will it end? A long year now I’ve had the nightwatch: A huddled dog on the palace roof, Home of the sons of Atreus. (Raphael and McLeish [1971] 1990)

Enough give in it 131 Tony Harrison (1981), similarly, though ‘in a version’ and with his signature poetic dimension: no end to it all, though all year I’ve muttered my pleas to the gods for a long groped for end. Wish it were over, this waiting, this watching, twelve weary months, night in and night out, crouching peering, head down like a bloodhound. Ted Hughes, in what is described in the printed edition as a ‘version’ rather than a translation – Hughes had no grounding in ancient Greek – opened with: You gods in heaven – You have watched me here on this tower All night, every night for twelve months, Thirteen moons, Tethered on the roof of this palace Like a dog. (Hughes 1999) A few lines further on (11–12) the Watchman reviews the orders he has been given to wait for the beacon which will signal the fall of Troy: . . . these high hopes My royal mistress thinking on her lord Feeds in her heart.

(Potter)

.. for so proudly hopes A woman’s heart, with manly counsel fraught.

(Swanwick)

So surely to her aim Cleaveth a woman’s heart, man-passionèd.

(Murray)

. . . to such a high end a lady’s male strength of heart in its high confidence ordains.

(Lattimore)

Clytemnestra stationed me here to waken her when the beacon shall flame in the east proclaiming Troy has fallen.

(Lowell)

Mycenae’s throne is Queen Klytemnestra’s now, And her heart is hard with hope.

(Raphael and McLeish)

132  Greek tragedy The woman says watch, so here I am watching. That woman’s not one who’s all wan and woeful.

(Harrison)

Hughes’ opening speech has forty-two graphic lines before the Watchman spots the beacon, compared to Aeschylus’ twenty-one, and so deviates from the original, though not necessarily its ‘atmosphere’, as to make direct comparison with ‘accurate’ translators pointless. If we want to make some judgement between these eight approaches, and there are more than another fifty English Agamemnons at least where a similar comparison could be exercised, any individual preference will come down to the balance to be struck between the original text, its associations, structure, language, metre, perceived emphases and mood. It is in Harrison’s ‘version’ that Stoppard’s ‘give’ may most clearly be found, with the opportunity for character, situation and even humour – ‘The woman says watch, so here I am watching’ – which a director might be looking for in the opening scene of such a lengthy piece of theatre. The sense of dramatic pacing or rhythm needs to allow in its ‘give’ for a relaxing of concentration, for an equivalent breathing-time within the individual scene to what the Greek playwright creates throughout a play by alternating scenes of action with choral ode. One brief further example shows the extent to which this already exists in Aeschylus, as we will see it does in Sophocles and Euripides. LibationBearers, the second play of the trilogy, is the most dense and concentrated of the three plays, revolving around the return of Orestes, his reuniting with Electra and the murder of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Breathingtime in this play comes in the interlude after Orestes’ first scene (incognito) with his mother after which she invites him into the palace. The choral ode lasts only for eleven lines before being interrupted by the unexpected entry of Orestes’ former Nurse, who has heard of the death of Orestes but does not have the privileged knowledge of the Chorus that the news is pretence. She has a speech of more than thirty lines in which she recalls him as a baby, his helplessness, his crying, even cleaning up after him. Potter was appropriately tender but, from the same deference to the solemnity of tragedy that allowed him to translate the whole of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, but omit Cyclops, has the Nurse say of her duties ‘ . . . nor with a squeamish niceness/Thought scorn of any office’ (Potter: 759–60). Anna Swanwick (1865), under the influence more of St Luke than Homer, had her Nurse speak of herself as ‘cleanser of his swaddling bands’ (though an old-fashioned coinage, ‘swaddling bands’ is a phrase to which Shapiro

Enough give in it 133 and Burian chose to return in their dignified 2001 translation). George Warr had her claim: The babish belly waits no help. How oft I prophesied amiss, how oft To make amends I washed his clouts again. (Warr 1900) Murray opted for ‘ . . . twas clothes to wash and dry, and fuller’s work as much as nurse’s’. Lattimore chose ‘ . . . and had to wash the baby’s clothes. The Nurse and laundrywoman had a combined duty’. Lowell concurred, ‘both nurse and laundress’. Raphael and McLeish gave the same sort of air of familiarity as they did to their Watchman, and later to the Servant who warns Clytemnestra about the murder of Aegisthus: ‘Or I ended up with all his things to wash./Nursemaid, washerwoman, I was both. I should have grown another pair of hands’. Hughes had her speak of the baby Orestes with touching affection: ‘Like a blind kitten . . . . A baby is helpless at both ends’, but drew the line at dirty nappies. Harrison’s nurse was more straight-thinking, musing on babies: ‘You have to read minds, keep one jump ahead/or else you get caught with their crap to clean out’.

Sophocles and the common man Sophocles offers a similar wealth of examples, notably in a series of down-toearth messengers in Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone, with others in Electra, The Women of Trachis and Philoctetes who the audience know or suspect to be lying through their teeth. All of this sets up an intriguing series of questions for the translators (never mind actors and directors) about how much to signal to an audience. In terms of a play’s structure such equivocation serves as a kind of distraction factor, but also as a means of elaborating or delaying the plot. In Antigone the Guard makes two entrances, the first reluctantly to confess to Creon that the body of Polyneices has been buried; the second time, one choral ode after his first exit, to deliver Antigone whom he has discovered re-burying the body. His second entrance is briefer than the first, principally due to his initially dragging his feet. The first English Antigone was in prose by George Adams who had his Messenger enter with the lines: O King, I will not say that swift and hardly breathing I came with nimble Pace; for I had many Resistances of Cares, turning myself round in the way for to return. My thinking Soul spoke many Things to me. Miserable Man! Whither goest thou? Whither wilt thou go and suffer Punishment. Thou Wretch, wilt thou still tarry? (Adams 1729: 223–9, listed as Act II. Scene II)

134  Greek tragedy The speech continues in the same vein. Initially Creon responds calmly, until provoked: MESSENGER: Do

you permit me to speak any Thing? Or shall I return, and go as I came? CREON: Do you know how troublesome your Talk is? MESS: Are you bit in the Ear or Mind? CREON: Why did you search out my Grief, and where it lies? MESS: He who did it torments your Mind but I your Ears. CREON: Wo is me. How thou art all mere Talk . . . Palliate your Crime with florid Speech; but if you will not shew me who did this Thing, You shall say that Gains unjustly got are dangerous . . . . (315–326) The Messenger retreats with an aside: [Apart] But whether he be ta’en or not (for Fortune will determine that) you shall not see me returning hither again; (327–9) It may well be that Adams was uncomfortable with, or at least resistant to, the idea of a comic messenger amidst the gravity of a tragedy. Subsequent translators were less concerned. Potter (1788) offers the line from Creon ‘A quaint prater this!’ (Greek lalêma – babbler – is the common reading but alêma – cunning man – affords an alternative). The anonymous ‘Oxford translator’ turns the engagement into something close to a sophistic disputation: MESS: Will

you grant me to say something, or, turning, shall I thus  depart? CREON: Do you not know even now how disagreeably you speak? MESS: Are you pained in the ears or in the mind? CREON: Why? Do you explore my grief where it lies? MESS: He who did it pains the mind and I the ears. CREON: Alas me! How plainly you are by nature nothing but talk. MESS: I am not therefore the person who did this deed. CREON: Yes, and for money too, betraying your life. MESS: Alas! It is hard that to whom at least there are suspicions, his   suspicions should be false. (Anon 1823) The philosophic tone is underlined by the chorus that immediately follows the exit of Creon and Messenger, the famous Ode to Man, beginning here: ‘Many things are wily (deina), and nothing is more wily than man’ (332–3).

Enough give in it 135 The prominent translators of Sophocles from the end of the nineteenth century – Plumptre, Whitelaw, Coleridge and Campbell – seemed unwilling to commit themselves, but Jebb introduced something of Launcelot Gobbo from The Merchant of Venice (‘Use your legs, take the start, run away’, Act II, sc. 2) for his Guard: ‘Fool, why are you going to your certain doom? Wretch, tarrying again?’ There is an interesting note in Theodore Buckley’s first Bohn edition at the end of this scene: Mitchell [probably Thomas Mitchell, translator of Aristophanes and suggested as the translator of the anonymous ‘Oxford’ translation of Sophocles] observes, ‘The Phylax [Guard] retires, it is to be presumed, amid much laughter from the audience.’ If so, their risible powers must have been below the standard of the New Cut [possibly a reference to the Royal Victoria Theatre, commonly called The Old Vic]. An audience so excited to risibility would be invaluable to a modern farce-writer. (Buckley 1849: 173) Hugh Lloyd-Jones’ second Loeb edition (1994) certainly allows for comic playing (‘Ah, you are a chatterer by nature, it is clear!’), without dictating it. Don Taylor, another non–Greek-reading playwright, appeared to demand it: SOLDIER: Am I allowed CREON: No.

to speak, sir?



Why should you speak! Every word you say Is painful to me. SOLDIER: Well, it can’t be earache, Can it sir, not what I said! It must stick in your gullet. Or further down Maybe, a sort of pain in the conscience. CREON: Do you dare to answer me back, and make jokes About my conscience? SOLDIER: Me, sir? No, sir! I might give you earache. I can see that. I talk too much. Always have done. (Taylor 1986: 144) Comic potential too for Mueller and Krajewska-Wieczorek: First let me get myself off the hook, king. I didn’t do it and swear I don’t know who did. So, please sir, don’t take it out on me! (Mueller and Krajewska-Wieczorek 2000) and the beguiling Heaney in The Burial at Thebes who opted for prose only for the Guard, perhaps dictating the accent too: I was over a barrel. One part of me was saying, ‘Only a loony would walk himself into this,’ and another part was saying, ‘You’d be a bigger

136  Greek tragedy loony not to get to Creon first.’ It was, ‘You take the high road, I’ll take the low road.’. . . . So here I am, the old dog for the hard road. What will be, says I, will be. (Heaney 2004: 12) Marianne McDonald, also in prose except for lyric passages, managed to be faithful to Sophocles, while hinting, without dictating, the approach an actor might take: . . . If Creon hears about what happened from somebody else, how do you think you’re going to get out of trouble then? Turning this over and over, looking at it again and again, I dragged my feet, and made a short road long. Finally I screwed up my courage and decided to come. And here I am! (McDonald 2000: 8).

Euripides and the new realism Two brief examples will have to do for Euripides, though suitable candidates are queuing up in every one of his surviving plays. The first is purely linguistic, the translation of a single word at the end of Alcestis (1128) when the bemused Admetus asks if the woman he sees before him is really the wife he saw die or some phantom. Heracles who has wrestled with Death to bring her back says, jokingly that he is no psuchagôgos, the word meaning ‘leader of souls’, used elsewhere as an epithet of Hermes; in verb form to describe Socrates in Aristophanes’ Birds (1555); as a metaphor of persuasion and illusion; and of the attraction of opsis, the visual element in tragedy, by Aristotle in the Poetics (1450a33). Psuchagôgoi is even the title of a lost play of Aeschylus. Heracles is making a joke, but this is a word of rippling meaning, especially in the only Greek play to feature a resurrection. Charlotte Lennox (1759), herself translating the partial Alceste of Father Pierre Brumoy, ducked Heracles’ psuchagôgos, substituting: ‘She lives. Speak to her’. Potter (1781) translated the word as ‘one that evokes the shades’; Way (1894) ‘ghost-upraiser’; Aldington (1930) ‘sorcerer’; Roche (1974) ‘spirit-raiser’; Vellacott (1953), Lattimore (1955) and Hadas and McLean (1936) ‘necromancer’; Kovacs (1994) ‘raiser of spirits’; Davie (1996) ‘conjurer of spirits’; Blondell (1999) ‘conjurer’; Walton (1997) ‘witch-doctor’. The range reflects the range of nuances possible in this beautifully crafted scene. The second example is from Ion, only one of several Euripides plays which look forward to New Comedy, with its plot of a foundling, intrigues and deceptions, unexpected revelations and an ancient crib full of miraculously new-looking trinkets. Any potential tragedy is prevented or circumvented, and everyone ends up happy, though in some cases as the result of only a partial view of what has really happened. The sub-tragic tone is established,

Enough give in it 137 after an expositional prologue from Hermes, in the opening scene proper in lyric metre – hence musical – where Ion, a temple servant at Delphi, is tidying the stage while trying to prevent the local birds from leaving their calling cards on the shrine of Apollo. The Chorus accompanying Creusa, queen of Athens, and full of admiration for the stage décor, are followed by Xuthus, king of Athens, who has come to consult the oracle about his and Creusa’s childlessness. Told by the oracle that the first man he meets on leaving the temple shall be his son, Xuthus accosts Ion. Not all early translators were comfortable with Euripides in skittish mood. The first English Ion was that of Potter in 1781, closely followed by that of Michael Wodhull a year later. Potter certainly saw something of the humour: XUTHUS: ION:

Health to my son! This first address is proper. I have my health: be in thy senses thou, And both are well. XUTHUS: Oh let me kiss thy hand, And throw mine arms around thee. ION: Art thou, stranger, Well in thy wits; or hath the god’s displeasure Bereft thee of thy reason? XUTHUS: Reason bids, That which is dearest being found, to wish A fond embrace. ION: Off, touch me not, thy hands Will mar the garlands of the god (Potter 1781: 517–23) Arthur Way, more than a hundred years later, had little time for such frivolity, or indeed, intelligible sentence structure: XUTHUS: Let me kiss thine hand, and let me fold thy form in mine embrace! ION: Stranger, hast thy wits? – or is thy mind distraught by stroke of

heaven? XUTHUS: Right my wit ION: Hold – hands

is, if I long to kiss my best-beloved regiven. off! – the temple-garlands of Apollo rend not thou! (Way 1894)

This is hardly an improvement on the strange translation of H. B. L. [Lennard] (1889), one line of which reads: ‘Has’t thy wits, sir-stranger, maddens thee some god despite?’ Ronald F. Willetts was much more jaunty: XUTHUS: ION:

Son, my blessing – it is right to greet you in this way. Sir, my thanks. We are both well – if you are not mad.

138  Greek tragedy XUTHUS: ION: XUTHUS: ION: XUTHUS: ION:

Let me kiss your hand, embrace you. Are you sane? Or can the god have made you mad somehow? Mad, when I have found my own and want to welcome him? Stop. – or, if you touch it, you may break Apollo’s crown. I will touch you. And I am no robber. You are mine. Must I shoot this arrow first, or will you loose me now? (Willetts 1958: 517–25)

This, as might be expected, is a much more fluent piece of dramatic dialogue, which the playing could enhance, but it depends on Ion’s doubting Xuthus’ sanity. A different comic potential can be seen in Philip Vellacott’s translation, from four years earlier than the Willetts: XUTHUS: My son! All happiness to you, my son! Before anything else I must

wish you joy. ION: Thank you, I am quite happy. If you will behave sensibly it will be XUTHUS: ION: XUTHUS: ION:

better for us both. Let me kiss you and embrace you. Sir, are you in your right mind or has some god sent you mad? I have found what I longed for. Is it mad to show my love? Stop! Take your hands away. You’ll break my wreath. (Vellacott 1954)

The implication that Ion believes he is being propositioned by Xuthus, no doubt something of an occupational hazard for young temple attendants, certainly makes the scene funny. David Lan’s ‘version’ spelled it out: XUTHUS:

My child! My boy! My happiness! Oh! I wish you all that I feel! Thank you. I’m glad it went well and the answer was pleasing. Now, if you’re finished – XUTHUS: Let me embrace you! ION: You feel weak? Incense can affect people oddly. Sit here, Let go! XUTHUS: I’ll never let go. ION: Don’t paw me! If that’s what you want, there’s a place. I’ll direct you . . . You’re creasing my clothes. (Lan 1994) ION:

Kenneth McLeish used elliptical and fragmented dialogue, but it is recognizably Euripides: XOUTHOS [different



transliteration]:  Son! Son! How are you, son?

Enough give in it 139 ION:

Er. Thank you. If you’re well, we’re both well. XOUTHOS: Give me your hand. Kiss me. Hug me. ION: Pardon. What’s happened? Have the gods – ? Are you all right? XOUTHOS: All right? I’ve found it. Got it. Found it. ION: Please let go. You’ll tear my garland.

(McLeish 1997)

Conclusion The real issue in translating, as well as in directing, plays from ancient Greek, is of restraint and licence, or, if you prefer, faithfulness to or freedom from the original; of finding a cultural context into which these ancient dramas will fit both theatrically and as a historical translocation. Many of the seminal directors of the twentieth century were wary of the Greek repertoire, unless, like Brecht (1948), they ransacked Antigone for her name and a message, or, like Okhlopkov (1961), they managed to persuade an audience to find a confluence between Medea and Stalin, both Georgians, both murderers of their children (Worrall 1989: 192–5). Definitions of what may or may not qualify as a ‘translation’ ebb and flow like the tide and leave as much flotsam. Beachcombing is not the purpose here. It is still worth reopening the debate about translation and translators, their qualifications and their responsibilities, less in the hope of finding any definitive solutions than in suggesting that our theatre does deserve, alongside the plethora of currently fashionable plays based on classical mythology from Sarah Kane to Chuck Mee, the odd reminder of what superb craftsmen the Greek tragedians and comedians really were.

9 ‘Men as they ought to be’ Sophocles in translation Brill’s Companion to Sophocles (2012)

The early translations and translators No more than seven of a reputed hundred and twenty tragedies and the first part of a satyr play written by Sophocles survived into the Renaissance in their entirety. Their translation into English, with a single eccentric exception, had to wait until the eighteenth century. Three of the plays, Antigone, The Trachiniae (Women of Trachis) and Oedipus Coloneus, were first published in translation, under these titles, in the two volumes containing all seven ‘translated into English prose’ by George Adams in 1729. By this time the other four had already appeared in print. Ajax and Electra (1714) and Oedipus, King of Thebes (1715) were published in successive years in translations by a working playwright, Lewis Theobald (see Ch. 2). Philoctetes (1725) was first brought out in Dublin translated by Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, later to be the successful manager of Drury Lane and author of The Rivals, A Trip to Scarborough and The School for Scandal. All four translations should, and indeed do, exhibit a sense of performance even if there was little chance of their ever receiving one. The first, indeed the only, seventeenth-century translation of any Greek tragedy, was the Electra of Sophocles (1649), a peculiar polemic by C[hristopher] W[ase]. It is here that the history proper of Sophocles in English begins. The year, 1649, and the place of publication, The Hague, give a clue to this unusual political document. It does little service to Sophocles but is undeniably a translation of his Electra (if a stilted and pedestrian one), in the sense that the episodes and dialogue are exactly patterned on the Greek. But Wase had his agenda. Charles I had been King of England, Ireland and Scotland since 1625, but after defeat in the Civil War and the establishment of the Commonwealth, was executed in January of 1649 on a specially erected scaffold in Whitehall. Christopher Wase was at the time a royalist Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Sophocles’ Electra deals with the revenge of Agamemnon’s brother and sister for the death of their father at the hands of their mother Clytemnestra. Wase’s dedication of Electra to ‘her Highnesse, the Lady Elizabeth’, the

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  141 younger daughter of the former king, is couched in such a way as to suggest that she should take Sophocles’ play as an example of how she should herself seek vengeance.1 There was no way it could be published in England. It proved of little effect anyway. Elizabeth was thirteen at the time, and locked up in Carisbrooke Castle where she died a year later. The ‘Persons of the Enterlude’ are listed as: The Tutour and Foster Orestes, the Prince Electra, the Princesse Royall The Quirr of Maids of Honour dwelling near the Palace Chrysotheame, the sister of Electra Clytemnestra, the unnatural Spouse of Agamemnon who conspired against him Egist, the paramour of Clytemnestra and Conspiratour against the King. There is some sense of staging for a play never to be staged, introduced by a separate set of Notes on the ‘Managing of the Scenethe Postures and Motions, with the Carriage of the Action’. Wase’s comment in the Dedication (2) that ‘Plays are the Mirrours wherein Men’s Actions are reflected to their own view’ is interesting at such an early date for setting up a kind of manifesto which may serve for future generations, both as a justification for the drama of classical Athens and for its translation into other languages. It suggests a pliability in these ancient plays which matches their immediate sense of parable in the Athenian society of the fifth century bce with a universality applicable to many another time and culture. What is abundantly clear is that any sense Wase has of the significance of the drama is betrayed as badly as he felt his King had been – in his case by a deplorable infelicity of expression. The ‘Tutour’ in the Prologue with Orestes and Pylades, reacts to a sound from the palace with the following: Methinks, within door, Child, I seemed to heare One of the maidens keep a groaning there. (Wase: 4; Sophocles: 78–9) His description of the chariot race shows no improvement in his rhyming verse: All the Crisean heath did cover’d lie With shatter’d limbs of his shipwrackt Chivalry. This he of Athens shrowd at’s reins espies . . . . (28; Sophocles: 729–33)

142  Greek tragedy But when the ring behind the sweet youth slide Down from the box, with a shrill shriek they cri’d. (29; Sophocles: 745–7) Wase’s Electra is an inauspicious harbinger for the almost four hundred translations of Sophocles which have been published in the years between 1649 and the present day, but it does serve to demonstrate how Greek tragedy in translation, and especially the plays of Sophocles, may come to reflect as much the period of the translator as the time of Pericles. There is a debate here, on which a number of men of letters and playwrights had already engaged, about the nature and definition of translation, and especially the translation of dramatic work both for a reading and a playgoing public.2 It is a debate which shows little sign of cooling down. One of the earliest English theorists about translation was the poet laureate John Dryden who famously wrote ‘For this last half year I have been troubled with the disease (as I may call it) of translation’ (Dryden 1685, in Watson vol. 2, 14). At the time he was translating from Latin – Virgil, Lucretius, Theocritus and Horace – and was to go on to write several essays on translation issues, including the substantial ‘Of Dramatic Poesy: an Essay’ (1668b), ‘A Defence of “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” ’ (1668a) and ‘To the Earl of Roscommon, on his Essay on Translated Verse’ (1684). He was also a dramatist of note with more than thirty plays to his credit, both tragic and comic, who in 1678 produced an Oedipus, written in collaboration with Nathaniel Lee. Their Oedipus a Tragedy was first performed at the Dorset Garden Theatre with Betterton in the title role and Mrs Betterton as Jocasta. Whether Dryden and Lee’s play can be classified as a ‘translation’ of Sophocles is not even a moot point. There would be a better case for suggesting it is a translation from Corneille, the first three characters to appear being Alcander, Diocles and Pyracmon (all borrowed from Corneille). Adrastus, Haemon, Phorbas, Diocles, Eurydice and Aegeon duly follow, none of them with a Sophoclean precedent. The play owes everything to Restoration Tragedy. In a night of thunder, ‘shooting Stars’ and ‘Chaos’ (Act II sc. 1) the truth is revealed by a series of ‘Prodigies’. There is a Senecan necromancy scene with the Ghost of Laius and nine deaths in the final four pages.3 The point is – and this is significant in the history of Greek tragedy in ­English – that Dryden was himself a translator from Greek as well as Latin, and a playwright with a shrewd sense of what the Restoration audience wanted. When he and Nathaniel Lee decided to embark on their Oedipus, Dryden knew his Sophocles well enough to write in the Preface to the printed edition: . . . that Oedipus was the most celebrated piece of all Antiquity: That Sophocles, not only the greatest Wit, but one of the greatest Men in Athens, made it for the Stage at the Publick Cost, and that it had the Reputation of being his Masterpiece, not only among the Seven of his which are still remaining, but of the greater Number which are perish’d. (Dryden in Roper 1985: 115)

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  143 Dryden would have been quite capable of translating Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, had he seen any point in so doing, and submitting it for public performance, had he felt the public could have put up with it. In 1679 when the Dryden and Lee play was printed there was no translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus in English and not the slightest chance of Sophocles featuring in a professional production. Thirty years later when Lewis Theobald’s translations became available, there was still no suggestion that they might be for the public stage rather than the private library. Though he embarked on a career in the law, before he was twenty, Theobald had had a play successfully performed, and repeated. He was later to join John Rich’s theatre at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and become a leader in the movement for a ‘proper’ text of Shakespeare, whose works appeared from the Restoration onwards in often barely recognizable adaptations. Theobald may have intended to translate the whole of Sophocles, but it was George Adams who first published all the seven plays, in two volumes in 1729, with a lengthy Preface and a dedication to William, Duke of Manchester. There are extended footnotes in Adams and adequate stage directions, apart from the setting up of the suicide of Ajax in a forest, rather than on the seashore. Unfortunately, Adams is prosy stuff, especially in the choruses, and lacks any of the sense of dramatic awareness to be found in Theobald. Thomas Francklin in 1759 was to go to the other extreme with a verse translation, handicapped, if not hamstrung, by the imposition of a notional rhyming pattern on the choruses leading, in consecutive couplets of Antigone, to ‘known’ rhyming with ‘son’, ‘Jove’ with ‘love’ and ‘strewed’ with ‘flood’. Francklin clearly appealed to the taste for a heightened language of his and subsequent times with a series of reprints as late as 1886. These may have been in part reaction to the complete works of Sophocles by Robert Potter (1788), his latest and least convincing work on the Greek tragedians, and the much-revised Oxford edition whose anonymous translator was well advised to remain so, and has so far still evaded identification.4 Lewis Campbell and Edward Coleridge proved significant translators of the entire works in the latter years of the nineteenth century, but both were eclipsed by the critical approach of the mighty Sir Richard Jebb, whose weighty three volumes of commentary and translation (1883–96) have affected, if not dominated, Sophoclean scholarship ever since. Jebb, coinciding as he did with the rebirth of Greek tragedy in performance, was the first to offer a major stage history of the Athenian tragedians in what we might now call the area of ‘reception’. His own somewhat literal readings of the staging process (as in a naturalistic identification in the Tutor’s description of Argos, during the opening scene of Electra, as features of the actual theatre of Dionysus in fifth-century bce Athens) no longer convinces, but his illumination of the broad influence of Sophocles as one of the founders of European theatre cannot be challenged.5 Together with Gilbert Murray, though less for Sophocles in Murray’s case than in his translations of Euripides, these two classical heavyweights created a foundation for the modern era of translating the Greeks for performance.

144  Greek tragedy

Text in context Finding a dramatic language in English for Sophocles has always proved a challenge. There is a thematic and theatrical range within the seven surviving Sophoclean tragedies; there are conflicting moral issues too and contradictions. Writing some seventy years after the death of Sophocles in 405 bce, Aristotle implied in his Poetics that, as far he was concerned, Sophocles was the greatest of all the Athenian tragedians, an innovator in theatrical technique and an imitator (mimêtês) in the mould of Homer (Poetics 1448a: 26). He quoted Sophocles as saying that ‘he portrayed men as they ought to be [or ‘as they ought to be portrayed’ – not quite the same thing], Euripides as they are’ (Poetics 1460b: 35–6). Plato, Phrynichus the comedian, and Aristotle elsewhere, had all represented Sophocles as a placid figure, at least in old age, comfortable and relatively content. From such an assessment of his personality grew up the popular view of the tragedian, especially within Victorian neoclassicism, as someone whose plays were the perfect examples, not only of men as they ought to be, but also of tragedy as it ought to be, sublime, detached and even passionless. A comment on him to be found in Aristophanes’ Frogs (405 bce) reinforces the impression. When Dionysus consults Heracles about visiting Hades to bring back Euripides and the hero asks why he would not prefer to resurrect Sophocles, the god of the theatre replies ‘I want to see how his son manages, and anyway, Sophocles was eukolos up here and he’ll be eukolos down there too’ (79–82).6 Eukolos literally means ‘having a good digestion’, hence ‘amiable’ or ‘easy-going’. A comedy, particularly an Aristophanic comedy, may not be the best place to find reliable information about any major figure of the fifth century bce, be he politician, soldier, philosopher or fellow playwright. Aristophanes might also have needed to find an excuse to rule out Sophocles, who was alive when he started to write the play, but died while it was in rehearsal. Sophocles at any rate came to be seen to represent in tragedy an Athens of harmony and proportion equivalent, as Richard Jenkyns suggested, to the architecture of the Parthenon or the statuary of Pheidias (Jenkyns 1980: especially Chs. 4 and 5). Forgotten was the fact that Sophocles was a soldier, elected General (possibly twice) and a member of a healing cult; and that he may have flourished throughout the glorious decades of Athenian supremacy, both military and cultural, but that he also lived his final years in a battered Athens hurtling to destruction, a whole generation of young men virtually eradicated. The last thing a translator needs to suggest about Sophocles is that he was above and beyond the realities of living and of dying. There is nothing bland or romantic in these seven plays, either physically or ethically. Much of the impetus of Sophoclean drama resides in the sheer fallibility of the human body and the human mind. His was a world of almost constant warfare and limited medical resources. Death and corporeal inadequacy inhabit all his seven surviving plays, from the madness of Ajax to

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  145 the gangrenous foot of Philoctetes. Oedipus was maimed when exposed as a baby. Heracles, the strongest man who ever lived, appears in agony on a stretcher. Out of nine deaths within the action six are suicides, and there would be another if Heracles in The Women of Trachis could only muster the strength to kill himself instead of trying vainly to persuade his son do the job for him. Choruses reflect on the misery of the human condition. Their betters indulge, or have indulged in, parricide, matricide, fratricide, and whatever term you use to describe the killing of a niece, a stepfather or a lot of sheep and cattle that, in his derangement, Ajax believes are his comrades-in-arms. There is incest; there is mutilation. Sophocles’ plays are steeped in physical and mental decay. The challenge for the translator of Sophocles has less to do with identifying a stoic language of heroism, than finding enough terms for suffering. If anguish provides the context for Sophocles, the dramatic situation is often built around the very human causes and justifications for a particular course of action. Though the characters of Aeschylus make their own decisions, there is usually a sense that they are barely, if at all, in control of their own lives. In Sophocles characters have to face some level of personal responsibility, including Oedipus whose crimes may be unwitting, but are the result of, and which result in, a programme of cardinal errors of judgement in the past and the present by all sorts of people, from defiance of oracles to refusal to follow orders, to lying to save face. In all of this, language becomes a flexible tool to justify their attitude for characters such as Lichas (The Women of Trachis), Clytemnestra (Electra), Polyneices (Oedipus at Colonus), Menelaus (Ajax), Odysseus (Philoctetes) or Creon (Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus). Often in Sophocles simple words such as kalos, philos and philia, nomos, hosios, sophos, dikê and dikaios, gennaios, phronein, hamartia or timê turn out to have shades of meaning which can be manipulated to suit an argument. Kalos can be both more and less than ‘fine’ or ‘beautiful’; philos and philia than ‘loving’ and ‘friendship’; nomos than ‘law’ or ‘custom’; hosios than ‘devout’ or ‘sanctioned by natural law’; sophos than ‘wise’ or ‘clever’; dikaios/dikê than ‘appropriate’ and ‘justice’; gennaios than ‘noble’ or ‘genuine’; phronein than ‘to intend’ or ‘to support’; hamartia than ‘failure of judgement’ or ‘mistake’; timê than ‘distinction’ or ‘respect’. Here is a twin challenge to the translator, both in finding a range of vocal expression for what is virtually beyond words and of hitting upon an English equivalent, sometimes more than one, for a single Greek term to accommodate the manner in which the speaker is playing upon the breadth or ambiguity of the original. If this may be true to some extent of any translation from ancient Greek, of poetry, oratory or even history, in translating dramatic material there is always the additional dimension of performance to allow for, where the stage action may confirm or contradict what is being said, and the inflection may depend upon the character either of the speaker or his immediate audience, or indeed the theatre audience with their different overall perception to that of those onstage.

146  Greek tragedy

Words and concepts With so many issues coming down to complex or contradictory concepts, both style and mood can come down to single words. An example can be taken from the two early versions of Electra. A single brief passage of Chorus (containing the genitive of dikê, one of the ‘ambiguous’ words previously identified), can show the difference between Wase’s Electra and, sixty-five years later, Theobald’s Electra. It comes from the scene when Orestes returns with Pylades after the murder of Clytemnestra, but before Aegisthus makes his entrance, still believing that Orestes has been killed in a chariot race. Electra welcomes her brother and urges him to return indoors when Aegisthus is spotted heading for the palace. The Chorus intervene with a brief lyric comment, a fairly literal translation of which might read: It would be a good idea to speak into the man’s ear some brief words so that he may hurry to the hidden ordeal of justice [dikê]. (Sophocles Electra: 1437–41) Christopher Wase (1649): Twere best a while picquere,7 And buzze into his ear Some idle tale, and play the fish, that so He unawares may rush as judgements blow (51, for Sophocles Electra: 1437–41) Lewis Theobald (1714): Twere fit a while we entertain the Tyrant With courteous Accents and Dissembled Meekness; To win him on, and sooth him into Ruine. (Act V, sc. 2, 40–2) The passage is not an easy one for the translator, as the following selection demonstrates from the other fifty or so translations of Sophocles’ Electra to have appeared in print since those of Wase and Theobald. George Adams (1729): It were very convenient that we speak a few mild Words in this Man’s Ear to deceive him, who while he suspects no Ill, falls into the Punishment which the Goddess of Vengeance prepares for him. (vol. 1: 156)

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  147 Charlotte Lennox (1759, from the French of Father Brumoy): Deceive the victim, princess, by some probable discourse, that he may fall more easily into the snare which the Goddess of Vengeance has prepared for him. (vol. 1: 154) Robert Potter (1788, not following the Greek line numbering): What here th’ occasion calls for, be my care. This man, then – ’twere well to sooth his ear With a few gentle words, that he may rush Without a thought on their avenging swords. (1474–7) Anon, The Oxford Translation (1823, revised by Theodore Alois Buckley for the Bohn edition, 1849): It would be useful to whisper a few words at least as mildly as possible to this man in his ear, that headlong he may rush into the covert strife of vengeance. (1437–41) Lewis Campbell (1873): Few words, as if in gentleness, ’twere good To utter in his ear. That eager and unaware. One step may launch him on the field of blood. (1437–41) Richard Jebb (1883): ’Twere well to soothe his ear with some few words of seeming gentleness, that he may rush blindly upon the struggle with his doom. (1437–41) E. D. A. Morshead (1895): It were wise to gloze something softly into this man’s ear, that he may rush unawares into the wrestle with his rightful doom.8 (60) E. F. Watling (1953): You must give him a friendly greeting To lure him unsuspecting To his reckoning with justice. (114)

148  Greek tragedy H. D. F. Kitto (1962): (sings) Speak some gentle words to him That he may fall unawares Into the retribution that awaits him. (1439–41) Kenneth McLeish (1990): Honey his ears with words To welcome a royal king; Let him suspect nothing Till Justice’s trap is sprung. (1438–41) Hugh Lloyd-Jones (1994): It would be well to utter in his ear a few gentle words, so that he may rush into the hidden ordeal Justice has ready for him. (1438–41) Frank McGuinness (‘a new version’ 1997): Speak gently to him. Let him walk blindly into the trap of Justice (62) Jenny March (1998): It would be as well to speak a few words in his ear with feigned gentleness, so that he will rush unsuspecting into the ordeal to which justice brings him. (1438–41) Michael Ewans (2000): It would be best to slip some gentle words into his ear, so he may rush into the hidden trap of Justice. (1438–41) Paul Roche (2001): Tell him something reassuring Inducing him to hurtle blindfold Into the hidden trap and tussle with his doom. (102)

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  149 Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton (2004): A quiet word or two in his ear Would not go amiss. Win him over And trick him into Justice’s trap. (62) Even such an uncontroversial passage of Chorus, which serves dramatically to cover the exit of Orestes and Pylades into the palace, followed by the immediate arrival of Aegisthus, raises a host of translation issues, which could occupy the whole of the rest of this chapter: verse or prose, literal or figurative, style, assonance, heightened language or clarity, stage directions, the unspoken and the unspeakable, the purpose of translation, and the difference between written and performance text. How much difference does it make to capitalize ‘Justice’, as do several of the more recent, while others offer a lower case ‘justice’ and some of the earlier translations a variation on ‘vengeance’: all for the Greek dikê? As the aim here is to concentrate on Sophocles and his seven plays, examples are important to point the difference between the preoccupations and preferences dictated, not so much by the text of Sophocles and the time when he was creating his plays, as by the period in which the translation was published; a commentary, perhaps, on the theatre of that time, the morals, the theological, political and social priorities of the translators. One noteworthy exchange within the text manages to encompass both Sophocles’ approach to the Electra story, so different to that of Aeschylus or Euripides, and how it may be viewed in other periods. Only a dozen lines before the comments of the Chorus, variously translated earlier, the issue of matricide is raised, the major theme of Aeschylus’ Oresteia and a central issue of the Euripides Electra. When the Orestes of Sophocles emerges from the palace having executed his mother, he has the following brief exchange with his sister which translates literally, if archaically, as: ELECTRA: ORESTES:



How have ye sped, Orestes? All within Is well (kalôs), if Phoebus’ oracle spake well (kalôs). (F. Storr for Loeb 1913: 1424–5)

‘Kalos’ is another of those flexible words identified as having as many positive, or implied positive, nuances as the situation requires. Kalôs is the adverb, often used in reply to a question, and as accommodating as the speaker chooses to make it. Electra asks her brother how things have turned out. He replies ‘kalôs’, as long as Apollo prophesied ‘kalôs’. Here is how a selection of those translators quoted previously and a couple of others

150  Greek tragedy handle this delicate moment which appears to dismiss matricide as something of minor importance, as long as it was sanctioned by the god. All show some appreciation of the implications of the exchange. EL: OR:



How are things carry’d? Things within are wrought Well, if Apollo’s wisedom [sic] well hath taught. (Wase)

EL: OR:

Speak, my Orestes, how succeeds our Cause? All’s well within. Unless the God deceive: (Theobald)

EL: OR:



Well, brother—— All’s secure within the palace, if the Oracle of Apollo does not deceive us. (Lennox)

EL: OR:



Orestes, how have ye fared? What is done there within is well done, if ’twas well counselled by Apollo. (Morshead)

EL: OR:

All right? All right . . . if Apollo was right. (Watling 1953)

EL: OR:



Orestes . . . It’s alright. Inside, it is alright, If Apollo’s prophecy is kept. (McLeish)

EL: OR:



Orestes, how did you do? It all went well in the palace. The prophecy Apollo made has been fulfilled. (Roche 2001)

EL: OR:



Orestes, how did it go? In the palace all is well, If Apollo prophesied well. (McDonald and Walton)

Most of these translations choose to repeat the word kalôs, in some way. Those that do not surely miss the stress of the dialogue.9

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  151

The translation of suffering The American poet Anne Carson drew attention to the manner in which Greek playwrights highlighted ‘outbursts of sound’, notably in connection with Sophocles’ Electra (Carson 1996: 5–11). Two other plays, The Women of Trachis and Philoctetes, feature extended scenes where a central character is in extreme pain, Heracles from the effect of the robe imbrued with the poisoned blood of Nessus, Philoctetes from the festering wound on his foot. Heracles is carried in on a litter and is in agony for the remaining three hundred lines of the play. Sophocles establishes the extent of his wretchedness in Heracles’ opening speeches, responding in lyrics to the iambics of Hyllus and the Old Man. The second of these speeches has the quality of an operatic aria, mixing physical distress with pleas for relief and invective aimed at the perceived cause of his anguish. For the translator without the screen of music such speeches are tricky. Jebb’s dense prose is not helpful here: HERACLES: O my son, where are you? Raise me, take hold of me – so, so! Alas my destiny! Again, again the cruel pest (daimôn) leaps forth to rend me, the fierce plague with which none may cope! O Pallas, Pallas, it tortures me again! Alas, my son, pity your father – draw a blameless sword and strike beneath my collarbone and heal this pain with which your godless mother has made me wild! So may I see her fall, exactly as she has destroyed me! Sweet Hades, brother of Zeus, give me rest, give me rest, end my woe by a swift doom. (Jebb 1892: 1024–43) Watling’s verse translation of the passage is milder, but more palatable at this remove in time: Where are you, my son? Hold me, here . . . here . . . and lift me up . . . Oh God! The foul fiend [daimôn] grips me again . . . He will have my life – There is no help against him. O Pallas, Pallas, I am in torment! O my son, For pity’s sake, your sword – in just mercy, strike Over my heart, here, and put an end to the pain That galls my flesh. And let me see the same swift death Punish your mother for this impious thing she has done. Sweet Death, brother of God, send me to sleep, to sleep, And end this misery in one sharp stroke of doom. (Watling 1953: 152–3)

152  Greek tragedy For most of the rest of the scene Heracles speaks of his suffering and feeling of despair, resorting to expressions of pain with no literal meaning, ‘iou, iou . . . oimoi’ or the repeated ‘aiai, ô talas, aiai’ of a cry of pain (1081–2). Adams, the first translator of the play, chose to ignore the expressions of pain altogether; Lennox to jump through the entire early part of the scene without translating any of it, cutting to the request to Hyllus to kill his father. More recent translators have tried not to shirk the implications of these ‘noises’ and the demands on a modern actor in the role: ‘Ah, o god! . . . Ah, it’s burning’ (Ewans); or simply transliterate when Sophocles reaches beyond coherent speech, a solution undertaken elsewhere on a regular basis by McLeish as well as by McDonald and Walton. The Women of Trachis is believed to have been an early play (though even that probably means that Sophocles was over fifty when he wrote it). The later Philoctetes (409 bce) introduces a stage picture from a time when Sophocles may well have been influenced by the more realistic approach of Euripides.10 The scene is set outside a cave by the sea, where newly washed bandages are seen hanging in the sun to dry. Philoctetes, exiled from human company because of the smell of his infected foot, is onstage continuously from line 219 to the end of the play, his festering wound causing him to faint at one point and hindering his every move. Marooned for nine years the Greek hero has survived, but only just. His hurt is as severe as ever, but he has come to treat his pain, as long-term sufferers will, almost as a living entity. When it overwhelms him he responds with a series of screams ‘a a a a’, ‘papai, apappapai, papa, papa, papa, papai’ and begs Neoptolemus to cut off his foot. In despair he calls on Gaia to save him from further suffering. Translators have done what they can, but it is not easy. Not much may change in a hundred years: E. P. Coleridge (1891): O Earth, receive me as I am, a dying man; for this agony no longer suffers me to stand upright. (819–20) R. G. Ussher (1990): Oh earth, receive me, without delay, in death; for this pain no longer allows me to stand upright. Both translations are more staccato than the original, but such ellipsis from the translator may well do a service to the playwright when the stage action signifies more than its verbal expression. The longing for death is familiar enough in Sophocles. During Philoctetes the maimed castaway twice threatens suicide. Heracles in The Women of Trachis orders his son Hyllus to dispatch him.11 In Ajax the disgraced hero falls on his sword, apparently in full view of the audience. His final speech could be a soliloquy, the action having moved from before his tent to the

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  153 seashore, enabling the Chorus to leave in search of him. Soliloquies are unusual in Greek tragedy, though this would not be the only example. A detailed analysis from the perspective of the translator is beyond the scope of the present study, but some points stand out. Ajax’s farewell to life occupies fifty lines, but is not all introspection. Much is addressed to Zeus as though he were present, rather than in the form of a prayer. He addresses the ‘light’ (pheggos), his home in Salamis, Athens and the Athenians, and the plains of Troy. The end is brief, beyond pain and beyond despair, his mind made up, calm. Though Antigone shows a similar dignity and Deianira a similar resolve, the solitary moment of decision from Ajax has no real parallel in Greek tragedy. Literally it reads: AJAX:

This is the last word Ajax speaks to you. From now on it is those in Hades I will address. (864–5)

Simple speeches often prove the most resistant to translation. His speech has been addressed to the light of day, the Sun, Athens, Troy and Salamis, his home, but the ‘you’ could as well include the audience. Sophocles ends with a verb, the longest and strongest word in the sentence. This is not a matter of versification or sentence structure, but of dramatic impact. None of the following, I feel, each selected from a different century, quite hits the right tone: ’Tis the last word Ajax shall speak on earth: The rest be uttered to the shades below. (Francklin 1759) This is the last word that Ajax speaks to you: henceforth he will speak in Hades with the dead. (Coleridge 1891) Farewell! This last word Ajax gives to you; The rest he keeps, to speak among the dead. (John Moore 1957) . . . You who have nursed me, I bid you farewell! These are the last words Ajax has to say. The rest I’ll tell in Hades to the dead. (Shomit Dutta 2001)

Translation and ‘dramatic impact’ Gilbert Murray was a major influence on the translation of Greek tragedy during the first half of the twentieth century, but not always a benign

154  Greek tragedy one. His idiosyncratic and archaic verse, often strained by the requirements of rhyme, was not to the taste of many commentators, as varied as Edith Hamilton, T. S. Eliot and Peter Green. Many of his translations, however well they have sold over the years, now look hopelessly dated. What he did achieve, not least through his contact with the Court Theatre in the early part of the twentieth century, was to ensure that most subsequent translations have at least attempted to show sympathy to the possibility of performance. From the 1950s the imperative to produce a clear text that would be suitable for the classroom, but also for reading out loud, drove the Penguin Classics and Chicago’s The Complete Greek Tragedies series. Accessibility was as important as faithfulness to the original, and obscurity of meaning was the cardinal crime. Old translations soon become museum pieces and ‘old’ tends to mean anything detectably written in the spirit of its own time. In recent years the Loeb editions have been given a makeover, and in the past twenty years there have been a number of spirited (and occasionally dispiriting) rivals to Penguin and Chicago from large and small presses which specialize in classics or drama, chief amongst them Aris and Phillips, Cambridge University Press, Dent (Everyman), Faber and Faber, Focus, Goldsmiths, Hackett, Methuen Drama, Nick Hern Books, Oberon, Oxford University Press, Pennsylvania University Press, Signet, Smith and Kraus and The University of Massachusetts Press. Only the Dover translations, cheap because out of copyright, are wholly wooden. The others differ considerably one from another, according to their special remit. Those with an adjacent Greek text often have copious and helpful notes; others are geared towards a playscript whose priority is to appeal to directors and to provide actors with material on which they feel they can work. Trial and error, as well as the dictats of bookshops, decide which have the most impressive shelf life and sales. Another category of translator now comes into focus: the modern playwright/poet with little or no knowledge of the original Greek, but a deep understanding of the dramatic issues, and the pen to liberate them in the English of today. In the past century, and especially from the 1920s to the 1950s, there was a vogue in Europe for classical plays extended, developed or reworked in a modern context. As Hall and Macintosh (2005) have so comprehensively catalogued, this had been a fruitful field between 1660 and 1914 (their termini). The Greeks themselves returned time and again to the same myths. The surviving Sophocles seven contain no play whose source was not appropriated or matched by his contemporaries in Athens. Marianne McDonald has shown that the operatic repertoire from 1600 onwards owes a huge debt to Sophocles.12 There is also a fine range of evocations of ‘Sophoclean’ plays within different cultures, recent versions of the Oedipus to add to those of Cocteau, Anouilh and Berkoff, now set in Nigeria, Japan, nineteenth-century South Carolina or a twentiethcentury Pentecostal church.13 In the work of such as Seamus Heaney,

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  155 Brendan Kennelly, Frank McGuinness and Blake Morrison, translation becomes a very different animal. Though all the seven plays have been seen in modernized versions in recent years – eight if Tony Harrison’s reworking of Sophocles’ fragmentary satyr play as The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus (1990) is included – Antigone has been the most popular choice. This is unsurprising, the play presenting a timeless confrontation between public obligation and private conscience. The option is open to the ‘straight’ translator to come down on the side either of Creon or of Antigone. The best leave open the possibility of dividing sympathies between man and woman; uncle and sister of the unburied corpse; commander and civilian. Moral and political issues are there to be resolved by each reader, director or audience member. There is room here for no more than a single example. After Antigone has been condemned to be walled up alive in a cave as punishment for flaunting Creon’s decree and burying her brother Polyneices, she embarks on a long speech justifying what she has done. One section tends to divide translators and commentators, or at the least, make them feel uncomfortable.14 Antigone speaks of her fate as the reward for burying her brother and continues in Hugh Lloyd-Jones’ literal translation in the new Loeb edition (1994): ANTIGONE:

Yet in the eyes of the wise I did well to honour you; for never, had children of whom I was the mother or had my husband perished and been mouldering there, would I have taken on myself this task, in defiance of the citizens. In virtue of what law [nomos, another of the ‘ambiguous’ words] do I say this? If my husband had died. I could have had another, and a child by another man, if I had lost the first, but with my mother and my father in Hades below, I could never have had another brother. Such was the law for whose sake I did you special honour, but to Creon I seemed to do wrong and to show shocking recklessness, O my own brother. (Lloyd-Jones 1994: 904–15)

This is a speech in iambics, not lyrics, and here if ever, is justification for Hilaire Belloc’s injunction in his Taylorian lecture at Oxford in 1931 for the translator to take note not only of the literary form but also ‘the atmosphere of the word’ (Belloc 1931: 17). These three poetic ‘versions’, from approximately the same passage of text, speak for themselves. My brother! It is for you I suffer this. This is my reward for loving you. And yet I only gave you what is rightly yours. If I had been the mother of children, If I had a husband in my home, I would not have done for them What I did for you.

156  Greek tragedy Why do I speak such words? A lost child can be replaced And other husbands can be found. But when my father and mother are dead No brother’s life Can ever flower in me again. In me flourished the very best of men. Men! Creon! He sends me to my grave Because I acted out my love. (Brendan Kennelly 1996: 37) I can see Polyneices waiting too: laying your body out was the death of me. but I’ve no regrets – I did right to break the law. I’d not have done it if I’d lost a child. I’d not have done it if I’d lost a husband. But you can find a second husband if you lose the first; and if your baby dies, you have another. But when your father and mother have passed on, you’ve no chance of getting a new brother. (Blake Morrison 2003: 100) . . . when I did What people knew in their heart of hearts Was right, I was doomed for it. Not for a husband, not even for a son Would I have broken the law. Another husband I could always find And have other sons by him if one were lost. But with my father gone, and my mother gone, Where can I find another brother, ever? The law of this same logic I obeyed when I disobeyed Creon. It’s a rule of life, But all Creon can see is a crazy girl He must get rid of. (Seamus Heaney 2004 The Burial at Thebes: 40)15 Any conclusion from all of this can only be that translating plays from ancient Greek into English, or any other language for that matter, is both an art and a craft best served by those with a theatrical as well as a linguistic sensibility. Sophocles was one of three great tragedians, living and making plays in the same city and in the same century, but wholly individual. Each has subsequently spoken in different ways to different generations. Sophocles’ medium

Sophocles: ‘Men as they ought to be’  157 and means may have undergone changes to their nature. His messages, even in translation, are as cogent as ever they were. They have been investigated here not in the hope of coming up with a formula for the translator of Sophocles, nor even making judgements on surviving translations. Translators are unwise to do that, their only reason for undertaking a new version of the original being a conviction that their own will be superior to anything previous. Translation of a stage play is an imprecise and imperfect art, the most important aspect of which is that it should speak to its new readership or audience with as much of the impact of the source as is possible for the target.

Notes 1 See Hall and Macintosh (2005): 164–5; and Hall (1999). 2 See especially Tytler (1790). 3 See Hall and Macintosh (2005): 17–24, who point out that Lee was probably responsible for Acts IV and V, including the bloodbath; and the Introduction to the translation of Oedipus the King by Richard Jebb (1887): xxxiii–xlv. 4 For an extensive list of translations, see the Appendix to Walton (2006). 5 Jebb (1883). Editions of individual plays were subsequently published or revised by Jebb at regular intervals. 6 See Walton (2005b, 26–38 in Greek, 214–26 in English). 7 Picquere. A rare word found in Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, meaning to ‘flirt’ or ‘engage in banter with’. 8 Morshead’s ‘gloze’ is an archaic coinage, though possibly was not so to Morshead (see Ch. 3: 51 and Stray 1996). 9 Similar exercises could be applied to various passages from any of the plays. For some comparisons from Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus, see Walton (2006): 85–105 and (2008): 161–3. 10 By 409 bce they had been rivals at drama festivals, sometimes in direct competition with each other, for nearly fifty years. 11 It was Philoctetes, not a character in this play, who eventually agreed to light the pyre. 12 McDonald (2001). See also on Robert Auletta’s translation in ‘Peter Sellars’ Ajax: The Obsolescence of Honor’, McDonald (1992): 77–87. 13 See especially on aspects of interculturalism Steiner (1984); Scolnicov and Holland (1989); Hardwick (2000); McDonald and Walton (2002); Dillon and Wilmer (2005); Hardwick and Stray (2008); Lianeri and Zajko (2008). 14 Goethe was not alone in believing that the lines must be an interpolation. 15 Heaney’s ‘version’ was turned into an opera in 2008, with music by Dominique Le Gendre. Some of the speeches, of the Guard and Messenger for example, remained spoken, not sung.

10 The translator’s invisibility Handling irony GRAMMA (2014)

Most translators of Greek drama would agree that different principles apply to the translation of comedy and tragedy. But what of those lighter moments to be found in Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the outright comic aspects of much of Euripides? Tragic irony is usually easy to spot, but is the same true of Euripides for whom palpable parody of Aeschylus may suggest that a similar tone should be found elsewhere in his plays to represent his perceived iconoclasm? Is the danger in making decisions about comic irony that they will determine the translator’s interpretation and dictate it to readers, directors and performers? All translation from one language to another comes down to equivalence of one kind or another. Definition of that term depends primarily on the nature of the material. There is not much arguing with the proposition that any sort of medical procedure or mathematical premise requires word-forword accuracy as an essential. When it comes to a haiku or concrete poetry, a more complicated equivalence will come into play, relegating the literal in favour of the ‘spirit’ of the original. By and large, though, translation of creative material, prose or verse, involves the direct relationship of source and target. Translation of a play has its different dimension. What might seem to be source and target are no more than intermediate positions from which the creative elements of live dramatic performance – involving directors, designers, performers – fashion something for the true target, the audience (see Ch. 8). The same extended relationship, I would argue, relates to a play on the page where allowance for creative potential may remind the reader that a drama has a more protean nature than to be confined under the signature of translators trying to inflict on an ancient playwright notions that they wish were there, but are not. This is a central argument against translators, except for indicating entrances and exits, inserting or inventing stage directions, or worse, attempting, as in many American translations of Roman Comedy, to prescribe a definitive production (see also Ch. 4).1 For all the need to recognize and even draw attention to performance writing, providing solutions to questions of staging is not the translator’s job. It leads to an inflexible idea of what the original playwright had in mind and translates to support it. The real task of the

The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony  159 dramatic translator for the page, I have often maintained, is less to interpret the text than to identify alternatives or possibilities in the source; to open the play up rather than close it down. Anything else is an original work, ‘based on . . . ’, ‘a version of . . . ’, or ‘adapted from . . . ’. This is no bad thing in itself. Ancient myths provide a shorthand exposition without necessarily dictating a conclusion or means of reaching it. The Greek tragedians returned to legend time and again, not to plagiarize or imitate their predecessors, but to find a different slant on an apparently familiar story and challenge audience expectation. Over the centuries since the first translations of Greek plays, arguably into Latin, there have been hundreds of similar ‘versions’ of old stories with classical settings, adapted with their new audience as the main target. This plea for neutrality or anonymity in translation, as opposed to in adaptation, is not to downgrade the translators’ function and skill – quite the opposite. It is to acknowledge their need for a deep understanding of the dramaturgy to be found in the original, as well as the conditions for which the playwrights were creating their work. The Greeks wrote for masked actors, for a civic and religious event, an open-air theatre and in competition. That is the culture of which the translator needs to take note and for which a full cultural equivalence is desirable. Few would any longer dispute that archaeological reconstruction of an ancient play in performance would serve no purpose unless you could similarly reconstruct the mindset of the audience the playwright had in mind. Self-evidently this is impossible in the light of the accumulated experience of artistic and sociopolitical attitude forged by the passage of time and circumstance. Even a revival of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia later in the fifth century bce after his death must have acquired new resonances, political as well as dramatic. While still believing that anything claiming to be a ‘translation’ requires a background in the source language as well as the target, I have to confess that in the current climate of theatre practice and cross-cultural reference, it is more difficult to reconcile faithfulness to the original with the demands of drama as a living art laying claim to a place in any modern repertoire. With this admission comes a growing hesitation about either the possibility or the desirabilty of this ‘neutrality’. Though one obligation on today’s translator may still be to preserve the integrity of an original work, the pull between translation identifying the atmosphere of a play and honouring its versatility is complex. Ambiguity for its own sake is no great virtue and a decision that the translator cannot ignore is tone: tone of character, tone of scene and tone of dialogue. The tragic and the comic for the Greeks were terms defining occasion as well as content, but what develops during the fifth century bce is tragedy, and subsequently comedy, based on the blurring of the difference between the two, in favour of cross-reference and surprise. When it comes to tone the translator simply cannot avoid declaring a preference. It is here that the question of irony becomes significant. Translating irony is where the translator is forced into making personal choices. It is at the implications of this which the present article is aimed.

160  Greek tragedy The Greek word eirôneia means ‘pretence’ or ‘dissimulation’, or ‘feigning ignorance in order to deceive’; the method used by Socrates and the word used by Plato in The Republic, in the mouth of the teacher of rhetoric Thrasymachus (337a). In Aristophanes’ Clouds the eirôn is one of a whole group of shifty characters whom Strepsiades hopes to emulate by enrolling at Socrates’ academy. Jeffrey Henderson cleverly translates him there as a ‘double-talker’ (Aristophanes II, trans. Henderson 1998: 449). In today’s usage the word ‘irony’ has the overtone of apparent declaration of the opposite as a means of mockery, and not infrequently as a defence against accusations of political incorrectness. In a dramatic context its most frequent use is when the audience has a different take on what is being said from what one or more of the characters is actually saying. It engages overview and subtext, not uncommonly for comic effect. If Aeschylus ever did describe his plays as temachê tôn Homêrou deipnôn, ‘offcuts from the feasts of Homer’, as Athenaeus claimed in his Deipnosophists (8.347e), it is likely that he was referring to more than the plots of his tragedies. Most of his plays, extant or lost, appear to have only a tenuous association with either The Iliad or The Odyssey. Indeed, from all the surviving thirty-three Greek tragedies, the action of only Euripides’ Cyclops (counting the satyr play as part of a tragic diet) and Rhesus are set within the action of either epic. Agamemnon, Menelaus, Ajax, Helen and, of course, the arch-ironist Odysseus, appear in plenty of cast lists, the nuances of their characters determined or adjusted to suit a variety of theatrical situations. What Aeschylus inherits from Homer, and Sophocles and Euripides develop, each following his own theatrical star, is a dramatic structure which balances action with interaction, instinct with contemplation, the serious with the relaxed, knowledge with ignorance, the sublime with the ridiculous: thus ‘irony’. Any kind of narrative performance from bardic recitation to Broadway comedy needs contrasts of tempo and mood, imposed by poet or dramatist. Homer knew it; Aeschylus relied on it for his ‘offcuts’, his light and shade. In The Iliad it might be the gods, on battlefield or Olympus, Thersites, or Hector with his wife and baby; in The Odyssey Penelope, Circe, Nausicaa or the returning hero’s old dog. The fifth- and fourth-century dramatists intersperse dialogue sequences with choral interludes, placing the action on hold. Aeschylus introduces The Oresteia with the Watchman and his human reaction to his cold and lonely vigil. The entry of the title character in Agamemnon is further delayed by a Messenger’s rehearsing the discomforts of life for a common soldier which precedes the king’s return home in triumph. In Choephori the bloody revenge narrative is interrupted for a Nurse to recall Orestes as an incontinent baby. Sophocles and Euripides expand their dramatic rhythm with such contrasts, nicely judged to accord with how audiences need time to relax and to catch up, what is usually described as ‘thinking time’. The issue is how translators should match a contemporary adjustment of language to occasion, often more difficult in moments of relaxed tension.

The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony  161 In most dramatic situations either one or more characters knows something that the audience does not yet know, or the audience knows something of which the characters, or some of them, are unaware. The dramatic engagement revolves around this prior knowledge and its revelation. Sometimes this happens via a process of deception, sometimes by accident, sometimes from the entry of a new character with new information which may be a surprise to the audience as well as to the characters. It all amounts to the emotional and atmospheric juggling of good playmaking. In The Oresteia Agamemnon does not know that Clytemnestra is preparing to murder him. Nor do the Chorus, though they reckon that something worrying is going on. Cassandra does know because of her special gift, or curse. The audience know too, at least as many of them as know their mythology, which is probably all of them. In Choephori (Libation-Bearers) Orestes lets the audience know immediately that he intends to kill his mother, and brings in Electra and the Chorus as co-conspirators. Clytemnestra is told that Orestes is dead. She believes it until after Aegisthus has been killed and her son confronts her with the truth and a sword. This game of who knows what and when is part of dramatic structure credited to Aeschylus, obvious though it now seems. Dozens of past critics have identified the different approaches of the three Greek tragedians through their handling of the Electra story. Cassandra in Agamemnon serves as a paradigm, aware of the truth but aware, equally, that no one will believe her. Sophocles’ Electra, covering the same ground as Choephori, has the audience ahead of the game with the question of who knows what, complicated by Electra’s sister Chrysothemis, and the Tutor as a false messenger with his pretend funeral urn. Theatrical impact is enhanced by Electra’s ignorance of Orestes’ identity until halfway through the play, the reversed order of the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, and the climactic scene with the delayed revelation of the dead body of Clytemnestra by Aegisthus, the only person who still believes it is the dead Orestes under the sheet. Euripides plays even more on the deceit and revelation motif in his Electra with the murders of Aegisthus while playing the good host, and Clytemnestra, behaving like a concerned grandmother who has come to help her daughter after childbirth. All such examples can come under the blanket definition of ‘irony’, a device employed differently, but with developing subtlety by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The question is how far does the modern translator give the game away without making the characters absurdly stupid; further, may it be necessary to translate the same Greek word in Aeschylus and Euripides with different words in English because of the change of context and tone. How does the translator gauge the nuance of what is being said when the context may be on a sliding scale from truth to outright lie? The audience being ahead of the characters, or of a single character making a revelation of which the audience was not previously aware, is just as much the grammar of comedy as of tragedy. There may be moments in a tragedy that are for comic effect, or in a comedy that

162  Greek tragedy are to make a serious point. All this dramatic sleight-of-hand over who knows what, and when and why, is at the root of dramatic irony, especially in Euripides. In Euripides it becomes a major translation issue. In Bacchae (965–70) Pentheus, seduced by Dionysus into dressing up as a woman, has the following exchange with the god before his exit to witness the Bacchants on Cithaeron, taunting him and giving certain words, or the sound of certain words a second meaning: The Oxford translation by Reginald Gibbons and Charles Segal offers the following: DIONYSOS:

PENTHEUS: DIONYSOS: PENTHEUS: DIONYSOS: PENTHEUS: DIONYSOS: PENTHEUS: DIONYSOS: PENTHEUS:

Follow me – I’ll escort you To salvation. But someone else will bring you back . . . . . . She who gave birth to me. You’ll be remarkable to everyone . . . That’s why I’m going. You will be carried home . . . . . . It’s soft delight you speak of! . . . in your mother’s arms. You’ll force me to be spoiled. Yes, true spoiling. But I only claim my due. (Gibbons and Segal 2001)2

The reason for some of Pentheus’ lines being italicized is not explained, but otherwise the translation is fairly literal, including a juxtaposition of truphan and truphas, ‘spoiled’ and ‘spoiling’. The greatest linguistic purist could hardly take exception. Anyone dramatically aware might well have reservations. This contrast is hardly easy on the ear. The general editors of Oxford’s The Complete Euripides, Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, repeat in the Foreword to each of the five volumes the words of William Arrowsmith, Founding General Editor of the series: ‘The Greek Tragedy in New Translations is based on the conviction that poets like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides can only be properly rendered by translators who are themselves poets’ (Gibbons and Segal 2001, v and passim). The problem with isolating this priority is that it relegates Euripides as a dramatist below Euripides as a poet, something strange in the light of Arrowsmith’s own position as amongst the first to appreciate Euripides as a maker of plays. Here is Arrowsmith’s own translation of this scene: DIONYSUS:

PENTHEUS: DIONYSUS: PENTHEUS: DIONYSUS:

(alternative spelling) I shall lead you safely there; someone else shall bring you back. Yes, my mother. An example to all men. It is for that I go. You will be carried home – –

The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony  163 PENTHEUS: O luxury! DIONYSUS: cradled in your mother’s PENTHEUS: You will spoil me. DIONYSUS: I mean to spoil you PENTHEUS: I go to my reward.

arms.

(Arrowsmith 1959) I have few doubts over which of these actors would prefer; or an audience.3 This whole scene in Euripides made many earlier translators of Bacchae uneasy, primarily for the unavoidable black comedy of the situation, with Pentheus in drag and treating his costume and prop as though he were at a dress rehearsal: which, of course, he is.4 Five years earlier than Arrowsmith came Philip Vellacott’s translation (1954) for Penguin Books: DIONYSUS: PENTHEUS: DIONYSUS: PENTHEUS: DIONYSUS: PENTHEUS: DIONYSUS: PENTHEUS: DIONYSUS: PENTHEUS:

Come; I will see you safely there; another shall bring you home. You mean my mother? A sight for all to see. It is for that I am going. You will be carried home – What splendour that will be! – in your mother’s arms. Why, you make a weakling of me! That is – one way of putting it. Yet it is what I deserve. (Vellacott 1954)5

How you react to such a conversational tone, and the substitution of an English double entendre for the Greek wordplay ‘truphan’ and ‘truphas’ depends largely on how prosy you feel that a translation of Euripides may be, and how poetic you find that of Gibbons and Segal. Why it is of special interest here is the background and subsequent investigation of the translation process from Vellacott himself. The dramatic point behind these lines is that the entire play can be seen to function as an investigation of the theatre process, and Dionysus as a character is sharing a joke, possibly with the Chorus, but certainly with the audience. The challenge for the translator of Euripides is to spot other occasions when this happens in a playwright whose awareness of dramatic irony has been so finely honed. Vellacott was one of the earliest to face this challenge. A respectable and respected classical scholar with a rare gift for dialogue, Vellacott, who died in 1997, was head of both Classics and Drama at the English public (fee-paying) school Dulwich College, founded in 1619 by the Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn. Vellacott translated all of Aeschylus and most of Euripides for Penguin Books in the 1950s and ’60s. The publishers chose him precisely because of his being able to make his translations read and sound like dramatic texts. Subsequently, in 1967, he took on all that at

164  Greek tragedy that time existed of Menander’s The Woman from Samos (Samia), two years before the almost complete text first emerged. Sophocles and Oedipus followed in 1971 and his groundbreaking Ironic Drama: A Study of Euripides’ Method and Meaning four years after that. This critical work had an opening chapter entitled ‘The Claim to Interpret’ in which Vellacott gave an account of, and justification for, his application of the term ‘ironic’ as applied to Euripides’ tragedies. Subsequently he suggested: ‘It may be that what I am calling irony is simply the gap which must exist in the work of every profound and creative dramatist between what he knows he has put into a scene and what he knows most of his audience will receive from it’ (49). Writing about Orestes, he asked of Helen, to whom he devoted a whole chapter in her various stage appearances, ‘What qualities has Helen shown? Warmth, sensitiveness, sympathy, a need for friendship, a mature graciousness’ (62); he described Alcestis as ‘[A] play about a good husband and an admirable marriage’ (105); and he wrote of the Old Man in Euripides’ Electra, who brings news of a visitation to Agamemnon’s tomb that might mean Orestes has returned, as ‘loyal, gentle and sympathetic’ (218). I have no disagreement with such a decisive critical standpoint, of which, if it be a fault, I plead as guilty as any other translator (Walton 2009). But a case can equally be made from the original text of Euripides for Helen being a shallow vamp; the Old Man a bloodthirsty dolt; and the marriage of Admetus and Alcestis as sham as that of Torvald and Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. This is fine. This is dramatic criticism where speculation goes with the territory because no great play is defined by a single interpretation. If it were, there would never be the need for a new production. Such speculation, and it is only speculation, about character and motive may well prove of greater value in appraising the ‘tone’ of a play than is to be found in linguistic minutiae or poetic preference. The plausibility of a translation is not the same and depends, in Vellacott’s case, on being convinced by his dramatic instinct which, it has to be admitted, was sometimes fallible.6 In his search for hidden (and therefore ironic) meaning he developed a growing conviction that in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus is fully aware that he killed Laius and that Jocasta is his mother. And Jocasta is as sure of it as he is. The whole play is not about the revelation of an unforeseen past, but the dismantling of the cover-up. In a BBC broadcast, reprinted in The Listener of 26 March 1964, he first offered this new interpretation. Two books followed with the thesis expanded, Sophocles and Oedipus (1971) and Oedipus and Apollo (unpublished, 1991), advancing his reasoning, but falling ever further into the trap of seeking an ironic subtext so arcane that, however plausible the argument might appear on paper (and that is not very), it would be virtually impossible to convey to an audience. Oedipus Tyrannus does contain apparent inconsistencies of detail, but only if it is approached without accepting its own terms of reference. Searching for irony in a play has limitations for

The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony  165 the critic. For the translator they become pitfalls. Vellacott, to his credit, produced not one but two translations of Oedipus Tyrannus that were not terminally influenced by his idée fixe.7 The Vellacott translations of Euripides and his Introductions to the various Penguin volumes still represent a major contribution to making this most controversial of playwrights visible first and foremost as a dramatic innovator. He also faced up to confronting situations, or simply remarks, which contain the essence of the ironic method. Two small instances show how complicated this may be, especially when a decision must be made over how comic a moment should be for the audience which may not be so for the characters. It is impossible to deny that elsewhere in Euripides there is barely a play without comic sequences: the Chorus in Ion admiring the set because it is ‘just like in Athens’, or Ion himself thinking he is being propositioned by a visitor to the oracle at Delphi who has been told that the first person he meets after leaving the shrine will be his son; the ‘double takes’ (so easy in a mask) of Helen and Menelaus reunited in Helen in circumstances that neither of them could have anticipated; Peleus in Andromache taking on, and seeing off, Menelaus in defence of the name character; Athena in Rhesus disguising her voice so as to pretend to be Aphrodite, and fool Paris.8 These are easy to spot and hardly contentious, but returning to Euripides’ Electra offers a moment where a decision must be made about the state of mind of the title character. Orestes has slipped across the border with Pylades to try and find out what has happened to his sister. Electra has been married off to the Farmer and has gone to a spring to fetch water, though her husband tells her she has no need to do so. Orestes and Pylades catch sight of her coming back with a pitcher on her head and assume that she is a slave, except that she has the lines, ‘Take this vessel from my head so that I may lament my father as I do at dawn’ (140–2). She may be doing a slave’s job, but apparently she also has a slave. There are a number of ways this can be addressed, but the translator can hardly avoid choosing one of them. It may be that, as her husband has suggested, she has no need to perform such a chore but likes to remind herself, and everyone else, how she has come down in the world. Perhaps the slave to whom she gives the pitcher of water did not know she had gone off to the spring, or is too decrepit to have gone in person. It may be the playwright’s excuse for getting her out of doors to encounter her brother. Just as plausible is that in the Greek theatre there were a number of ‘invisible’ stage assistants whose job it was to bring on or remove props. The staging may be up to the director, but this early scene is like a pebble in the pond, an indicator whose ripples have ramifications for the rest of the play. Is Electra downtrodden, depressed, sympathetic, vindictive, masochistic, obsessive, self-pitying, insane; is she mad or bad, downtrodden or psychotic? Her choice of language, in translation, will influence decisions about her state of mind and, perhaps, account for Orestes’ reluctance to identify himself until he is found out by the Old

166  Greek tragedy Man. For the translator, how you translate the first scene is often a guide to how you will have to translate the last. Later, when the Old Man whom Vellacott found ‘loyal, gentle and sympathetic’ is rehearsing reasons why Orestes may have returned, he cites the same recognition tokens as Aeschylus’ Orestes uses in Libation-Bearers to convince Electra he is her brother. Euripides’ Electra sneers at all of them, pointing out how improbable they are. Is this Euripides parodying his predecessor, or a symptom of the Electra who went to fetch water when she had no need to, and prefers a different version of her avenger brother than someone who has sneaked across the border under cover of darkness? Can a translator possibly duck the responsibility of analyzing this character? And, if the recognition-demolition is ironic and intentionally debunks the Aeschylean recognition, how much should this first encounter between brother and sister, where Orestes consciously avoids revealing who he is, have a similar ironic tone? How far do these ironic ripples reach? Something minor, but with similar consequences, was identified in Children of Heracles by Philip Vellacott (1975: 217–218). The decrepit Iolaus heads off into battle and comes off the sub’s bench, as it were, to score the winning goal. A dazed Messenger gives a graphic account of this miracle, to which Alcmena rejoins ‘thaumaste elexas’ (798). ‘Thou speakest wonders’, is the response which appears in the first published translation (Potter 1791). In more recent times, equally neutral are ‘A remarkable story’ (Kovacs 1995: Harvard), and ‘That’s miraculous news’ (Davie 1996: Penguin). Henry Taylor and Robert A. Brooks (Oxford 1981) prefer the sceptical ‘A miracle indeed, if true’. Vellacott, as it happens, hedged his bets with ‘You speak of a miracle’ (Penguin 1972); but ‘Quite remarkable’ (Vellacott 1975). An accurate record, or sarcastic? I must admit to having a fondness for Ralph Gladstone’s, ‘Well, of all things’ (Chicago 1955), though whether this is appropriate for the vengeful Alcmena of the rest of the play is a moot point. What Susan Bassnett has described as the ‘visibility’ of the translator is the issue here, but should that exclude decisions over which characters are cynics (Bassnett and Lefevere 1997: 25)? The whole issue, writ large, can be found in Euripides’ Orestes, to which Vellacott devoted a whole chapter in Ironic Drama, but without referring to what might appear the central and most ironic aspect of any surviving Greek tragedy. This is a play where Euripides specifically draws attention to the most insistent conventions of Greek tragedy, apparently to make fun of them – to ‘send them up’. The play is set in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, who has descended into a torment of self-recrimination which he attributes, not to any Furies, but to sunesis (396), ‘conscience’. Having finally got him to sleep Electra is assailed by a helpful Chorus: ELECTRA: Lord,

that’s all I need! Here they come, these friends of mine, determined to grieve with me. Oh, no. They’re going to sing. They’ll wake him up.

The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony  167 CHORUS:



He’s only just got to sleep. A peaceful sleep at last. If I have to see him raving again, I’ll burst into tears. Women, dear women. Friends. Please. Quietly! No shuffling your feet. And no stamping! Shhh! You mean well, I do know that. Nevertheless, we really don’t want to wake him, do we? Gently, gently does it. A quiet step is best. Slide your foot along; no heavy tread. How’s that? (McDonald and Walton 2009: 132–41)9

When she asks them to leave, they refuse. How could they leave? They are the Chorus and they’ve only just arrived. Finally, checking in case he has actually died, they do wake him up. Subsequently Tyndareus reveals that this is an Argos with a legal system for dealing with the sort of case that Orestes has against his mother. In fact it has already been set in train and Orestes, Pylades and Electra are duly convicted of murder. Two Messengers report respectively on the trial, and later what has later been happening off-stage in the palace. The first is a casual bystander, pro-Orestes, thanks to past favours, with a biased account of the public hearing, which ends with him putting all the blame on Apollo. Hostile witnesses included Tyndareus: ‘Dangerous precedent’, and all that sort of thing, as he smirked in the direction of the Aegisthus clique. All the same, heralds. They like to know which side their bread is buttered. Friends in high places. That’s what matters to a herald. (McDonald and Walton 2009: 892–5) Orestes, Pylades and Electra are condemned to death by stoning. Electra and Orestes react by following the advice of Pylades to commit another murder, that of Helen, and to take her daughter Hermione as a hostage against their escape. This they do and head off into the palace. A second Messenger arrives, over the roof, to report what is happening indoors. He is a terrified Trojan slave who speaks a kind of accented Greek (Asiadi phônâ, 1397, as he describes it), fractured, erratic and with no parallel in our Greek drama except, perhaps, for the Scythian policeman in Aristophanes’ comedy Women at the Thesmophoria. Though the Trojan’s entrance is unorthodox, his speech barely intelligible, the tale he tells is graphic enough: MESSENGER:



She scream, scream loud, ‘Ômoi moi.’ Her white arm beat chest, Sound hard thump, Gold sandaled feet, run hard, run fast, She carry, carry off. Orestes grab hair

168  Greek tragedy

Trip her with Mycenaean boot, Twist head back hard, Throat white Want dark sword make bloody. (McDonald and Walton 2009: 1465–74)

By the end of the play, Electra is on the roof with Pylades and Orestes who is holding a sword against the neck of Hermione. Down below Menelaus has summoned the local Argives who want to arrest the murderers and is trying to break down the palace door which Orestes and his gang are threatening to set on fire – somewhat recklessly as they are the only ones in there. ORESTES:

Leave those doors alone! Hey you, yes you, Menelaus, I’m talking to you, you blustering bullyboy. The masonry’s nice and loose just here. Get back Or I’ll brain you with this piece of coping-stone. The doors are barred fast. You can’t get in. So don’t think you’re going to rescue anyone here. (McDonald and Walton 2009: 1567–72)

Impasse! Enter the theos ex mêchanês on the stage crane, Apollo, accompanied by Helen, not dead after all, but about to be transformed, translated even, into a heavenly deity to minister to sailors. Orestes is to go to Athens for a proper trial, prosecuted by the three Eumenides who will lose the case. Then he will marry Hermione whose throat he is at the moment threatening to cut. Apollo will sort out her current betrothal to Neoptolemus whom he will have murdered in Delphi. Orestes will then become King of Argos. Pylades will marry Electra (serve them both right), while Menelaus goes back to the throne of Sparta as a return-dowry for the wife he has lost to the sailors. Myth restored, job sorted in forty lines, with everyone of importance present as though it were a curtain call. I cannot pretend that this collaborative translation is not biased towards the ironic, an approach which has not been shared by many of those who have addressed the play in the past. Some have been puzzled by it, regarding it as evidence of Euripides’ decadence. Humphrey Kitto found it ‘pure melodrama’ (Greek Tragedy, 334), whereas for Vellacott it was certainly ironic, but as ‘the poet’s last personal address to the Athenians’ (Vellacott 1975: 53–81 for his chapter on Orestes). What can at least be claimed for the McDonald/Walton translation is that it rules out several readings which no production could adequately sustain. If the reason for the choice of a Euripides play for production today is his apparent accord with contemporary issues relating to war, gender, politics, religion, personal responsibility, sympathy for the oppressed or just family matters, then it is understandable

The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony  169 that a director might prefer to give free rein to a modern playwright to tilt or twist a Euripides original towards a specific direction. Critical opinion has always been divided over the spirit in which Euripides approached plotline ‘givens’ from myth. If, as I prefer to believe, his aim was to interrogate the possible background, then surely so must the translator, and leave it to the director and actors to identify more precisely a physical context in which the events can reasonably take place. Part of what underpins this as a method is the constant reminders throughout Euripides, not of the poetic, but of the theatrical background, the meta-theatre. Medea is the best actress in Greek tragedy, the Chorus of Ion the most appreciative of the set. The Messenger in the same play appears to give instruction on how to build a temporary theatre. And Pentheus in Bacchae, as we saw previously, wonders whether his costume hangs properly after a quick change and whether he is using correctly his property thyrsos while Dionysus advises him, like a director. An exercise like this could go on ad infinitum, with so many Euripides plays and so many translations from which to choose. Perhaps any such concerns over faithfulness are redundant in an age where all productions of stage classics, including in England – recently Schiller, Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov – only appear in new ‘versions’, doctored to the scriptwriter’s whim. Film and television make faithfulness to the original even more redundant. It may be that we live in a world where the only way of keeping alive an awareness of an ancient culture is by distorting it almost out of recognition. Wouldn’t that be ironic when British potter Grayson Perry could suggest in one of his 2013 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures that ‘Detached irony has become the kind of default mode of our time in the art world’? It still would be foolish to underrate the nature of the art form of theatre which has survived through its ability to change, respond to and challenge society’s novelties. Dionysus, frequent notice of whose demise proves premature, has always resurfaced in some new form.10 Must not those from Aeschylus’ generation who found themselves living in Euripidean times have felt that tragedy had been similarly reduced and disparaged? What must not be lost is the ability of translators to read these ancient plays for their inventiveness in defining not only the language of ancient Athens but also the even more long-lasting language of theatre. If the only translations to be published are those that ignore the dimension of performance, and the only performances are of ‘adaptations’ or ‘revised versions’, then the original plays of the Greek tragedians are doubly distorted and doubly betrayed.

Notes 1 For possible exceptions where the translator is also the director, or the translation is aimed at a specific actor, see Walton (2006), 93–120. See also the Preface to Fischer-Lichte (2014): xiii for the position that all ‘translation’ is ‘adaptation’. 2 Burian and Shapiro, vol. IV, 2009. The translation copyright date is listed as 2000 and the line numbers alongside the text differ from the Greek text. The

170  Greek tragedy Oxford Euripides in five volumes (2009–2011) has more than twenty translators or co-translators and incorporates a number of translations from earlier times. 3 I had no hesitation over choosing the Arrowsmith translation for a production of The Bacchae with the University of Denver’s professional theatre company in 1972. William Arrowsmith’s justly celebrated, ‘You will spoil me/I mean to spoil you’ catches so well the tone of the original that I felt obliged for a subsequent translation (Methuen Drama 1988), to opt for an inferior substitute in favour of the innuendo, ‘You will ruin me/You could say that’. 4 See Walton (2006), 124–5 for various translations from Milman to Woodruff. 5 Vellacott’s translations were replaced in Penguin by those of John Davie (2006). 6 In his translation of the fragments of Menander’s Samia (Vellacott 1967), he made a serious miscalculation in the allocation of the lines by failing to spot the presence of a third speaking character during Demeas’ rejection of Chrysis. 7 Sophocles and Oedipus (1971) contains two separate translations on either side of the page, one ‘as literal as possible’, the other ‘in a style which does not forget that the work is both a poem and a play’ (Vellacott 1971: ix). Oedipus and Apollo seems never to have been published, though two copies are lodged in the Harvard University Library, perhaps privately published. I do know a draft text of this from 1988, having been a reader for a British publisher who subsequently rejected the manuscript. 8 Vellacott (1975) chose to ignore both Cyclops and Rhesus, though inclusion of either might have supported his argument. 9 The translations of Orestes used here are from McDonald and Walton 2009; first performance of this translation at The Theatre Inc, San Diego, Feb–March, 2010. 10 See Fischer-Lichte (2014) for variations of The Bacchae from Africa, North and South America, Asia and Europe.

11 Hit or myth The Irish and Greek tragedy Methuen Drama (2002)

Appropriation of old stories to tell a modern tale is nothing new. There has never been a time since the Renaissance when playwrights have not sought inspiration in classical legend, the abiding quality of which has been its adaptability. The theatre is a protean art by its very nature and there can be no surprise that so many original and prolific dramatists have returned to the world of Greek myth where plots and characters are part-known but only part-prescribed. Aeschylus was said to have claimed that his work was no more than ‘fragments from Homer’s banquet’. His tragedies were simply new versions of old stories, as were those of Sophocles and Euripides. The resurrection of any of what was left from the repertoire of Greek tragedy as theatre pieces was left effectively till the latter end of the nineteenth century (see Part 1). There had been translations, first into Latin and then into modern European languages, from Erasmus in the sixteenth century onwards, perhaps earlier, but the potency of the texts was barely if ever tested in performance. It was not as if a knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, things Greek had disappeared; rather that the acquisitive culture of Rome was so dominant that Athena had become irrevocably Minerva, Odysseus Ulysses, and even Aristotle was offered the soubriquet ‘divinus’ as though he had acquired his stature only through some Neronian apotheosis. If the plays of the Athenians had ossified into literature, the myths had not. Shakespeare’s Theseus, Troilus and Timon may have raised few echoes from Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides but the drama of the Renaissance and after involved numbers of plots and characters that had their origins in the Trojan War, the tribulations of Thebes, the deeds of Heracles (or, rather, Hercules) and a whole host of other themes from Greek mythology. Distilled through tales of heroism and mayhem, bloodshed, pastoral and romance, they met with other chronicles and cultures without ever having been overtaken by them. That is the power of myth. It becomes personal by virtue of its universality, inviting decodings tied to each new occasion or circumstance. In the classical revival in Britain during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ancient Greece was reinvented as something pristine and Arcadian. If its drama spoke to new generations, it could only be as poetry which subscribed to and reinforced eternal verities, transcending time and culture. Greek myth

172  Greek tragedy paradoxically had recreated its stage life in opera where the power of the word was subordinated to music; in ballet where it took second place to dance; and on the burlesque and pantomime stage where the story of Medea could be subtitled The Best of Mothers with a Brute of a Husband. The twentieth century changed much of this, or rather opened new pathways to the Greek canon. Stutteringly, but relentlessly, the great tragedians began to emerge from the shelves and vaults to which they had been consigned, their plays, or some of them, reinvigorated through translation. It was a far from painless process. In 1903 there were riots in the streets of Athens when Thomas Economou presented Aeschylus’ The Oresteia in modern rather than ancient Greek. Several people were killed. Designer and theatre visionary Edward Gordon Craig identified the potential of the masked figure in a way that impressed and influenced W. B. Yeats, through a series of ‘visions’ of light and space, but he had to go and live outside his native England to find anyone who would take serious note of his ideas. In Europe Max Reinhardt rediscovered the spectacle of Aeschylus and Sophocles, but it took the Irish directors Terence Gray and Tyrone Guthrie to treat spectacle as something to be fostered alongside subtlety and humanity. And it is Irish writers who have best and most comprehensively absorbed classical tragedy into their own history and culture. Questions of translation are knotty, not least because there is often seen to be some obligation on the writer who claims the authority and the reputation of one of the classics to serve that original as well as the self. The Greek myths may be trees with many branches, but too much parasitic ivy can destroy the trunk. Amongst those who struggled to provide rules of engagement for translators, Walter Benjamin offered one of the more enlightening responses when he wrote ‘While a poet’s words endure in his own language, even the greatest translation is destined to become part of the growth of its own language and eventually to be absorbed by its renewal’ (Benjamin 1970: 73). This is where the Irish come in. Though he spoke in terms of the written rather than the spoken word, Benjamin was making a case for translation as a creative act which could equally well apply to the construction of plays. Most playwrights would, I imagine, be inclined to justify their personal response to the classical originals in just such a way. Most of the Irish playwrights whose work is discussed here would make no secret of having their own bones to worry at, whatever their source of inspiration. But then a personal vision was what inspired Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes to write what they did and in the way that they did. More, the Greek tragedians would return again and again to the same themes, plots and characters, not in order to repeat themselves ad infinitum but because they found in the skeletons of the old stories more than enough inspiration to create whole new beings of infinite variety – new individuals and families, new breeds. Such versatility is appealing to those who want to take advantage of the distancing that a classical setting may offer. The Greeks went back and back

Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy  173 to the same sagas from pre-history precisely because only the barest outlines were fixed. Jocasta was not going to turn out not to be Oedipus’ mother, but there is a raft of possible motivations and attitudes to invest and investigate. Medea would still be deserted by Jason, but killing her children may well have been a refinement dreamed up by Euripides. Why not, then, a Medea, as Franca Rame and Dario Fo envisaged her, who does kill the children, but as a metaphorical act of personal release? Or a conclusion as posited by Brendan Kennelly where the Chorus can leave the audience with the conclusion: And yet I wonder, and will always wonder – Is Medea’s crime Medea’s glory? (Kennelly 1991: 75) Irish settings have given these Greek classics a new dimension not least because Ireland still thinks of the theatre as the natural place to juggle ideas. As one director of the Abbey Theatre maintained, ‘If you have something to say, you write a play about it’. Myth can reveal you to yourself. And, as Irish writers have turned to ancient Greek material as translators, adaptors, commentators or what you will, so in the process, through myth, they have tended to unmask themselves. All you need for a proper climate in which to present Greek plays are the social and political conditions which demand the special enlightenment that only the theatre can offer. Lady Gregory and Yeats initially had different ideas. Yeats felt that any concentration on Greek mythology was at the expense of Irish history. J. M. Synge too had written to Lady Gregory in 1906 implying that the only reason for the Abbey to produce classic plays such as Molière and Sophocles would be ‘to illuminate the work of Irish playwrights on Irish themes’.1 His own Oedipus plays Sophocles’ King Oedipus: a Version for the Modern Stage and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus: a Version for the Modern Stage were presented in 1926 and 1927, but not published until 1928 and 1934, respectively. Yeats had worked for twenty-four years on his translations and the various stages through which the final version went have been carefully recorded by Davis R. Clark and James B. McGuire. The process of ‘illumination’ that Synge had advocated was well illustrated in the early exchange between Oedipus and Creon in King Oedipus. Oedipus expresses surprise that so little is known about the circumstances of the death of Laius. He tells of the one man ‘who fled in terror’: CREON: He said that they were fallen upon by a great troop of robbers. OEDIPUS: What robbers would be so daring unless bribed from here? CREON:  Such things were indeed guessed at, but Laius once dead no



  avenger arose. We were amid our troubles. (Clark and McGuire 1989: 85–91)

174  Greek tragedy A Dublin audience, hearing ‘amid our troubles’ in 1926, would be hard put not to listen to the rest of this ‘version’ without looking for a subtext. Oedipus disarms the phrase, but draws attention to it too when he responds ‘But when royalty had fallen what troubles could have hindered such a search?’ Creon replies ‘The riddling Sphinx put those dark things out of our thoughts’, but then caps it with ‘We thought of what had come to our own doors’ (92–6). As it happens, these are a perfectly reasonable, straight translation of Sophocles’ original text, but here, as so often, everything depends less on the text than on the context. The second play, not a sequel to Sophocles, but often treated as such in modern productions of both, has a consciously Irish setting, as Yeats admitted. It requires no linguistic trigger to give a taste of immediacy to a play that concerns the fear of civil war. Several plays in their first production in Athens saw this as the danger to be avoided at all costs – Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles’ Antigone, Euripides’ Suppliants and Phoenician Women – but few can have been naturally so pointed as Oedipus at Colonus with a father sending a son away to his death at the hands of his own brother, a curse ringing in his ears. Greek tragedy with its range of savage and pitiless hatreds, its victims, its losers who are losers and winners who are losers, offers ample examples of the arbitrariness of fate. So wide-ranging is the subject matter of even the limited amount of Greek tragedy we have that it might appear that there are metaphors here for any and every occasion. The question to ask is why did the rewriting of Greek tragedy become such a crucial part of the critical response to the political situation both north and south of the border in Ireland, particularly from the 1980s to the turn of the millennium? Part of the answer is in the sheer range of writers involved in any survey of Irish commitment to classical tragedy and the manner in which drama in Ireland staked out the battlefields of struggle and debate, functioning as both macrocosm and microcosm. Playwrights as diverse as J. M. Synge, Sean O’Casey and T. C. Murray can be invoked as demonstrating classical themes or structures; Seamus Heaney, Brendan Kennelly, Tom Paulin and others all presented their fresh slants on extant plays from the Athenian repertoire; others whose plays are of today and set in today, Brian Friel, Marina Carr and Tom Murphy, set up resonances from the Greek world that clang and clatter round the mind. Aeschylus is represented by versions of Prometheus Bound and The Oresteia. Prometheus is the archetypal rebel, the superhuman who defied Zeus and brought fire to mortals; whom a hostile Zeus had pegged out on a rock in the Caucasus. He is the defiant figure who suffers for refusing to tell the one secret that terrifies the lord of the Gods. As a representation of the indomitability of the spirit, few images are more concentrated than the crucified figure whose liver is pecked out daily by a vulture, only every night to be restored. For Tom Paulin, whose Seize the Fire is a subtle mix of classical allusion and conscious anachronism, Zeus is the authority that uses

Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy  175 and abuses. If the broad picture invites an association between Zeus and England, Prometheus and Ireland, the play loses nothing of its power when switched to the perennial battles of capital and labour, control and freedom. Aeschylus himself sets up such a confrontation when he has Prometheus shackled to the rock by Bia and Kratos, Power and Strength, on the orders of Hephaestus, another, and here reluctant, member of the Olympian hierarchy. Prometheus remains immobile throughout the play, his plight highlighted by the freedom experienced by Oceanus, by the chorus of Oceanids, by the victimized Io trying to run from the pursuing gadfly and by Hermes, the messenger god with winged sandals. For Paulin, the fire that Prometheus brought may be both the spirit of armed rebellion and the arms themselves. The conflict remains unresolved as in our extant Aeschylus it remains unresolved. Paulin’s forecast is of ‘the tanks on the lawn . . . locked doors and panic’ (14–15). In Aeschylus, though, there was one more part of the trilogy to come, maybe two, leading, perhaps, to a resolution of qualified optimism. The rest has not survived. Paulin’s Zeus uses tactics from bribery to physical threat, virtually guaranteed to strengthen the resolve of his adversary. Here is the true strength of weakness, though offering little cause for optimism. The revenge theme of the three plays of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia already had an overt political parallel when first presented in Athens in the middle of the fifth century bce. Progress towards democracy, albeit a democracy of limited scope and ambition, had taken the best part of fifty years after the expulsion of the last King of Athens and the struggles with Persia as he tried to win back his throne. Aeschylus’ massive work, the only connected trilogy to survive the ravages of time, was on the surface, as Arthur Miller once described most plays, a story of ‘the chickens coming home to roost’. Agamemnon returns victorious from the ten-year war against Troy, only to be axed in his bath by his wife Clytemnestra. In the second play of the three, revenge for the murder of a father is exacted by their son Orestes. In the third, the Furies, roused from their lair by the act of matricide, hound Orestes until, in a trial in Athens, he is acquitted and the cycle of vengeance finds resolution. Aeschylus makes the piece work on several different levels simultaneously. The dramatized action is only one part of a saga that has carried on through generations. The present is a product of the past, the scenes of violence the latest in a long line of violations that have torn families apart. These plays are set in the world of the Trojan Wars and its aftermath, best part of nine hundred years before Aeschylus was even born. But if the world of the play is the deep past, shrouded in the variations and alternatives of myth, Aeschylus’ messages are set firmly in the present. There are issues of loyalty and betrayal, the conflicts of order and anarchy, the imperatives of duty and instinct. These make The Oresteia a set of plays that still live and breathe. Behind all this, though, in the resolution of the unresolvable – should you punish or applaud a man who avenges his father by killing his mother? – there was a specific

176  Greek tragedy political dimension in Athens. The judgement of Athena, patron goddess of the city, that this is too big an issue even for the gods to resolve, leads instead to the establishment of a jury system. The whole state will take responsibility for the presentation and execution of justice: and the elder deities, the Furies, whose justice was summary and unaffected by circumstance, must give way to new and younger gods with shorter memories. The Oresteia celebrates the final triumph of the democratic system. There is, of course, a price and it is on that price that contemporary versions tend to concentrate. The legacy of the past cannot be so simply expunged. Louis MacNeice, in his translation of Agamemnon allocated to the Chorus the lines ‘ . . . in ill fortune/The dab of a wet sponge destroys the drawing’ (MacNeice: 58). Virtually all classical critics give the lines to Cassandra, the prophetess doomed always to tell the truth but never to be believed. This is the last thing she says before she exits, knowingly, to her own death. She too is a victim of her past actions. MacNeice’s alteration does, perhaps, make the message corporate rather than individual and may even make the immediate message stronger. The legacy of the past, attitudes as entrenched and instinctive as the power that rouses the Furies, are as easy to parallel in contemporary Ireland as they were in the Athens of Aeschylus. If the belief that something has to happen to break an impasse can lead to uncomfortable conclusions, then that must be better than the philosophy of despair, or a Pilate-like refusal any longer to acknowledge responsibility. Most modern adaptations of The Oresteia choose to treat it as a family saga. The same tends to be true for versions of the Sophocles Electra which covers that part of the history of the house of Atreus which Aeschylus deals with in Libation-Bearers, the second part of The Oresteia, and Euripides in his Electra. Frank McGuinness turned to the Sophocles Electra for his ‘new version’. Commissioned originally by London’s Donmar Warehouse Theatre in 1997, neither translation nor production made any attempt directly to invoke an Irish context. Nevertheless, the writer’s patterns of speech do give resonance to particular lines – ‘Is my news not good news?’/‘You’re living in the land of dreams, and you don’t know it’ (36). McGuinness’s work on a literal, as in his translations/versions from Norwegian, Russian, Spanish and German, does little more than make the play more palatable for an audience of today. His fluency with dialogue is exemplary and, if the plays take on a wider resonance, then that is because the original makes it possible rather than that the writer has intervened with a personal agenda. This is less true of most of the ‘Irish versions’ performed in the North or the South in the past twenty years, and Electra, along with Philoctetes and Antigone, are the Sophocles plays which might most invite a contemporary slant. Sophocles deals with non-conformists, those who take on difficult decisions and have to learn to live or die with the consequences of their actions. Seamus Heaney looked at both plays in The Cure at Troy: A

Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy  177 Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes (1990) and The Burial at Thebes: Sophocles’ Antigone (2004).2 Sophocles’ Philoctetes concerns the attempts by Odysseus and Neoptolemus to persuade or trick a man, whom they and their fellow Greeks had years ago abandoned on a desert island, to go with them to Troy. Philoctetes, marooned because his festering foot was too noxious for his shipmates to live with, turns out to be essential if they are ever to take Troy. The reason is the bow of Heracles, or, in Heaney, Hercules. The battle becomes, though, in both Sophocles and in Heaney, a psychomachia over the soul of the young Neoptolemus, son of the dead hero Achilles. Philoctetes seems like the apogee of Sophoclean anguish, fainting from pain at one point but tortured too by the duplicity of the Greeks. In Heaney there is a change of tone. The pain is there, but the despair is not. Heaney’s approach to the story was to use it to suggest seeds of hope for reconciliation and even redemption. His Philoctetes could even offer Neoptolemus some homespun advice: PHILOCTETES:



Life is shaky. Never, son, forget How risky and slippy things are in this world. Walk easy when the jug’s full, and don’t ever Take your luck for granted. Count your blessings And always be ready to pity other people. (Heaney 1990: 27)

But the bitterness is harsh and unyielding until Neoptolemus persuades Philoctetes that there is no shame ‘in working for a good thing’. The Chorus, late in the play, come up with an optimistic message: Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells. (Heaney 1990: 77) and then themselves play Hercules – in Sophocles a deus ex machina – as Philoctetes is finally persuaded to leave the island and go to Troy. Sophocles also wrote a Tantalus, a Pelops, a Niobe, an Atreus and, apparently, no fewer than three versions of Thyestes. So who knows how much nightmare and misery we have been spared by not having more of his plays? From the seven plays we do have, it is clear that he is the playwright of physical and mental agony. Deianira in The Women of Trachis tries to win back the affections of her husband with a love charm which unwittingly proves as fatal as that with which Medea disposes of Jason’s new wife. Deianira kills herself: so too does Jocasta in Oedipus Tyrannus on the discovery that her husband, the father of her children, is also her son. Only in the last and posthumous play, Oedipus at Colonus, does death offer consolation or, in the case of Oedipus, not death but departure from life in a transfiguration

178  Greek tragedy that is as mystical as it is unusual. But for those left behind the Chorus offer a dismal prospect summed up in Yeats’ celebrated free translation: Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow, As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know. In the long-echoing street the laughing dancers throng, The bride is carried to the bridegroom’s chamber through torchlight and tumultuous song; I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long. Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away. (Yeats: 961–9; Sophocles: 1214–29) This is no casual nor unfamiliar response. In Sophocles the quality of personal despair that isolation engenders is wholly unlike anything to be found in Aeschylus or Euripides. It is this which makes the Sophocles originals such effective parables for any political situation where a single decision taken on moral grounds can cut the individual off from family, from friends, from established authority, from ‘civilized’ behaviour, from normal life, from life itself. Antigone offers few opportunities for compromise. Sophocles’ eponymous heroine, isolated by her resolve to bury her dead brother whatever the cost, turns against her sister for refusing to become involved, and publicly defies Creon, the figure of temporal power. She chooses to make her protest a political statement, accepting the inevitable death sentence and anticipating it by hanging herself. Here is no reconciliation, only realization when it is too late of the real cost of the rigid stance. Creon’s change of heart comes too late. His obduracy and innate capacity to make the wrong decisions and at the wrong time ensure he loses son and wife without even the bitter consolation of winning the argument. David Nowlan (1991) writing in the Irish Times described Brendan Kennelly’s Antigone as ‘probably the most substantial Irish drama since W. B. Yeats was writing . . . this is, of course, a political tragedy’. But Kennelly offers no less powerfully the family tragedy: ‘I wanted to explore sisterhood, the loyalty a sister will show to a brother, against law, against marriage, against everything. There’s no relation like it; it has all the passion of your whole nature, this side of incest.’ Sophocles offers a personal but relentless exchange in Antigone: ISMENE: ANTIGONE: ISMENE: ANTIGONE: ISMENE: ANTIGONE:

I want to help you. Then save yourself. I don’t want you to die too. Oh, pity me. Let me die with you. No. You chose life, and I, death. I only said what I believed. Some will think you are right; others will think I am. (McDonald 2000: 552–7)

Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy  179 This is expanded and more wide-reaching – softer too – in Kennelly’s conciliatory: ISMENE:

Say whatever words you will. Let me serve you now with body and soul. ANTIGONE: You’ll serve me best by saving yourself. ISMENE: Have I, then, no share in your fate, Your death? ANTIGONE: You chose to live for fear. I chose to die for love. ISMENE: At least I made a protest at your choice. ANTIGONE: There were two worlds, two ways. One world approved your way, The other mine. You were wise in your way, I in mine.

(Kennelly: 25) Kennelly’s other two Greek ‘versions’ were both of Euripides plays, Medea and Trojan Women. They too take a strongly feminine perspective, but one that is more in keeping with the sympathies exhibited in the originals. Of the nineteen plays of Euripides to survive, all but five (only four and a half if you allow Children of Heracles to include the hero’s offstage daughters as well as his visible sons) take their title from a woman or a group of women. Euripides’ plays show an extraordinary variation in mood. The situations in which these women find themselves vary from the deeply pathetic to the frankly comic. Today, it is difficult to comprehend how Euripides’ contemporary, the comic playwright Aristophanes, could have characterized Euripides as a misogynist – still less how this could still be a common critical view as late as the twentieth century. True, many of the women in his plays, Hecuba, Phaedra, Medea, Electra, Helen, Agave, are responsible for the deaths of enemies and, in three examples, children, but what concerns the playwright is less the nature of their acts, however horrible, than the circumstances that have reduced them to such. Most of his plays have no history of Irish adaptation, indeed few of the less well known have much of a stage history anywhere. The ones that do remain popular are all notable for their modernity. Characters in Euripides frequently display subtleties of personality and nuances of behaviour that mark them down as a spit in the eye to traditionalists and a challenge to many of the received views of myth. Euripides, the iconoclast, has enough stun guns in his armoury for him to be judged both the murderer of tragedy by making it too domestic, and the precursor of the whole European comic tradition. Maybe, in the light of the enthralling history of their drama, the Irish might feel entitled to appropriate an author whose juxtaposition of the pathetic and the comic is still a cause of despair to those critics who can only accept their drama cut into recognizable and properly labelled packages.

180  Greek tragedy In the early years of the last century Gilbert Norwood wrote an intriguing study comparing Euripides with Shaw; the mixture of the sublime, the pathetic and the ridiculous to be found in many a Euripidean scene should ring bells of recognition in the minds of those whose history has been predicated upon just such a recipe (Norwood 1921). Euripides’ world is peopled by those whose judgement is faulty. Though the same could be said to be true for Sophocles’ Creon, Odysseus and, indeed, Oedipus, the fabled heroes of Euripides frequently forfeit the right to be treated as anything other than moral cretins. It is to the savage, though sometimes comic, Euripides that contemporary Irish dramatists most readily turned: Kennelly to Medea and Trojan Women; Marina Carr to Medea and Iphigeneia in Aulis; Aidan Carl Mathews to Trojan Women; Derek Mahon to The Bacchae. All have discovered the bleak, black, farcical moments. All could claim with justification to find such moments embedded in their source of inspiration. These, then, will be the sample Euripides plays to consider here, plays whose diversity makes them suitable for tinkering and tuning in each and every new age. In a frontispiece to Derek Mahon’s The Bacchae there is a quotation from Louis MacNeice’s The Poetry of W. B. Yeats where he wrote: Yeats’ efflorescence in old age is perhaps unique in recent poetry. We might compare Euripides who, after a long life spent struggling with and digesting new ideas, in gradually formulating a sceptical, rationalist attitude, had in his old age the elasticity to admit that there was a case for Dionysus. (quoted in Mahon frontispiece 1991) MacNeice’s view of Euripides as a deathbed convert to orthodoxy was a fashionable doctrine at one time, both before and in the wake of a rationalist approach which considered the character of Dionysus or ‘The Stranger’ to be no god but a charlatan. Hugely divergent interpretations are what reinforce Bacchae as a barometer of the current social and political moods of an era. At the core of the play is a collision between temporal and divine ­authority – as in Antigone, several of the tragedies of Shakespeare, Shaw’s St Joan, Anouilh’s Beckett and a host of other dramatic masterpieces, including, if you like, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Ibsen’s Brandt. Unlike them, sympathies may be much more finely tuned according to the tastes of the time. The representatives of authority and freedom are less easy to side with when they are delivered into the hands of Euripides’ weak king Pentheus and his cousin, the mocking god. In the 1960s Pentheus was identified as a fascist dictator, Dionysus as flower power, free love and the hippy culture. Ten years later and the influence of Dionysus appeared baleful. The balance had shifted within a decade and the ease with which a god used supernatural powers to befuddle and destroy his own family appeared a ghastly whim. At other times there have been various alternatives, the play interpreted as

Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy  181 anything from an attack on organized religion to a discourse in the nature of theatre itself (see Walton 2009: Ch. 9). Derek Mahon’s version is subtitled ‘after Euripides’. Marianne McDonald wrote of it ‘This parable is suitable for Ireland. Dionysus can be regarded as a force of nature, the force of a people who are fighting to reclaim their rights – a people who are laying claim to a land that has been taken from them’ (McDonald 1998). Astute as this may be, Bacchae is no Antigone where the audience are offered a straight clash between the authority of Creon, a king trying to restore order after civil war and the rebel Antigone who knows, without a moment’s doubt, that she has to bury her brother whatever the law of the land happens to say. That is a relatively straightforward debate between two human beings who find themselves on different sides in every possible way, one young, one old; one female, one male; one in authority, one powerless; both stubborn unto death, suffering or causing it. In Bacchae something very different is at work. Here is a magical world, a world of miracles and marvels, of superhuman powers and delusions. Instead of a determined and stubborn girl stabbing herself after imprisonment in a cave, we have an equivocal ‘stranger’ who frees himself from his prison and then persuades the king of Thebes to dress up in women’s clothes before being torn to pieces by a mother who thinks he is a lion. Yet both plays take place in Thebes and the battles are fought over the exercise of authority. Cadmus in Bacchae is grandfather of the ill-starred Pentheus. He was also, the myth has it, great grandfather of Laius, the father that Oedipus killed where three roads meet on the way from Delphi. That makes him great-great-grandfather to Antigone, though exactly where Pentheus and Dionysus fit into this genealogy is blurred. It may be revealing to consider what differences it makes to the quality of parable, this change from Sophocles’ realistic clash of temperaments to the ‘magical realism’ of Euripides. One contrast stands out above all others. The Sophocles play is easy to translocate into a different time, a different culture, a different set of political circumstances. A solitary figure standing up for her beliefs in the face of all that the law of the land can throw at her can offer a dozen parallels a day from Africa to Asia, from Europe to the Americas. Antigone is the resistance icon, hence the revival of the play in one form or another, at moments of protest in France, South Africa or the Ireland of 1984. Bacchae, though, is a play whose metaphor is both more spiritual and more theatrical. And it is far less easy to explain either what happens in it or to debate whose side you might wish to take and why. On the surface it has one of the simplest of dramatic themes, that of the disruptive outsider who appears in a community and in a short time creates havoc before moving on. Euripides’ angle is explicit. God though he may be, Euripides’ Dionysus has been forged by the circumstances of his birth which Pentheus and the rest of the family have refused to acknowledge. His mother Semele, Dionysus claims, was loved by Zeus. Then jealous Hera persuaded the pregnant Semele to get Zeus to reveal himself to her in his

182  Greek tragedy true nature. When he did, she was burnt to charcoal because the true nature of Zeus is a thunderbolt. Much of this the character offers in a prologue, in Mahon’s version almost flippantly. Dionysus is described as ‘gaily dressed’, speaking in a ‘light, gay voice’. In his description of what has and what will happen in Thebes, this Dionysus poses almost no threat, except to his puritan cousin. When he leaves the scene Mahon has the chorus describe him as ‘the laughing god’. He seems at this point to be more treat than trick when they call upon the Theban men to shut your houses tight; Dionysus’ women are here to give you all a fright. (Mahon: 23) But, as is Antigone, Bacchae is a family drama too. Semele was one of the four daughters of Cadmus. The other three are the ones who have refused to believe the Zeus story and who will between them tear Pentheus to pieces. Dionysus, by his own admission, is half god, half mortal. That is a major factor because the ambiguous Dionysus is determined to have it both ways, to be both god and mortal. If this is a play about persecution and repression, it is certainly open to question who is the persecutor and who is repressed? Tiresias, the old, blind prophet who is always consulted in times of crisis in Thebes and usually ends up roundly abused before being proved right, is in Mahon quite childlike, trying to persuade ‘the old fool’ (Cadmus) ‘to go to the famous ceili’ (15). But then what an extraordinary picture Euripides does paint, two old men, one blind, one halt, dressed up for someone else’s party, full of lore and blather. They might be a missing turn by Samuel Beckett: as comic too, for surely no one, however Penthean, could deny the humour in Cadmus’ hoping to get a lift up the mountain to go and dance for Dionysus. Dionysus, ‘disguised as a man’, has turned the women of Thebes mad. He then helps them perform miracles up in the hills; escapes from prison by deluding Pentheus; organizes an earthquake, which may or may not be an illusion too; persuades Pentheus to dress up as a woman and parade through the streets of Thebes disguised as a Bacchant; and finally convinces Pentheus’ mother and the other women that this is a lion; giving them the strength to pull him apart before inspiring Agave to return to Thebes brandishing her son’s head on her Bacchic wand. Mahon makes an odd decision when he takes literally the earthquake with stage directions such as, ‘The palace shakes. There is a fall of masonry within . . . . More falling masonry . . . Dionysus appears before the palace in a cloud of smoke’ (29). Though the destruction of the palace prefigures the destruction of the King, a more flexible reading of the original is to treat the whole ‘palace miracle’ as an exhibition of Dionysus’ power to deceive and delude. One of the marks of the great play is that it will be satisfying both within the terms of reference the playwright has established and as a fable, as an

Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy  183 allegory, as a debate and an argument about the human condition, the world we understand and, in this case, the world beyond, which we fail to understand. This makes it possible to speak to the future, a future that the playwright could never have envisaged in his wildest dreams. Bacchae does that, in a manner quite unlike any other Greek tragedy, by engaging with that wholly other world, the world of theatre. Dionysus was, after all, apart from any functions relating to wine, nature and the irrational, the god of the theatre. And here we see the god demonstrating in his command of those he encounters, the very marrow and bone of theatre itself, that quality that made the theatre seem so dangerous and subversive to Plato and Socrates that no place could be found for it in the utopia of The Republic. Here is a dramatic narrative driven by masquerade, deception and hallucination. Dionysus may have the power to bemuse Pentheus, Agave and the women of Thebes. He also has, in his Chorus, followers who have accompanied him from the east, a living embodiment of the Dionysiac religion, glorious, terrifying, dangerous, ecstatic – all qualities that mark the very best of theatre. Perhaps that is why this is a play that baffles people and is so difficult to translate. It is no paper play, but a blueprint for theatrical action. To those who have some garbled notion of what a Greek tragedy ought to be, Bacchae is a problem because it is so resistant to fitting into any category: to those who wish to find a moral message it is worse, being full of paradoxes and confusions. Whose side are you meant to take? Which character can you latch onto to help you through this moral maze? How ambiguous can the translator leave the action? Any suggestion can only lead to further paradox but there are some markers, signposts which help to make Bacchae applicable to any manner of contemporary events. What Dionysus succeeds in doing is to release the true nature of those with whom he comes into contact. Apply this to the other characters, Cadmus, Tiresias, Agave, the first Messenger. All are affected in different ways. For Pentheus, the exposure of his real nature is the source of his own destruction. Perhaps too it is in this revelation that the play ties into the Nietzschean position posed in The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche is quoted in the Mahon Preface, but elsewhere in The Birth of Tragedy he wrote ‘Every artist is an “imitator”, that is to say, either an Apollonian artist in dreams, or a Dionysian artist in ecstasies, or finally, as in Greek Tragedy, at once both artist in dreams and tragedy’ (Nietzsche 1967: 38). There’s a dichotomy here, surely, that many an Irish artist would recognize. And a translator who ignores it risks reducing a complex drama to a single dimension. What we have in this last and posthumously performed play looks to be Euripides’ celebration of, and farewell to, the theatre. It can offer itself as a political allegory, but it may equally be, as Mahon’s version implies in his choral epilogue, a statement of what the theatre stands for and a reason for the existence of the genre as a forum of debate. The theatre is, in critic Michael Billington’s neat term, a place ‘to rearrange consciousness’. Here things can be said or hinted at that may not be said elsewhere. In Ireland

184  Greek tragedy issues are still debated through theatre. Problems may not be solved but at least the problems are recognized and addressed. There is a political dimension too. Of the three classical tragedians Euripides was the one who most questioned the actions of his city. Aeschylus had fought at the battle of Marathon, Sophocles was an elected general. Euripides presumably underwent military training and fought in battle, but his disillusion with the conduct of the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the power exercised within a notional democracy by the demagogues who plagued contemporary politics, gave him a thoroughly jaundiced view of those in authority. Euripides’ Trojan Women was written in the wake of, and probably as a response to, an actual atrocity of war that his own side had perpetrated. In the winter of 416–415 bce, with the Peloponnesian War becoming ever more ferocious, the island of Melos, which had asserted its right to non­alignment, was attacked by the Athenians and crushed, the men killed, the women and children sold into slavery. Trojan Women, a play about the shocking aftermath of the fall of Troy, was performed at the Great Dionysia of 415. How that first audience in Athens may have responded, many of whom would have voted for the destruction of Melos, there is no means of knowing. Sitting watching the play may well have been soldiers who allocated the Melian women as slaves, and killed the men deemed a danger. And, if they had the wit to see it, they would have recognized the sense of doom which now hung over their heads as their own war moved to what was its most desperate and damned final stages. Brendan Kennelly’s Trojan Women: A New Version offers a slant on the Euripides which makes a strong case for the ‘version’ as having, on occasion, as powerful an impact today as the original play. Kennelly’s reading is enhanced by striking set speeches and some wrenching phrases – ‘Alone as a whisper in a sick room’ (53); ‘There’s nothing more dangerous to a winner than/one seed of hope in the mind of a loser’ (71). Unlike Euripides for whom the action is procession of despair, Kennelly offers the possibility of recovery and renewal. ‘The dead are not the past. The dead are the future’ (72), says Hecuba, only for the Woman – a member of the Chorus – to respond a little later, ‘If there were no forgetfulness/who would dare to continue?’ (74). For Kennelly there is hope and it is women who offer it. If such optimism is more than a simple adjustment of Euripides, it should not be forgotten that there is a romanticism in despair no less seductive than that of the will to survive. Kennelly’s Medea is a different kind of work. Euripides’ Medea gains much of its power from the fact that the situation is essentially what the police today might call ‘a domestic’. From that can be extrapolated a number of possible themes, ideas and notions with which almost anyone can find a point of contact (see Ch. 7). This is one of those plays that has an air of promiscuity to it, acquiring new lovers wherever and whenever because itself so resilient. Kennelly transforms it into a dissection of ‘rage’ and ‘the

Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy  185 world of rage’ while sticking close to the structure and dialogue of Euripides’ original. Knowing at first hand, and sympathizing with, the struggles of women in Ireland, Kennelly finds a kind of justice in Medea’s destruction of her children that places in the frame a whole stratum of Irish social history. Medea’s despairing exit line to herself in Euripides as she goes indoors for the last time: ‘You kill them. Poor Medea. But I love them’ (1250), becomes in Kennelly the more challenging, ‘Though I shall kill them, at least I loved them’ (71). In the light of Kennelly’s change of emphasis, the Abbey Theatre production of Euripides’ Medea in 2000, with Fiona Shaw in the title role, invited a broader meaning when she suggested wryly: ‘Your foreigner embarrasses you’. Shaw’s was the only Irish accent in the cast, though her otherness was diminished by the unremitting intensity of the rest of the cast. No sense here that it was passion that made Medea so different from these ‘civilized Greeks’. This was the production of a faithful translation by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael, but served to show that an unsympathetic director can distance a modern audience further from the original play than will a sympathetic ‘version’. Such examples need putting into perspective alongside contemporary approaches to the whole idea of translation. The 1998 St Jerome Lecture for the British Centre for Literary Translation was given by David Constantine, with an edited version published in The Times Literary Supplement (Constantine 1999: 14–15). Much of what Constantine had to say related to poetry, but his opening point was equally relevant to translating Greek tragedy when he talked about the need for ‘vitality’, similar to the vis which Julius Caesar required of comedy (see Chs. 4 and 12). Plays need to be vital or they are nothing. If they do not live, they cannot hope to be read, still less survive on stage beyond their immediate era when topicality or fashion may have awarded to them a short-lived esteem. Vitality in stage terms is far more than language and, for the translator, more than discovering a potent linguistic equivalent. It involves discovering a stage dynamic that allows objects to acquire resonance; makes dialogue debate; offers subtextual meaning, shared with, or, on occasions, exclusive to the audience; it means deciding whether the weight of a line in the original is better served by the same number of words in the receiving language, more, or fewer; it is masks and masked acting, and what Antonin described as ‘the concrete language of the stage’ (Artaud 1958: 37). As Yeats’ phrase ‘Amid our Troubles’ spreads its tail like a peacock, so other resonances attach to other situations, phrases or situations carrying a vibration with them. In Israel, as Israeli scholar Nurit Yaari, pointed out, ‘a land facing the sea’, for all this could be a literal translation of a Greek originally referring to Aulis, to Troy or to Ithaca, will be more than that. In Israel, if a character in a Greek tragedy enters the stage carrying a rifle, then the make of rifle identifies whose side s/he is on; and identifies where the director is coming from.

186  Greek tragedy In ‘A Bomb at the Door’: Kennelly’s Medea, Marianne McDonald pointed to the way that Kennelly gave Jason the language of Cromwell and in the process turned the ‘barbarian’ Medea into a metaphor for Ireland (McDonald 1992). This is, of course, precisely what Euripides might himself have been doing, if not with an Irish dimension in mind. Those first Athenian audiences were watching situations which they had to treat as unreal. The world of Medea – Euripides’ Medea – is a notional Corinth, a Corinth ruled by a king. Medea secures her own escape before any of the murders by inveigling the King of Athens into guaranteeing sanctuary. Athens was on the brink of war with Sparta in 431 bce, a war in which Corinth was to be on the Spartan side. But the Athenians had thrown out the last of their kings eighty years before; and Corinth was by this time an oligarchy at loggerheads with Athens over her colonies. Was there something in the way in which Creon spoke which spoke more to that first audience? Or Aegeus? Or Medea herself? The stage world of Medea was always, is always, a fantasy world, as was the world of all Greek tragedy, including Aeschylus’ Persians, the only tragedy set in the knowable past. This can be wonderfully liberating for adaptor, translator, director and designer. The story of Medea is perhaps the best of all Greek myths for exploiting this freedom. The mega-myths are about the great taboos, incest, murder in the family, infanticide. Alongside them are the major injustices, exploitation, betrayal, desertion, lust for power, lust for women, lust for possessions. Apart from incest, Medea has the lot – and something in addition. It has as the central figure a woman who breaks the greatest law of humanity. She murders her children: and she gets away with it, aided and abetted by divine intervention. Euripides gets close enough to accounting for, if not justifying, the act of infanticide. Medea becomes the ultimate challenge, the supreme metaphor for oppression because it is the supreme taboo that she violates. How do you account for such an act? Face the act and face the truth behind the act. Here is Kennelly’s ‘rage to falsify all words . . . Medea’s world, the world of rage . . . the world without lies’: rage as a woman, rage as a country, rage as a fine line stretched until it breaks. Translation for translocation involves retexturing a play within a different social milieu from that of its own time, but a milieu which has its own precise cultural parameters. In the 1930s this tended to mean little more than Tyrone Guthrie offering Macbeth in a lounge suit and the brief but controversial ‘modern dress’ movement for Shakespeare which is now commonplace. The Greeks remained Greek while everyone agreed that there were certain plays and playwrights who were so wedded to their own time that there was virtually only one way of producing them and that was strictly in period. Chekhov was considered one of these inviolables, until, that is Thomas Kilroy translocated The Seagull to Ireland. A few years ago Brian Friel followed up his forays into the classical world when he similarly transposed Turgenev’s A Month in the Country to an Irish setting.

Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy  187 There are, no doubt, countless other examples, all of them geared not to subvert the intentions of the original playwright, but to convert them, as Athena converted the Furies, from a single, unquestioning purpose into flexible deities with a new and more versatile brief. Here resides a challenge. Kennelly’s Medea on radio was presented in what was clearly an English production, while his Trojan Women was equally clearly Irish. These days few productions can any more live exclusively in an all-purposes classical limbo. In what period and in what country would Trojan Women or Hecuba not seem relevant? Acts of revenge, acts of treachery, insane cruelty, sacrifice, resistance: any of these, and so many similar, form the spine of the Greek tragic repertoire. Any of them can be generalized, inviting the audience to home in on a single issue. Or they can be made specific, in a specific theatrical context, from which, again, the audience may draw the parallel they find most suitable. Irish Greek tragedy is apposite because Ireland’s past is steeped in injustice and oppression. How can a stage piece confront such oppression? O’Casey found one way, Synge another, but an approach via the Greeks can focus the mind through situations that are ‘givens’ and characters that are ‘givens’ but contain within them that precious power of allegory which all these fine Irish writers relish and fashion. And if this is true for plays rooted in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, how much more so when the myths that inspired those plays are revisited and renewed in contemporary situations. Any Medea can be an Irish Medea, or a Russian Medea, or an Italian or Israeli Medea. It does not even need to be called Medea. All that is necessary are the social or political conditions and these myths will work their magic. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides wrote uncomfortable things for their fellow countrymen. They wrote for the Greeks he knew, two thousand five hundred years ago. The Irish pay them homage and write for now.

Notes 1 Ann Saddlemeyer (ed.) Theatre Business: The Correspondence of the First Abbey Theatre Directors: William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J. M. Synge, quoted in Fiona Macintosh, Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama. Cork: Cork University Press, 1994: 9. 2 Though Heaney contributed to Amid Our Troubles, his The Burial at Thebes: Sophocles’ Antigone was published too late to be discussed in the present chapter. Retrospectively, it includes many of the point made here.

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Part 4

Greek and Roman comedy

Introduction James Thurber once said that many works suffered in translation, but that his were unique because they suffered in the original. As this section is concerned with the translating of comedy, it seemed suitable to start with a gag, even a modern one. There’s a point behind the Thurber crack, of course. There can be a temptation to improve on an original and in comedy there may be a good case for doing so. Certainly, translators claim a lot more leeway in the translating of comedy than is usually accorded to the translation of tragedy. Why that should be may come down to a number of factors, but in the main resides in the differing imperatives of theatre and the nature of comedy. At the beginning of Aristophanes’ Frogs, two characters enter, Dionysus and his slave Xanthias. Here is the opening dialogue: XANTHIAS: Will

I tell a joke, eh, boss? Business as usual. Give the gallery a laugh. DIONYSUS:  Yes, whatever. But don’t do ‘I’m whacked’. Keep off ‘I’m whacked’. I can’t be doing with ‘I’m whacked’. XANTHIAS: But I have to get a laugh, right? DIONYSUS: Course you do. But no ‘pain in the neck’ stuff either. XANTHIAS: What about . . . ? Yeah, you’re going to love this . . . DIONYSUS: OK, let’s hear it. But don’t mention . . . XANTHIAS: What? DIONYSUS: No shifting the luggage because you need a shit. XANTHIAS:  What, no shit jokes? No dropping my load before my arse explodes? DIONYSUS: Don’t even think about it. You’ll make me vomit! XANTHIAS: Why all the bags if I can’t do a bag gag? Phrynichus always does a bag gag. This is comedy isn’t it? Lycis, Ameipsias. They all have a baggage scene. DIONYSUS: Absolutely not. Every time I see one of their contrived comedies I get a few more grey hairs.1 (McDonald and Walton 2007: 1–12)

190  Greek and Roman comedy It is hardly a dynamic opening, but it is an informative one. The audience knows the old jokes. Aristophanes sets up a situation for them, then has the god of theatre outlaw them. The players are masked and they ‘play’ the audience. Plus, though you might not immediately guess it from the script, there is a donkey. And the god of the theatre, Dionysus, is disguised as Heracles, complete with Heracles’ stock emblems of a lionskin worn over Dionysus’s own emblematic yellow costume as Dionysus, and carrying a club. It’s all about theatre. Aristophanes is looking for novelty and his last two plays after Frogs will look forward from his Old Comedy to the New Comedy that becomes Menander in Greek, Plautus and Terence in Latin. When it comes to the translation of old comedies, any equivalence to the source text has to take into account what will be funny to the latest target. Aristophanes relied on linguistic gags, puns and comic coinages, but more on physical business with properties, animals, stage machinery, costume accessories including a false phallus, bodily function and sex jokes and a lot of cross-dressing for comic effect. He created a whole fantasy world and invited his spectators to enter. It is not only in his Birds that he transported his audience to a cloudcuckooland. All his eleven surviving plays had a similar engagement with the fantastic, including the final two where the ethos is less political. The freedom that this offers is seductive. The plays are still based on a received text, and this provides its own challenges for the translator. Only the most pedantic of scholars would maintain that plays as old as those of Aristophanes are automatically funny, but the situations are still promising. The topicality of humour will sometimes override the durability of a gag and satire inevitably reflects its own time. Human nature being what it is, there is something to be found in almost all the characters created by the four comedians whose plays have survived. Of course comedy does tend to date because times change as do terms of reference. Beyond this there is the accumulation of sophistication which may mean that what was once cutting-edge or risqué is soon tamed. One noted nineteenth-century translator of Aristophanes, John Hookham Frere, divided translations into ‘The Faithful’ and ‘The Spirited’, a useful distinction. The challenge in classical comedy is to know what to keep and what to revise, not only linguistically but also culturally. The one obligation, I would suggest, is to ‘lay a trail’, a trail that begins less with the original language than with the original circumstances and ends with today’s audiences, today’s readers. The problems for the translator of Aristophanes are of a different nature from those of his contemporaries writing tragedy. Deborah H. Roberts identified one when she wrote: The vocabulary of sex, of elimination, and of the parts of the body associated with sex and elimination is notoriously hard to translate. Expressions in the source language are often metaphorical, and thus pose the

Greek and Roman comedy 191 usual challenges of figurative speech; and if (as often happens) the target language lacks any unmarked terminology in these areas, the translator may be confronted by a choice between the scientific, the euphemistic, and the colloquial. (Deborah H. Roberts 2008: 278) But this is only the tip of the iceberg. The central issue is one of a broadly defined anachronism. Aristophanes’ stage world was a glorious hybrid, set in Athens, Heaven, Hades or wherever the bizarre mix of characters found themselves. When Thomas Randolph chose to introduce a seventeenth-century setting for the first English translation, or claimed translation, of an Aristophanes comedy, Wealth, he addressed these questions of language and usage. Randolph was the adopted son of Ben Jonson and in a Preface to the reader his publisher F. J. warns that, ‘if it be biting, ’tis a biting Age we live in. Then biting for biting.’ A cast list which includes Jupiter’s Vicar (the Pope), Aristophanes and Randolph himself gives an indication of the liberties he cheerfully takes.2 In the next century Alexander Tytler would deplore such as ‘vulgar petulance’ in Laurence Echard’s Terence, converted into the argot of the eighteenth-century London street (Tytler 1790; see Walton 2006: 14–15). This is the real crux. Should translators of Aristophanes try to introduce their readers or audience to the Athens of Aristophanes, or take the advice of Voltaire that ‘True comedy is the speaking picture of the Follies and ridiculous Foibles of a Nation’ (Letter XIX on Comedy), and apply Aristophanes to their own time? They must at least take note of the fact that nothing dates more quickly than slang. Voltaire was, as it happens, speaking of Aristophanes: but what ‘Nation’, if you are a translator? That of your source? Or of your target? The question has to be addressed to any comedy taken out of its own period and culture and thrust into another. One response for the translator must be that the aim and purpose of a comic playwright will be addressed, not so much the translation of language, as its rehousing within the new audience’s frames of reference. Fifty years after Aristophanes’ death, Menander (c.344–c.292 bce) revealed in his domestic New Comedies the everyday world of his own time, informing us in the process of features of Hellenistic life about which we would otherwise have remained ignorant. Translations of Menander have all been in a modern idiom if only because no complete play of his was discovered and published until 1957. The plays we do have are realistic in setting and situation, a far cry from Old Comedy. Aristophanes offers a fantasy stageworld where gods, long-dead heroes and animals may converse with Athenian citizens, whose real-life counterparts were sitting amongst the audience, but his characters are still talking about clothes, food, furniture, fashion, diseases and money: such things are part of the comic currency. Menander’s characters are concerned about the boy or the girl who lives next door, different approaches to living and to one’s neighbours, the status and likely lives of girls and older women, though not in any questioning sense.

192  Greek and Roman comedy So the translator of Old or New Comedy has similar options of turning drachmas into euros or dollars and chitônes into shirts and trousers. In a production this may not really be the translator’s decision but the director’s. The translator’s challenge is to provide a text that is as funny as the original. A gag is a gag, and most modern translators would regard that as their bottom line. The danger, as William Arrowsmith cogently pointed out, is in the wholesale transfer of a play to another time and place: ‘It is not, of course, topicality that is wrong of itself . . . . What is wrong is the heavy and insistent topicality which asserts that Athens not merely resembles America, but is America’ (Arrowsmith and Shattuck 1961: 126, see Ch. 12). Most modern translators, including Barrett, Sommerstein, Dickinson, McLeish, Henderson and Roche have chosen to follow this advice. Can there then be any special rules, or at least guidelines? When it comes down to it, there will be fewer directives for translating comedy than for tragedy. Shakespeare’s plays were by Shakespeare, Stoppard’s are by Stoppard. Those of Plautus and Terence were by Plautus and Terence, whatever debt the Romans confessed to their Greek sources. The ultimate question for the translator of classical comedy is simple. Which is more important: discovering what made an ancient Greek laugh, or what does the same for a modern audience? The answer has to be the second, but when it comes to stagecraft it is difficult not to wonder if Greek Comedy was not so much a separate genre from Tragedy as an alternative perspective on narrative which reinforces the differences between oral poetry and drama, and between drama and theatre. Perhaps there is a continuity and development of means of communication both offstage and on, from Aeschylus right through to Menander. It could be this awareness of the theatrical which is the real inheritance of Plautus and Terence and all those influenced by their example. The initial selection of material for the Comedy section began with the more general chapter and one on Aristophanes and burlesque. It included neither the article on Menander at the Getty nor the Platform Lecture for the National Theatre. They were less about the process of translation than other possible candidates. It was the manner in which translating comedy opened up that convinced me there should be a place for both. Menander was otherwise under-represented and the whole experience was salutory. This is also the earliest of the articles, the only one from the twentieth century. Much more attention has been focused on Menander in the twenty years since the article was first published and this was a case where the translator had no option but to be creative. Concluding with a National Theatre Platform lecture before a performance of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum picks up where that leaves off, with the definition of translation stretching from ancient Rome to Broadway and the American musical. Perhaps the only truth to be discovered is that translation of a theatre piece may happen in the study but the proper place for the translator is in rehearsal.

Greek and Roman comedy 193

Notes 1 Unpublished translation by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton, first performed by The Theatre Inc, San Diego, 1–18 November 2007. 2 Thomas Randolph, A pleasant comedie, entituled (sic) Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery. ‘Translated out of Aristophanes his Plutus, by Tho. Randolph, augmented and published by F.J.’, London: 1651. The Preface A.3. See Walton (2006): 145–6 for a more detailed account of the modernization.

12 The line or the gag Translating classical comedy CTIA Occasional Papers (2006)

Generalizations or theories about translating comedy are always suspect. Comedy depends on circumstances and circumstances include production. Broadly speaking, the problem still comes down, as it always does in any act of cultural transference, to the balance to be struck between source and target. What is special about comedy relates in part to performance and in part to the way in which humour travels. The nature of performance is too large an issue to consider more than peripherally here, but attention has to be drawn to Umberto Eco’s Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation where he wrote: Now suppose that I am following a play in a language that I do not know well enough. When an actor utters something, I notice that the other people on stage (and probably also people in the audience) are laughing, so I infer that the actor has said something funny. These laughs act as an interpretant of the first actor’s utterance, telling me that he told a joke; but they do not tell me what the joke was about. Not only this, I cannot tell whether it was a witty quip or trivial wordplay. (Eco 2003: 126) This is a bizarre reduction which suggests that comic drama is primarily about characters telling jokes at which others on stage will laugh: it is simply untrue. Much comedy is sufficiently physical as to require the translation of action, not of words. It may involve stage ‘business’, movement, a trip, a shrug, engagement with objects, costume, setting, properties; or expressions of anger, delight, surprise. These transcend the spoken word and are perfectly intelligible to an audience who may be excluded from the spoken language but not from the stage language: and that is something both greater and more complex. Even verbal comedy frequently relies for its humorous effect on context and situation, the engagement of time with space, reaction, facial expression; and other characters not laughing rather than laughing.

The line or the gag 195 Such a distinction is important because it is precisely this engagement with the translation of action rather than words which the translator of comedy has to address. The more alien the society for which a comic drama was originally made, the greater the challenge to today’s translator. Aristophanes’ or Menander’s themes may appear topical. It is the terms of reference, social, political and cultural, which are not the same. Conflicting patterns of behaviour and attitudes then and now have to be confronted and recreated so that they are intelligible and funny while still being capable of passing the Trade Descriptions Act. Words will be a part of this but, in a play of Plautus or Terence, or indeed Euripides or Aristophanes, finding a pun that replicates the Latin wordplay may be far less significant than pointing out who is threatening whom and with what. One immediate point of contact may be that in drama from the classical period both tragedy and comedy were located in a consciously staged world, a masked cocoon, which nobody expected to resemble real life except in the broadest of outlines. But within this exclusive and often exotic world there was a compact to be negotiated (to use one of Eco’s more useful terms) between playwright and audience. In classical tragedy contact was made through a shared awareness in the audience of the frailty of existence; the apparent arbitrariness of whatever it was – whether gods, fate or destiny – which dictated the course of existence; and the sympathy which could be generated in watching the playing out of a life which might be removed from their own, but had all manner of immediate points of connection. Comedy, it might be argued, did exactly the same, but at a lower level of consciousness where heroic figures could be cut down to size by the insignificant; where the gods threatened more with banana skins than with thunderbolts; where seriousness was not a matter of death, but a matter of life. In comedy far more people pretend to die than actually do die. In each and every case, though, however divorced from the realities of day-to-day living, the Greek playwrights, tragic and comic, still acknowledged and tuned into a political, historical, philosophical, sociocultural framework that was part of the world they shared with the generic entity of their audiences. Whatever else can be recreated in translation that initial shared experience cannot. It is this that makes the brief of the stage translator such an intriguing one. The further you go back in time the more complex the task becomes, less because of the spoken language than because of the cultural context. Part of the translator’s task in renewing any plays of a previous era is to renegotiate the terms of reference for a new audience. In tragedy that may require a leap of faith, but ultimately the goal is likely to be Aristotle’s pity and fear, or Brecht’s enlightenment and stimulus to action. The path may be narrow, but it is straight. In Sophocles incest is incest; a wound is a wound; suicide is suicide. In comedy the path is anything but straight and the search for equivalence may involve less a leap of faith than a leap of the imagination. Aristophanes’

196  Greek and Roman comedy fondness for anachronism, for absurdity, for the fantastic gives licence to a similar freedom in all but the most literal of translations. A considerable disservice will be offered to a comic text on the page which, in the name of faithfulness to the original, loses Julius Caesar’s vis, which he personally found in Menander but not in Terence (see Ch. 4: 47), all those qualities of stage dynamic which cannot be translated simply by the substitution of a set of words in Latin or Greek or French or whatever, by their equivalent in English, and certainly not by whether those on stage find the situation funny. The oldest type of recorded or recordable classical comedy was the satyr play. From at least the time of Aeschylus – and Aristotle suggested the satyr play predated tragedy – a group of tragedies ended with a comic afterpiece, as a kind of restorative. For the Athenians the satyr play was less comedy than a necessary aspect of tragedy. A single complete example has come down to us: Euripides’ Cyclops. Old Comedy is represented by Aristophanes’ plays, performed between 427 and 388 bce. Nine of the surviving eleven are known generically as Old Comedy, two as Middle or New. The last two, Women in Power and Wealth, show a change in tone and emphasis away from the overtly and specifically political to generalized and more social themes and treatments. Such a trend is anticipated in some of the later plays of Euripides from the later fifth century – Helen, Iphigenia in Tauris or Ion. The latter part of the fourth century is represented almost exclusively by Menander (flor. c. 320–290 bce) writing on strictly local issues in an Athens that had become ever less politically significant since the rise of Macedon. Before 1957 there was no extant play of Menander. Now we do have two in a performable state, with major portions of several others. The BadTempered Man (Duskolos) and The Woman from Samos (Samia) are cleverly constructed mixtures of domestic comedy and farce, with the situations being driven by the characters more than by the plot. Surviving classical comedies raise a number of issues. One relates to the ‘no-go’ areas of Comedy, areas which have acquired a censorship of taste or sensibility. Aristophanes was banned for many years on the British stage and was often published in translation with passages omitted or translated into Latin, on the quaint assumption that little boys would be less roused to vice by reading the words membrum virile than if confronted with ‘cock’ or ‘penis’ (see also Ch. 5). Now, when nobody turns a hair at references to farting or fucking, we are in a period of rather different sensitivities. Matters of correctness form a more flexible part of the social fabric in comedy than they ever do in tragedy. Such sensitivity is a matter of fashion. Current concerns over attitudes to people of colour, to disablement, sexism or cultural stereotyping – Aristophanes uses most as the basis for jokes – may seem every bit as coercive as were references to obscenity or profanity a hundred years ago. Often translations say more about the times in which the translation has been made than about the originals.

The line or the gag 197 For a number of periods stage comedy provides the most powerful social document available. How later generations may view them can be almost as revealing. Another trouble with the Greeks and the Romans is that not only is the original the province of a diminishing few, for none of whom is it still a spoken language, but also the source language is dominated by a series of linguistic and dramatic intricacies which may have no obvious point of contact with contemporary stage practice. The plays were written for masked actors and the theatre of masks is kept alive today in only small and specialized pockets. One of the requirements for the translator, for all much of the writing is mask-orientated, may be to open up the text so that it loses this association with masks. A single example from each of the major genres can do no more than bring a few of these the issues under a single roof. The satyr plays were not ‘satires’ but plays which featured a chorus of satyrs, earthy creatures with horses’ ears and tails and usually sporting an exaggerated phallus. If Cyclops is in any way typical they relied heavily on parody, with situations similar to those that might have appeared in a tragedy; the comic dimension comes through the antics and attitudes of the chorus. A comparison between two contemporary translations, one literal, one freer and in verse, offers something of the distance between faithfulness to the playwright and faithfulness to the spirit of the playwright. The Cyclops, Polyphemus, has been made drunk and Odysseus is preparing to put out the giant’s single eye, with the enthusiastic but ineffective assistance of the chorus of satyrs (Cyclops: 656–62). CHORUS:  Hurrah,

hurrah! Thrust bravely, hurry, burn out the eyebrow of the guest-eating monster! Burn, incinerate the herdsman of Aetna! Whirl and pull, whirl and pull, lest in pain he does you some desperate harm! (Kovacs 1994)

Alternatively: CHORUS:



Twist it, be firm with it. Give him a perm with it. Wind it and twine it, Try to refine it. Now anticlockwise and just watch him squirm with it.



Exercise, exorcise. Make his eyes water. Pulverise, cauterise. Give him no quarter. Miserable animal, Man-mangling cannibal! Grind up his cornea with pestle and mortar. (Walton 1991)

198  Greek and Roman comedy Whether a descent into rhyme, exaggeration, anachronism and alien metaphor is justified in the pursuit of performance ‘drive’ is another matter. It is a slippery slope that leads to ‘anything goes’, if any store is to be set by fidelity to the original. The question of fidelity was addressed by, amongst others, Hilaire Belloc (1931: 17; see also Ch. 8: 128). With a dramatic text, and especially with a comic one, the ‘atmosphere of the word’ may well be all those things that Eco overlooked. The problem is extended by the challenge confronting the translator of Aristophanes. Here there are all the usual issues of any classical play: gods; a background of myth; geography; cultural norms; an understanding of the difference between the world of the play and the world of the first audience; a recognition of stage conventions, including music and dance; an understanding of the sense of occasion; the built-in bank of more recent theatrical presentation, with all its novelty and shortcuts. For Aristophanes, add immediacy, in-jokes, local gossip, the current hot issues, verbal abuse and innuendo, stage business, puns and wordplay, together with a sense of the absurd which may be the most difficult to replicate. If there is to be licence in updating the reference bank in comedy, then in what areas does it reside? The range runs, as with stage comedy from any era, from language manipulation; to the making explicit of lazzi or potential physical business, to wholesale updating of the parochial. At the heart of a long-running debate is the difference between ‘equivalence’ and ‘appropriation’. Space permits only one example here, again a comparison, but this time of several translations, each of which considers the nature of the joke, but only the most recent of which find a way of reproducing it as a performance ‘gag’. In Aristophanes’ Birds the two Athenians persuade the birds to construct a new city in mid-air between heaven and earth to be called Cloudcuckooland.1 A Messenger arrives to report progress. The scene is in the form of a double act between Peisetairos and the Messenger who has brought news that the construction work on the new city is now complete (Birds: 1122– 69). The plot is temporarily put on ice while Peisetairos ‘feeds’ and the Messenger delivers the ‘punch-lines’. Peisetairos wants to know which bird contributed what to the building process. Who carried up the mortar and how? ‘Herons’, says the Messenger, using their feet like shovels: to which Peisetairos responds ti dêta podes an ouk an ergasaiato?, literally ‘Is there anything that feet cannot do?’ (1141–7). This arcane response is explained by a scholiast in a side note in one of the manuscripts where he says that there was a proverb at the time ‘Is there anything that hands cannot do?’, with the word ‘cheires’ for ‘podes’. Comedy does not always travel well. The earliest English language translation of Birds, an anonymous prose one of 1812, left the line to fend for itself: PISTHETAIROS:  [spelling

of names varies in different translations] And how did they apply the mortar to the stonework?

The line or the gag 199 FIRST MESSENGER: This,

my good fellow, was cleverly contrived: the geese made shovels of their feet, and, after having minced up the mortar, loaded the hods. PISTHETAIROS: Wonderful! what use cannot feet be applied to? (A Member of One of the Universities 1812) John Hookham Frere, in the first verse translation, made a better attempt at the wordplay, but put the context of the gag into stage directions of his own before coming up with a pun: PEISETAIROS: (in

a fuss which he endeavours to conceal). Yes! yes! But after all, to load your hods, How did you manage that? MESS: Oh, capitally, I promise you. There were the geese, all barefoot Trampling the mortar, and, when all was ready, They handed it into the hods, so cleverly, With their flat feet! PEIS: (a bad joke, as a vent for irritation). They footed it you   mean – Come; it was handily done though, I confess. (Frere 1839)

More recent translations have been rather more ingenious in turning the gag into a pun: and, indeed, according to modern taste, funnier. William Arrowsmith (1961) opted for: PISTHETAIROS: MESS:

PISTH:



But how was the mortar heaped in the hods? Gods, now that was a triumph of engineering skill! Geese burrowed their feet like shovels beneath And heaved it over their heads to the hods. They did? Ah Feet! Ah Feet! O incredible feat! What can compare with a pair of feet? (Arrowsmith 1961)

But that is a reader’s gag. You can’t make the point by speaking it, at least not without elaborate ‘signposting’. Kenneth McLeish used the same pun, but turned it into an actor’s gag: PEITHETAIROS: MESS:

PEITH:

And how did they fill those hods? You’d have liked that. Geese stuck in their feet like this, and shuffled it. What a feat. (McLeish 1993)

200  Greek and Roman comedy Paul Muldoon was pithier still, but he too appreciated what an audience needs to work it out: PEISETAIROS: MESS: PEIS:

But how did they get the mortar into the hods? That was done by the geese. They shovelled it in with their feet. No mean feat. (Muldoon 1999)

Aristophanes is notoriously testing to translate because of his mixture of the physical and the verbal, fantasy and politics, the farcical and the serious. The temptation to update has sometimes proved irresistible to directors and translators, though not always convincingly.2 Menander looks easier, but offers problems of his own that look forward from his New Comedy to Roman New Comedy based on his plays and those of his contemporaries. Menander’s reputation in the ancient world was superior to that of any other comic writer. Plutarch (first–second century ce), who gives the impression of having attended lots of Menander’s plays, could see no point in an educated man going to the theatre at all unless he were going to a play by Menander. Favourite lines were quoted all over the place, even in St Paul. But, principally because his language showed influence of koinê, the speech of every day, his work failed to hold a place in the school curriculum. From the Dark Ages onwards not a single play survived. Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did major fragments of plays begin to emerge, frequently in the most bizarre circumstances: enough, though, for a number of critics to start to write about Menander as a playwright, and even to try to complete some of the plays.3 The publication as late as 1957 of one whole play, The Bad-Tempered Man, and almost all of another, The Woman from Samos (1969), made informed judgements easier (see Ch. 14). The scripts may look simple, but translating Menander is not straightforward. There is always something lurking beneath the surface of apparently innocuous dialogue that is far more dramatically complex than many of his critics have credited. Certainly the more successful English-language versions are those which show an awareness of subtext. The Woman from Samos is built on a series of misunderstandings about a baby amongst (baby apart) a cast of six, who think constantly that they alone know what is happening, when none has a complete picture. The onus on the translator to provide clarity amongst such confusion is testing. This is comedy less of action than of reaction. Menander is a master of ellipsis. There is a brief exchange when Demeas throws Chrysis out of his house (370–3 in the fuller text). The scene was partially known, but without its full context, from 1905. F. C. Allinson translated for the first Loeb edition as follows: DEMEAS: CHRYSIS: DEMEAS:

Off with you to perdition! Quick! Because of his adoption? That, and –

The line or the gag 201 CHRYSIS: DEMEAS:

Well, why ‘and’? Yes, that. (Allinson 1921: 156)

Lionel Casson had the benefit of the whole text (or at least the 85 per cent of it in the 1969 manuscript): DEMEAS: Now, beat it, I say! CHRYSIS: Just because I insisted on DEMEAS: For that and – CHRYSIS: (interrupting) And what DEMEAS: For that, period.

keeping the child?

(Casson 1971) Norma Miller, in the second of two Penguin translations: DEMEAS: CHRYSIS: DEMEAS: CHRYSIS: DEMEAS:

Now go to hell. Is it because I kept the baby? Yes, and because . . . Because what? Just because of that? (Miller 1987: 370–3)

Allinson used seventeen words, Casson twenty-one, Miller nineteen. Menander does it in twelve. That is why translating Menander is difficult (see Ch. 14). Then there is the offshoot of Greek New Comedy in the world of republican Rome in the third and second centuries bce. The Latin plays of Plautus and Terence, significantly different from each other, are united in representing not only our first literature in Latin, but also a series of plays all of which are based on Greek New Comedy originals. There is a special problem here for the translator who is translating what are in their way already translations. If part of your process in translating for the stage is to recreate a plausible society within which the characters can speak and breathe, what do you do with a play which is both Roman and Greek while being steadfastly neither? Brief examples from Plautus, the earlier of the two Latin playwrights, and one from Terence, make similar points about how comedy does and does not travel, from period to period and across the Atlantic. Consider the gulf between these two translations of a speech from Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian): MILCHIO:

 hen an old phrase suits the occasion it’s well used. Why all this W blarney you are giving me is nothing but pure piffle, as they say, rien que belles balivernes. [The Plautus original uses Greek, not Latin, here.] (Nixon 1932: 136–7))

202  Greek and Roman comedy Alternatively: MILCHIO:



If the old saw seems dull, hand me an axiom. Buddy, this baloney is a batch of gooey hooey. (Burroway 1995)

Or, again, the difference in Truculentus between the translator who leaves the text open to interpretation and the one who distrusts both the playwright and the actors by visualizing and identifying spurious stage action through stage directions as though they were Plautus’ own: there are, of course, virtually no stage directions in the manuscripts of any classical play: STRATOPHANES:

. . . [a] female hired to mourn, loud in praise of others and fitly dumb about herself. (Giving his cloak a rakish hitch) Ah, well, back I come to Athens after ten months’ absence . . . (Nixon 1938: 496–7)

Alternatively: STRATOPHANES: . . .



she knows how to praise others well enough, but in truth cannot praise herself. (The entire procession is asleep, some leaning on their instruments, some on each other; a few are prone and audibly snoring. He awakens them by a loud clearing of his throat. They applaud vigorously and exit with ad-libs about his bravery, eloquence etc. The last to exit hurries back to snatch the scribe away just as another kick is aimed at him. He is dragged off writing furiously. STRATOPHANES turns the incomplete kick into a grand gesture and continues.) Now after nine months, I’ve come back to Attic Athens. (Tatum 1995)4

For a more detailed consideration of translations of Plautus Menaechmi, see Ch. 4. The one example from Terence is a drunk scene from Brothers (Adelphi) (801–804): Re-enter SYRUS, tipsy. SYRUS:

S ’help me, little Syrus, you’ve taken downy care of yourself and filled your office in fine style. G’along. Still, as I’ve filled my belly indoors from all the dishes, taking a stroll here has caught my fancy. (Sargeaunt 1912)

The line or the gag 203 Alternatively: Enter SYRUS from indoors. SYRUS:  Syrus,

old son, you’ve done very nicely, thank you. Handled your duties with aplomb. Off you trot. You’ve sampled everything available indoors. Time for a little constitutional, I think (Walton 2003)

William Arrowsmith, perhaps the most enduring and insightful of all twentiethcentury translators of both comedy and tragedy, identified the problems as he saw them in ‘The Lively Conventions of Translation’, an essay in one of the earliest books devoted to stage translation (Arrowsmith and Shattuck 1961). He pointed to what he described as ‘the hard facts of culture’, complex enough in Greek tragedy but multiplied in comedy because: . . . comedy dumps into the translator’s lap an intolerable profusion of things – odd bits of clothing, alien cuisine, unidentifiable objects, pots and pans and utensils of bewildering variety and function, unfamiliar currency, etc. . . . . What the devil can a translator do with a culture in which women, for esthetic reasons, depilate their pubic hairs, or with a comedian who can build a whole recognition scene on the fact? (Arrowsmith 1961: 123) Mercifully, he answers his own question a little later, speaking for any translator of Aristophanes when he asserts that, ‘Incongruity and craft make the obscene more obscene, truly obscene. And this is what the translator wants’. Kenneth Dover picked out a more fundamental issue that relates to reception: . . . the audience of tragedy tolerates a certain degree of obscurity and mystification, but an audience that has been told that Aristophanes is funny and therefore expects to be amused is less tolerant. (Dover 1972: 230). It is here that Hilaire Belloc’s injunction to pick out ‘the atmosphere of the word’ acquires the force of mantra which any and all translators would be advised daily to rehearse. The atmosphere of a word may well translate into a completely different word from its literal meaning. It is challenging to remain faithful to the original text of an ancient comedy but virile enough to convey in the reading the playwright’s joie de vivre. How difficult this may be was summed up by publisher Nick Hern when he wrote of being reminded by a production he had seen: How very difficult it is in the case of Aristophanes to follow the Drama Classics brief [the series he initiated] and provide an uncut

204  Greek and Roman comedy and uncluttered translation of the original. If you put the whole thing in much of it is incomprehensible (and it goes without saying mountainously unfunny) yet the series doesn’t allow you explicatory footnotes.5 Perhaps the nub of rendering Aristophanes in English boils down to how you handle the ‘clutter’. As for modernization, Arrowsmith set his mind against what he called ‘total cultural translation’. When talking about comedy he picked out a tragedy as his bad example, not a comedy, but the translation of The Women of Trachis by Ezra Pound into a ghastly cornpoke whimsy, which, bizarrely, still finds its adherents even among the most text-based of classicists; not Arrowsmith, though: The Greek characters in Ezra Pound’s shabby Women of Trachis, for instance, manage to persuade us that they are neither Greek nor American nor English by employing a bastard argot never spoken by anybody except Pound and, in consequence, the whole convention founders. (Arrowsmith 1961: 126) Whatever the virtues in demystifying a classical text for the modern student, classical comedy is seldom served by abolishing essential virtues in favour of the quick snigger. Arrowsmith rightly points to the heavy-handedness of translating a Cleon (in Aristophanes’ Knights) into Joseph McCarthy or Nicias into Eisenhower: It is not, of course, topicality that is wrong of itself . . . . What is wrong is the heavy and insistent topicality which asserts that Athens not merely resembles America but is America (Arrowsmith 1961: 127). When it comes to Plautus and Terence, and the justification they both claim for adapting Menander and other Greek originals as a guarantee of quality, we enter a whole new world of meanings for the verbs ‘translate’ and ‘adapt’. The Latin comedians may well have headed for the Greek repertoire, but their originality as dramatists allows for the criticism by Terence of a rival that he was a decent translator but a poor playwright: or, to put it literally, ‘ . . . in translating well, he has written badly and from good Greek plays has made Latin ones that are not any good’ (Prologue to The Eunuch: 7–8). For the modern translator of Plautus or Terence this is still the challenge and makes a contribution to the whole debate over priorities. The ‘good’ translator, in the manner in which Terence uses the term, may turn a good play into a bad play. Clearly there is not a lot of arguing

The line or the gag 205 with that. But how important is it to consider another possibility that the translator turns a good play of Terence into a good play, but bad Terence? And does it matter to anyone except the Latin scholar? Roman comedy is a contrived blending of two stage worlds, one a relocation of the real life of Hellenistic Athens in the late fourth and early third centuries bce, the other a bastardization of this into republican Rome where the nature of the piece and the changes that have been made in it do offer comment, however veiled, on Roman society of the playwright’s time. Can we then divine here any rules, or, at least guidelines? Individual translators, I suspect, will always find their own rather than borrow anyone else’s. It has to be remembered that a new translation of any classical play is the result of perceived deficiencies in predecessors. Definitive versions are rarer than hen’s teeth in the world of dramatic translation. Every production of a play, every performance by an actor is a kind of translation. With the Greeks and Romans, performers, audiences and readers need translators, less as mothers than as midwives. And yet it is precisely the cultural context, or the variety of cultural contexts, that makes the comedy of the classical period so fascinating. It is important that there be some translations of Greek and Roman comedy around that do actually offer a faithful rendition of the received texts. That they may need to be padded out with commentary and footnotes relieves the pressure on the translator to search for anything but accuracy. For an audience, of course, such a translation is absolutely hopeless. If a comedy is to be renegotiated in another language and another culture, maybe it comes down, not to any neo-Aristotelian unities of Place, Time and Action, but to an equivalence of the senses; the smell or flavour of, the feel, sight and sound of. Here there can be room for the pace and the silences, the emotions, quirks of character, the nuances, joys, humiliations and sheer daftness of human behaviour. Those are the regions of real flexibility, those are the aspects of human experience which are least affected by the gulf of years between now and then, between the playwrights, players and audiences of ancient Athens or Rome and those of our own century. The finest of comedy in the classical period is less to do with jokes than with the interplay of characters and situations. That is the challenge: recognition of it goes a major part of the way towards finding solutions.

Notes 1 This is one of the simplest and most definitive of translations from Greek, Nephelokokkygia meaning precisely ‘Cloud-cuckoo-land’. 2 Stephen Sondheim’s Frogs (1974) features not Aeschylus and Euripides for the two dead playwrights competing to return to earth, but Shakespeare and Shaw.

206  Greek and Roman comedy 3 Gilbert Murray’s The Rape of the Locks and The Arbitration, published by George Allen and Unwin in 1942 and 1945, were based respectively on Menander’s Perikeiromenê and Epitrepontes, both still known only from fragments. 4 The discrepancy between ten months and nine is explained by the Latin saying ten, but the plot revolving around the duration of a pregnancy. 5 Unpublished commissioning letter.

13 Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque The Comparative Drama Conference, 2005

On my last visit to the Comparative Drama Conference two years ago in Columbus (in 2003), my starting point was also Athenian Old Comedy. Then I initiated a rapid and somewhat superficial trawl through theatre history to see if there were any other playwrights who could be claimed as having inherited Aristophanes’ mantle. The conclusion was that there was nobody who combined the same elements of farce, fantasy and hard politics until the emergence as a playwright in the nascent Soviet Union of the dynamic poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky was born and raised to revolutionary ideals in Russia in the early years of the twentieth century, coming into his own as poet, playwright and the prime mover behind Window Rosta, the satire arm of the Russian Telegraph Agency in 1919. He was largely responsible for the development of poster art of the period and is given credit for the propaganda trains and boats which served to disseminate information to distant regions of the vast country that was Russia in a time of largely primitive communications. His intellectual anarchy produced a series of inventive circus plays and a few full-length ‘burlesques’ which included the first soviet play, MysteryBouffe, and the two science fiction classics, The Bedbug and The Bathhouse in 1929 and 1930. After the hostile reception of the latter he committed suicide, only to be posthumously rehabilitated by Stalin as ‘the poet of the revolution’. The word ‘burlesque’ is used advisedly as I want now to move backwards in time, less to an individual than to the whole genre of ‘burlesque’ which may be said to have incorporated many of the aspects of Aristophanic vis, comic verve and vitality. ‘Burlesque’ may also be used unadvisedly as it will conjure different forms of entertainment according to whether your background is in the theatrical styles of America or of Great Britain. My contention is that, different as the two forms of burlesque are, they do offer complementary dimensions of the Aristophanic and tie both English and American traditions into the earliest translations of Aristophanes in the English language. American burlesque brings to mind low comedians and strippers where, in the words of Douglas Gilbert, ‘the height of humor centered about the

208  Greek and Roman comedy apertures of the human body’ (Gilbert: 5). Martin Collyer’s 1964 history of the subject makes no attempt to pretend that burlesque in America was sociologically anything much more than that. He does point to a kind of distinctive rapport with the audience that had less of the sleaze of a Soho strip club than the kind of joie-de-vivre to be found in William Friedkin’s 1968 film The Night They Raided Minsky’s. The burlesque stage was where the likes of Red Skelton, Abbott and Costello, Bert Lahr (who starred in Minsky’s with Jason Robards Jr and Britt Eckland), Sophie Tucker, Phil Silvers and Lenny Bruce learnt their trade, and where the skills of ‘First Banana’ (Silvers says that the term ‘Top Banana’ was never used) were almost formulaic in their requirements. The strippers tended to exploit a gimmick, and if it is unnecessary here to recall what some of these gimmicks were, I do confess that my one and only experience of burlesque, in a latter-day manifestation, was in downtown Denver in 1973 where the star of the show rejoiced in the name of Clara Clapsaddle. Collyer does, however, maintain that ‘Burlesque can be claimed as any comment made broadly, satirically, mockingly, but consistently retaining an underlying truth’ (Collyer: 4). In the stage burlesque he found not only satire and parody, but also a self-knowing quality which depended on what might be described as ‘a contract of unreality’ between audience and performers. That level of shared unreality can be found in every aspect of Greek Old Comedy, as it has come down to us. For those who claim for American burlesque that it might reflect the American male’s sexual uncertainty of himself, there is a parallel in the more obviously ‘drag’ plays of Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, Lysistrata and Women in Power – a better translation of which might be Women in Control. There is a kind of hardheaded innocence in a show that only exploits those who, performers or punters, are willingly exploited, and makes no attempt to disguise its personal social subtext. English burlesque by contrast was born in the newly legitimate theatre of the Restoration and had its heyday in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as parodies of serious plays. In 1999 Edith Hall published a comprehensive survey of burlesques from classical mythology in the Victorian theatre (Hall 1999: 336–66). Fiona Macintosh followed with an investigation into burlesque versions of Medea in the light of the social history of Victorian England (Macintosh 2000: 75). Two of these, Robert Brough’s Medea, or The Best of Mothers, with a Brute of a Husband and Mark Lemon’s Medea; or a Libel on the Lady from Colchis, opened on the same day in rival London theatres in 1856. The present paper focuses on James Robinson Planché, one of the writers who made their names, reputations and, indeed, fortunes in this world of the dedicatedly unserious, but who might, nonetheless, claim to have most contact with the spirit of of Aristophanes. Planché wrote and staged a version of the story of Jason and Medea, though he preferred to use the term ‘extravaganza’ to describe The Golden Fleece: or Jason in Corinth and

Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque 209 Medea in Colchis. The Golden Fleece was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in March, 1845. It is in two parts, the second of which keeps closely to the shape of Euripides’ Medea, though omitting the murder of the children and thus removing the need for Aegeus. A year later, almost to the day, Planché presented a production of what has a strong claim to be the first Aristophanes on the British stage. The “Birds” of Aristophanes is a short and unsurprisingly sanitized version of the Aristophanes which concludes with a transformation scene to Olympus and the intervention of Jupiter to restore conventional morality. A Harvard Birds of 1883 has been claimed as the first production of an Aristophanes play since classical times and that was certainly closer to the Greek original. The inventiveness of Planché, however, both here and in his Theseus and Ariadne or The Marriage of Bacchus, was to parody both classical tragedy and comedy in a manner which replicates, or perhaps even reconstructs, Old Comedy in a Victorian context. The linking of these Planché plays is significant. The first translation of Aristophanes into English is usually identified as Thomas Randolph’s Wealth (Ploutos) published in 1651 as Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery. This is a pretty free use of the term ‘translation’, with a cast that included Aristophanes himself and references to football, the gunpowder plot and the ghost of Hamlet’s father (see Walton 2006: 147). There was no Birds until 1812 and a translation attributed somewhat coyly to ‘A Member of One of the Universities’ who I am now fairly certain was Thomas Mitchell. There were further translations of Birds by the Rev. Henry Cary (1824); John Warter (1830); Charles Wheelwright (1837); and John Hookham Frere (1839). None of these had any expectations of performance, nor, indeed, in the prevailing morality of Victorian England, any likelihood of being translated, much less published, in their entirety. The latest, that by the Right Honourable John Hookham Frere, holds a significant position in the history of English literature. Frere was an Etonian who founded a satirical magazine called The Antijacobin and wrote a number of literary parodies and burlesques. Not surprisingly, his career in the Foreign Office was short-lived and his time in the Diplomatic Service regarded as not diplomatic enough despite his high connections. He was not yet fifty when he retired to the island of Malta and devoted some of his life to translating Aristophanes, principally because he was so unsatisfied with the work of Thomas Mitchell. In a review of Mitchell’s translations published in the Quarterly Review in 1820, Frere criticized Mitchell for using old-fashioned language such as might be found not in a nineteenthcentury comedy but ‘in the style of our ancient comedy in the beginning of the sixteenth century’.1 Frere’s own translation of Birds was published in Malta, for private circulation in 1839, and subsequently with three other plays (Acharnians, Knights and Frogs) in 1840, an edition so popular it was frequently reprinted in The World’s Classics in the twentieth century as late as 1939.

210  Greek and Roman comedy Such was the dramatic legacy inherited by Planché in 1845 and published the following year as: ‘The “Birds” of Aristophanes. A Dramatic Experiment in one act, ‘Being an Humble Attempt to Adapt the said “Birds” to this Climate, by giving them New Names, New Feathers, New Songs, and New Tales’. This, then, is the context: centuries of neglect for Aristophanes because, Wealth apart, he was regarded as unsuitable in the classroom, too parochial and much too scatological. No play of his, including Wealth, could be regarded as suitable for any stage, especially the British stage bedevilled by a censorship that would keep rude words such as ‘adultery’ and ‘hips’ away from the sensitive ears of the theatre-going public until as late as 1968 (see Ch. 5). But in the nineteenth century, the vogue for the works of the classical authors, including the dramatists, found itself matched by an enthusiasm for stage parody and the farcical treatment of subjects that elsewhere might be given serious consideration. Such was the demand for new material that novels and dramas, even police and newspaper reports, might find themselves staged for a public that had been forced largely by law into a diet of revue and musical pastiche. The celebrated production of Sophocles’ Antigone with music by Mendelssohn reached Covent Garden via Potsdam and Paris on 2 January 1845. By February E. L. Blanchard’s burlesque version of Antigone was playing at the Strand Theatre. A month later Planché’s The Golden Fleece or Jason in Colchis and Medea in Corinth opened at the Haymarket Theatre Royal, April 1845; “The Birds” of Aristophanes one year later. In the frontispiece of the published text of The Golden Fleece Planché invoked the earlier Antigone as the reason for his interest in the Greeks: I could not resist the temptation to burlesque – not the sublime poetry of the Greek dramatist [in this case Euripides and Medea rather than Sophocles and Antigone] I should have deemed it profanation – but the modus operandi of that classical period, which really illustrates the old proverbial observation that there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. (Planché 1846: 8) The relationship between original and parody has something of the link between, for example, Euripides’ Helen, or the lost Telephus, and Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria. Here are some samples of Planché’s Gilbertian macaronics. The first sets the tone for Jason and Medea’s initial encounter: Enter MEDEA JASON: Gods! A goddess AEETES: My daughter, sir,

A quartet.

sure I gaze on. Medea, Mr Jason! . . . .

Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque 211 MEDEA: (aside)



O Jason, thy face on I wish I ne’er had looked, sir So spicy and nice he Is – I’m completely hooked, sir! His glance like a lance, Right through my heart he throws, O! Enraptured! I’m captured. (Planché 1879: 16)

The Nurse (‘Psuche, a good old soul’) opens the Medea part of the play:

Oh, that the hull of that fifty-oared cutter, the Argo, Between the Symplegades, never had passed with its cargo. Indeed, I may say that I wish, upon Pelion, the pine trees Of which it was built had remained, as they were, very fine trees. (Planché 1879: 28)

Give or take the doggerel this is an accurate translation of the opening lines in Euripides. The plot follows Euripides closely. Medea is first heard lamenting off-stage before making her entrance: MEDEA:



O! mighty Theseus and adored Diana! How long must I be treated in this manner? The wretch to whom my virgin faith was plighted; To whom, in lawful wedlock I’m united, Has gone and popped the question to another, And left me of two chopping boys the mother . . . . He leaves me to darn his stockings, and mope in the house all day Whilst he treats her to see “Antigone”, with a box at the Grecian play. (Planché 1879: 29–30)

The Chorus are sympathetic. Creon arrives (‘You are a dab, I know at hocus pocus/But off this point you’ll find it hard to choke us’). She begs a day’s leave before exile with the children which he grants (‘Well, for their sakes I’ll grant that brief delay,/You can’t much mischief make in one short day’). The first scene with Jason is recognizable from Euripides, but Aegeus is cut and the play moves rapidly to the dispatching of Glauce with the poisoned robe: MEDEA: NURSE:



Does Glauce spurn my gifts? Oh would she had – She took ’em in, as you have her.

212  Greek and Roman comedy MEDEA:   I’m

NURSE: MEDEA:

NURSE:

glad To hear it. Tell me all, how do they fit her? Fit her! She’s frying in them like a fritter. She stole my flame, and now in flames she lingers, And with my wedding ring she’s burnt her fingers The tyrant Creon, too, does he not frizzle?. He does, and so will you unless you mizzle . . .

Enter JASON JASON:



How now? What more of ill Has Jason now to dread? The King’s a cinder; My match is broken off – my bride is tinder; And I am left, a poor unhappy spark, To go out miserably in the dark. (Planché 1879: 39)

The children return and exit with Medea into the house as she goes off to ‘flog’ (rather than kill) them. Jason returns and Medea appears above in a chariot drawn by two fiery dragons (as in Euripides). Euripides finally retreats in disarray as Medea reveals the boys alive and the information that she is going to send them to a Greek Grammar School, before throwing herself on the justice of the audience. And the Chorus sing the final number: CHORUS:



Off she goes, sir – off she goes, sir! Highty-tighty! Highty-tighty! Goodness knows, sir, all her woes, sir, Made her flighty, made her flighty. (Planché 1879: 41)

The play relies heavily on anachronism and pun, with the Choruses in musical form similar to what might be expected in an English Pantomime, or even one of the Savoy operettas of the latter part of the nineteenth century which themselves parodied the dramatic styles of the time – Patience, The Yeomen of the Guard or Ruddigore. Planché offers plenty of songs, with titles such as ‘John Anderson’ (sung by Medea), ‘The Tight Little Island’ (The Chorus) and a Posthorn Gallop by the whole company for the finale. As in English pantomime the principal boy and principal girl were both played by women, Madame Vestris as Medea, and Miss P. Horton as Jason. If this did not quite conjure the spirit of Aristophanes, Miss Horton’s appearance the following year certainly did, as the Nightingale in “The Birds” of Aristophanes. In the Preface to the first edition of “The Birds” of Aristophanes Planché claimed it as: . . . a humble attempt to imitate or paraphrase (but not burlesque [my italics] or travesty) such portions of the Comedy of “The Birds” as were

Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque 213 capable of being adapted to local and recent circumstances . . . “an experiment” . . . undertaken with the view of ascertaining how far the theatrical public would be willing to receive a higher class of entertainment than the modern Extravaganzas of the English stage, or the “Revue” of the French. (Planché 1846: 7, rpt. 1879: 83) It was performed at the Haymarket Theatre only three years after the passing of the Theatres Act of 1843 which offered greater freedom to playwrights by slightly restricting the powers of the Lord Chamberlain as censor. There is a vastly reduced cast, from twenty-one down to seven, apart from in the finale. The two central characters change their names from Peisetairos and Euelpides (‘Persuader’ and ‘Optimist’) to Jackanoxides and Tomostyleseron, for reasons which are buried in time. The plot follows the simple line of Aristophanes with two discontented Athenians looking for somewhere new to live who end up creating a city of the birds in mid-air: Enter JACKANOXIDES and TOMOSTYLESERON following a RAVEN and a MAGPIE. CHORUS [not



of BIRDS]: Now to begin – two citizens are these Of – we’ll say – any town, in short, you please, Who, being discontented with their station, As people may be found in every nation, Seek from the sovereign of the birds to know Where, for the better, they had best to go. The rest, in their words, they will make plain, If not, the birds I’ll cut, and come again! (Planché 1846: 88)

The talk is of caviare, The Times, Easter, balloons, the Houses of Parliament, Tories and Whigs. TOMOSTYLESERON: KING [of the Birds]:



What sort of life is it among the birds? Why, much like that which you desire to lead; They neither pay for water nor for seed; Do little work except make their own beds; With politics have never plagued their heads; With fashionable tailors run no scores; Have no tax-gatherers knocking at their doors; Bet on no races – dabble in no stocks; Need not a carriage, nor an opera-box; . . . . Sometimes a rival in a passion flies out, And pecks, occasionally, a friend’s eyes out.

214  Greek and Roman comedy

But barring little accidents like those, Nothing can be more peaceful, heaven knows! (Planché 1846: 90–1)

There is an Aristophanic parabasis: CHORUS:



Good sensible folks, if there be any here, Inclined at these classical fancies to sneer, Be just, if not generous . . . . Why should not the fowls in the air build a palace, When there’s hope of a submarine railway to Calais? In the days of Queen Bess, did our forefathers dream Of the glories of gas, and the marvels of steam? And if an Utopia man could secure, In Harmony birds would beat Owen, I’m sure!2 (Planché 1846: 98–9)

References invoke Pindar as well as Shakespeare, and there are as many jokes about birds (and as contrived) as in Aristophanes. If in his updating Planché might seem to show less respect for Aristophanes than he had for Euripides, the parodos suggests he has at least given the matter due thought. The Chorus ends as in the Greek (261–3): Toro, toro, toro, tinx Kickabau, kickabau Toro, toro, toro, loli, lolix. (Planché 1846: 93) to which the playwright appends the footnote ‘As any translation of the above might weaken the force and beauty of the original, it has been thought advisable to request the Chorus to sing it in Greek . . . ’, a principle which Mitchell and most later translators – Hookham Frere apart – have endorsed, including Jeffrey Henderson for the new Loeb (2000). In the final scene the King of the Birds challenges Jackanoxides (Peisetairos) for getting above himself and then reveals himself as Zeus, or rather Jupiter. After a sudden transformation scene to Olympus, complete with its Olympians, Jupiter offers a moral and political warning against any who might dare to challenge the authority of the gods. KING: JACKANOXIDES: KING:



Why, then, change the life they led that nature by? Because I thought them born for better things. You thought! Vain fool, know Jove, who gave them wings, Put, in his wisdom, limits to their flight; . . . . Think you he gave to man the power of reason To stir inferior beings up to treason?

Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque 215

To snatch from out his hand the regal rod, And make each goose believe itself a god? Or gave to godlike man that reason’s use, That he with wings should make himself a goose? JACK: Hollo! How dare you talk this way to me, King of the Birds although you chance to be? KING: Peace, worm! – The King of gods and men behold! (changes to JUPITER) The scene at the same time changes and discovers OLYMPUS, with the principle DEITIES enthroned. JACK: (falls

on his knees) Jupiter’s self! By Jupiter, I’m sold! Oh, Tomostyleseron – where, where are you now? A large COCKATOO appears at the wing. Merciful powers, can this be – COCK: (in a melancholy tone) Cockatoo! JUPITER: Observe, ye deities, these desperate fools, Who fain would rise and push us from our stools. These brittle things – these images of clay; Poor shadowy shapes – mere creatures of a day. Who, born to trouble, would from trouble fly, Yet know not how, unless they scale the sky; (Loeb 2000: 107)

Whether this is in the spirit of Athens, or of Victorian London, can be disputed. What we do have in Planché, I would maintain, is the first genuine attempt to find and renew that quality of stage expertise that was virtually unique, and so much the prime characteristic of Aristophanic comedy.

Notes 1 W’ [short for Whistlecraft, Frere’s nom-de-plume]. A review of Thomas Mitchell’s ‘A Translation of the Comedies of Aristophanes’ in The Quarterly Review, vol. xxiii, July, 1820, reprinted as the Introduction to The Plays of Aristophanes, vol. 2, London: Dent (Everyman edition) 1911: viii–xlii. 2 The philanthropist Robert Owen established a religious ‘settlement’ in New Harmony, Indiana, in 1824. He persuaded his five children to go and live there, and then went back himself to Newtown in Wales.

14 Realizing Menander Get-in at the Getty DRAMA (1997)

What follows is an account of the production of Menander’s The Woman from Samos directed with a professional company at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu in the autumn of 1994. The play was part of a double bill, the second half of which was Plautus’ Casina. As translator of the Menander I served as dramaturg to the production while Richard Beacham undertook the same function for the Plautus. This article is based on the rehearsal log I kept, but concentrates almost entirely on the Menander. This is in no way to suggest that the Menander was more important than the Plautus. The plays complemented one another rather well, as it happened, and shared a cast as well as a set. Richard Beacham’s support and practical advice were of enormous help: which is all the more reason why impressions of his rehearsal process must be left to him. Apart from being a commentary on a production, this is an account of the recovery of an almost lost play, its translation and a case for its place in the world’s repertoire as the first surviving comedy to investigate a family relationship in real depth. Rather than treat the rehearsal period chronologically, I have chosen to offer a series of impressions based on an artistic enterprise which was ambitious, exciting and, as every successful comedy should be, a little touched by magic and the Santa Anas.

The recovery of the play The French archaeologist Gustave Lefebvre was excavating in Egypt at Kom Ishqaw in 1905 when he made an unexpected discovery. The house he was unearthing had belonged to a lawyer named Flavius Dioscurus who had lived in Aphrodite, as the town was then called, in the sixth century of the Christian Era. His collection of legal documents had been kept in a jar, protected in part by the aridity of the climate, in part by having been carefully wrapped in pieces of papyrus. It was not the legal documents but the papyrus that would prove the real find. Dioscurus had wrapped his archives in dismantled pieces of a codex which had originally contained five plays of Menander.1 By the time the pieces had been recovered no more than a third

Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty  217 were decipherable, but that third included more than half of Epitrepontes (The Arbitration), and rather less than half of two other plays, Perikeiromenê (The Shorn Girl) and one thought to be a play otherwise known only from its title, Samia (The Woman from Samos). What could have been no more than a quaint, but otherwise arcane, academic exercise proved to be of major interest to theatre historians. Menander was the great lost playwright, a comic writer from the ancient Greek world where Aristophanes ruled in splendid isolation, but by default because none of the work of his rivals had survived. By the time that Menander started to present plays Athens may have relinquished its claim to being the cultural capital of the known world, but the theatre festivals survived. In the fourth century bce Greek comedy had taken a new and independent direction away from the earlier political fantasies of Aristophanes in which he castigated famous local figures, especially politicians, proposing bizarre and wonderful solutions to the problems of his own time. Menander’s New Comedy was more personal and familial, comedy that travelled well because it dealt in domestic complications and everyday characters. So successful was Menander, if not during his life, at least after his death in about 292 bce, that later critics were to consider him with a kind of reverence. Aristophanes of Byzantium, no relation to the comedian, ranked Menander second only to Homer amongst Greek writers and praised him for his ‘realism’. Plutarch wondered why any educated man would want to go to the theatre at all, if not to see a Menander play. The Roman writers of New Comedy, Plautus and Terence, borrowed from him, less shamelessly than in a spirit of homage, guaranteeing quality to their Roman audience by admitting that their source was the impeccable work of a man who had died a hundred and more years earlier (see also Chs. 4 and 12). Quotations from Menander appeared in all manner of contexts in Greek and Latin literature and continued to do so into the Renaissance and beyond. Curiously, though, the plays had not been preserved. Little enough of Euripides and Aristophanes was available in libraries or private collections, but of Menander not a single scene survived: just the quotations and the reputation, with some lines found by accident in the binding of a completely different manuscript in a monastery on Mount Sinai in 1844. Classical scholars set to work on the Cairo Codex, as the papyrus found in Dioscurus’ legal jar was known, and came to a number of conclusions about the sort of plays Menander had written. Translator and playwright Gilbert Murray ‘completed’ Perikeiromenê as The Rape of the Locks and Epitrepontes as The Arbitration in 1945. The Rape of the Locks received a number of student and amateur productions, presented as high comedy, and both were broadcast by the BBC. This was still not a lot to justify Menander’s reputation as the finest comic writer of the ancient world and, more especially, a playwright celebrated for realism. The evidence was too slight to go much further. This would change.

218  Greek and Roman comedy Against the odds, and in circumstances which have never been wholly explained, there emerged in 1957 part of a document which contained three plays of which Duskolos (The Bad-Tempered Man) was virtually complete. It was not until 1969 that the rest of the manuscript was published, containing about 85 per cent of Samia, including some bits which overlapped with the Cairo Codex and a substantial portion of the Shield (Aspis), though virtually without the last act. By 1964 two scholars working at the Sorbonne had turned up some more fragments being used as papier-mâché to wrap a mummy. There had also been unearthed, in what is now known as the House of Menander in Mytilene, a series of mosaics based on scenes from the plays. These include one from Epitrepontes and another showing the expulsion of Chrysis from Demeas’ house, with the title and characters identified by name as from Act Three of Samia.

Completing the play There have been a small number of productions of Menander’s The Woman from Samos since 1969, including a broadcast on BBC Radio Three. I heard of two in North America while rehearsing at the Getty. The most significant followed the discovery of a set of New Comedy masks on the island of Lipari and a production using them directed by Luigi Bernabo Brea (Prosperi 1982). There had also been a number of published translations: Lionel Casson’s was one of the earliest (Casson 1971), two Loeb volumes of Menander, with the Greek and English translation on facing pages (W. G. Arnott 1979–2000) and two by Penguin, the second containing a lively and pleasant version by Norma Miller (1987). In addition, David Bain published a comprehensive annotated edition of the text in 1983 with a translation alongside. To this I was deeply indebted throughout the preparation and rehearsal process. All the aforementioned published translations show a proper respect for what survives and what does not by noting where there are hiatuses in the text and, at most, identifying what action seems to have taken place during the break. My own translations were published by Methuen (Aristophanes and Menander: New Comedy 1994). Duskolos, translated as The Malcontent, is almost complete, but The Woman from Samos still lacks getting on for half of Act One and more than half of Act Two. For a performance text the gaps have to be filled. The length of the lost sections is not in doubt but, though there is never a gap of more than twenty-seven lines, as many as sixty are missing from the lengthy Prologue which occupies 7 per cent of the entire play. More important, a crucial scene is missing between Demeas and his son in Act Two. The decision to write the missing passages myself and simply bracket them in the printed text was not taken lightly as the translation was to be published before any production was planned. Contrary to what should be best practice, none of the translation or the added passages had then received a proper appraisal by actors.

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The project In August 1993 I received a letter from Richard Beacham of the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. He mentioned that the previous year, 1992, he had given a lecture at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu where the Department of Antiquities were considering presenting a double bill of classical comedies to be given a full professional production. The performances were to coincide with the opening of an exhibition from the private collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman entitled A Passion for Antiquities. Both the Fleischmans were keen theatre-goers who believed that an exhibition, which would include a number of theatrical vases and terracotta and bronze figures of actors, could only be enhanced by the presentation of actual plays. Beacham had subsequently spent six months as a Getty scholar and the idea for the double bill had taken shape from there. He knew of my Menander translations, published early in 1994, and wondered whether one of them might make a suitable pairing with his own translation of Plautus’ Casina. He had already directed this at the University of Warwick with a student cast and on a replica Roman stage which he had reconstructed as a result of research into Roman wall-painting in Pompeii and Rome. The first plausible reconstruction of the kind of temporary Roman stage on which the original productions of Plautus and Terence might have been presented, Beacham’s Roman stage had already been tested as a space on which actors could perform. This would be very different, in the Museum garden at Malibu, open-air and with the audience accommodated wherever there was room. The choice of The Woman from Samos was influenced in the end by the ease with which the cast could be duplicated in Casina. A double bill of a Greek and a Roman play would anyway be a proper reflection of the Fleischman exhibition. By January 1994, a schedule had been drawn up from casting in August to a first night on 13 October. The production was to be a collaboration with the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the Theatre Department at UCLA who would provide most of the production staff, including the director Michael Hackett.

The plot Menander’s plots may be open to criticism as having a limited range by anyone who thinks of Greek comedy as blessed by the freewheeling imagination of Aristophanes. The plot of The Woman from Samos is complicated and does require explaining. The exposition, or Prologue, has to be reconstructed from detail later in the play, hence the extended role of the translator. Menander’s people are mostly everyday Athenians, speaking in a dialect of koinê, none of whom believe they can change any world but their own, all of whom lay claim in some measure to an audience’s sympathy. Central

220  Greek and Roman comedy to The Woman from Samos is the relationship between Demeas and his adopted son Moschion, a deep and caring relationship flawed by the inability of both to take the risk of offending the other. As a result, a simple deception undertaken to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings leads to, and almost ends up in, unnecessary pain. There is a cast of six speaking characters.

Act one The play opens with an extended prologue from Moschion. The first part is missing, but the gist turns out to be not difficult to supply. Moschion was adopted as a baby by Demeas, a wealthy Athenian, and brought up with no expense spared: ‘spoilt rotten’, the uncharitable might suggest, except that Moschion is well aware of the debt he owes and determined to do nothing which will make his father think ill of him. The trouble is, he already has. Demeas has been away on business at the Black Sea for the best part of the last year, accompanied by his indigent neighbour Niceratos. In the intervening period Moschion has seduced Niceratos’ daughter Plangon and she has recently given birth to his child. Moschion wants nothing more than to marry Plangon, but is scared of telling either father what has happened. Now the two men are reported to be on their way home. Moschion also tells the audience about Demeas’ relationship with Chrysis, the Samian woman of the title. Chrysis is not an Athenian citizen so could not marry Demeas, but Demeas fell in love with her. In order not to set a bad example, he tried to conceal the relationship from Moschion who found out anyway and finally got Demeas to offer her a permanent home. Such a relationship, of course, had no legal footing, but it is plain to everyone that Demeas is in love with Chrysis and could never refuse her anything for long. Chrysis had found she was pregnant just before Demeas left, but he had left strict instructions that she must get rid of the baby which could not be brought up as legitimate. Chrysis did lose her baby – exactly when is not clear – but has suggested that she will pretend that Plangon and Moschion’s baby is hers, perhaps acting as a wet nurse, until such a time as the fathers can be persuaded to sanction the match between Moschion and Plangon. The slave Parmenon is in on the act too and he and Chrysis tell the panicky and somewhat feckless Moschion what he must do and say. He exits to practice his speech. Demeas now arrives from abroad with Niceratos, delighted to be back in Athens. There is only one thing troubling him. He and Niceratos have agreed that it would be a good idea for Moschion to marry Plangon, but he cannot think how to break the news to Moschion who is ‘a conventional sort of boy’. Niceratos cannot afford to provide a dowry for Plangon but has agreed to the match. All Demeas now needs is a way to put the idea to Moschion. Act One ends with him leaving the scene to the Chorus while he goes indoors to find Chrysis.

Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty  221

Act two Demeas enters in a fury because he has found Chrysis, in accordance with the plan, nursing a baby which he assumes to be his. Moschion greets him and tries to calm him down. There follows the most important of the play’s missing scenes. By the end of it Demeas has been persuaded to forgive Chrysis for keeping the baby and in return Demeas has put it to Moschion that he should marry Plangon. All appears to be working out for the best, though a satisfactory outcome is being constructed on a series of false positions. Niceratos returns and, in another substantial ‘lost’ scene, appears to reveal that his wife and daughter have rejected the notion of Plangon getting married without realizing that Moschion is the proposed groom. This is duly sorted out and the act again ends with everything back on track and wedding plans in train.

Act three Demeas again enters in a fury, but this time it is much more serious. The subterfuge over the baby is one which Chrysis had instigated and with which she thought she could cope. What has happened then is that Demeas overheard an old nurse talking to the baby and revealing that its father is not Demeas but Moschion. This appears to point to Moschion having an affair with Chrysis. Parmenon arrives from the market with a Cook to prepare the wedding feast. Demeas gets Parmenon to admit that the baby is Moschion’s, but Parmenon assumes that Demeas now knows the mother is Plangon. Convinced of Chrysis’ duplicity Demeas drives her and the baby out of his house in a scene of extraordinary bitterness, defused, but only just, by the interruptions of the Cook. Niceratos comes to the rescue and offers Chrysis sanctuary with his wife. At this point Chrysis is bemused because she has no idea what Demeas imagines has happened. Nobody else can understand it either because Demeas refuses to put it into words, claiming only that he ‘knows everything’.

Act four Niceratos enters to reveal the domestic upset that all this has caused in his house, though he still has little idea himself about what is really going on. He meets Moschion and tells him of Chrysis being expelled from home. Demeas enters and both try to convince him, but from different perspectives, that he should take Chrysis back. Moschion even wants her at the wedding. Demeas’ response is such that Niceratos at last begins to catch up on what Demeas thinks has happened, but reacts more violently than Demeas did. The ensuing scenes are pure farce as Moschion finally tells his father the truth. Demeas is convinced when Niceratos chases Chrysis out of his house

222  Greek and Roman comedy after discovering his daughter nursing the baby, and assuming that Chrysis has been plotting against him. Demeas now finds himself protecting Chrysis and the baby. The two men come to blows, but Demeas manages to calm Niceratos down. He suggests that Plangon’s baby may have been fathered by Zeus. Niceratos is sceptical, but grudgingly accepts that, if Moschion is the father of Plangon’s baby, then the wedding, preparations for which have been going on non-stop throughout the play, might as well go ahead. Everything again appears to have been sorted out.

Act five With the wedding about to start, Moschion is now feeling aggrieved that his father could ever have imagined that he would have an affair with Chrysis. He decides to pretend to leave home and orders Parmenon to fetch his cloak and sword. Demeas enters and in a touching speech apologizes for what he has done, but ends by admonishing Moschion for his public reaction to his father’s one mistake. Niceratos arrives and more mayhem is threatened before peace is made all round. The marriage ceremony at last takes place and so ends the play, happily. Because so much of the play is character interaction the translator’s relationship is as much with the cast as with the director.

The company The collaboration with UCLA ensured that several of its staff could form the nucleus of the production company. Director Michael Hackett is a faculty member in the School of Theater and has directed extensively in Europe as well as in America. Auditions took place in Los Angeles from 23 August 1994 with Beacham holding a watching brief for both plays. For The Woman from Samos Jay Bell was cast as Demeas, Jon Matthews as Moschion, Tressa Sharbough as Chrysis, Larry Randolph as Niceratos, Robert Machray as Parmenon and Kathy Kinney as the Cook (male in Menander). Loretta Devine and Hope Alexander-Willis, who both had major roles in Casina, took the walk-on parts of Niceratos’ wife and daughter. The range of experience from Broadway to Hollywood was formidable. How actors of such diverse backgrounds would handle a 2,300-year-old comedy was going to be interesting. What they would make of a second comedy in the same evening that was utterly different in tone, only time would tell.

The set Neither Menander nor Plautus makes obvious demands on the setting. Stage action may depend on props, but seldom on furniture. Menander’s theatre was, for the most part, it is assumed, the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, but perhaps on an inset stage (as in Figure 14.1). Plautus, by contrast,

Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty  223 was performed in a Rome which was still to permit the construction of a permanent theatre within the city. Beacham’s researches had come up with plausible evidence for its actual form which would be used for both plays. The basis of this setting was a three-dimensional wooden facade of pillars and painted background. Each of the side doors leading to the houses of the protagonists had a portico before it. This provides a second level upstage about two feet higher than the forestage and linking the doorways across where there could be a central entrance if required. Steps in front of the houses and the inlay of two bays between each portico and the central area offered a variety of places for actors to wait, hide or address the audience, confirming Beacham’s belief that this is no simple space, but a versatile and complex setting for farce. Two additional entrances are provided for those leaving for the town or the country, off the stage down left or down right. The space required special negotiating for The Woman from Samos which has a precise sense of place that takes in both off-stage action and the complicity of the audience. Every speaking character at some point addresses the audience. In total this direct address amounts to some 35 per cent of the play. Most of such speeches describe a complex off-stage series of events. Menander goes to some pains to build up a picture of life inside the house of Demeas, contrasting it with life in the house of his poorer neighbour. Whole scenes have their mood set by the pace of exits and entrances. Much of the play’s emotional realism comes from creating the belief that these characters are leading actual lives, not, as in Plautus, that they are actors playing the gags.

Figure 14.1  Getty Stage, Malibu, 1994 Reproduced courtesy of Richard Beacham.

224  Greek and Roman comedy

First meeting The first read-through on 6 September is at the Getty. We all get a chance to see, for the first time in many cases, where the play will be presented. The inner peristyle garden has a pool in the centre, which stretches most of the way from one side to the other and is flanked by five life-size bronze statues. Low box hedges and individual ivy bushes are interspersed with gravel paths which make it possible to reach from one point to another but indirectly, as in a maze. Two low steps at each side give access from the garden to a marble-floored portico with thirty-six Ionic columns. The far walls lead to other parts of the museum and to galleries where some of the antiquities are on display and the Fleischman exhibition will be located. To my delight I find that the museum’s bust of Menander is in one of these rooms facing towards the garden. When the door to his gallery is open he will be able to see his play. The bushes, it transpires, are to be removed on one side as far as the pool. The set will be brought in in pieces and installed opposite the main entrance, much as in the Elizabethan inn-yards, once beloved by a generation of theatre historians. It is hard not to wonder if such an event has ever happened in a setting as exotic as the Villa dei Papiri. Suitably stupefied by the grandeur of it all, we retreat to the Ranch House for the reading. The company are introduced and the actors feel their way gently through the lines. Pronunciations of Greek and Roman names are fixed. Different actors approach such occasions differently, but there is general concern about what sort of play the Menander is. The Plautus is more obviously comic, as well as translated into an often dazzling rhyming verse. The Menander reads as muted by comparison and some of the scenes are not at all funny. I am uneasy. I tend to translate into English using my own intonations as a yardstick. American rhythms are different and I am worried that the actors may feel a need to rely too much on added business. Fortunately, Hackett is aware of this, describing the play as urbane and charming, where the Plautus is broader and more obvious farce. Set and costumes are discussed. Alex Jaeger is designing period costumes, but masks will not be worn except by the Chorus who feature only between acts, and with no lines prescribed by the author. Several people ask questions, the most interesting of which is from Nathan Birnbaum who is to compose the music. He wants to know if Hellenistic society was really so stable and, if so, why. I answer as best I can, pointing to how the expansion of the Greek world under Philip and Alexander served to reduce national ambition in Athens, opening up instead the dramatic possibilities of the inner and more domestic environment. Political comedy was no longer appropriate.

First rehearsals Straight into blocking The Woman from Samos with the cast tending to play strong and direct. Though this works reasonably well for the larger-than-life characters, it becomes clear that there is a split in the play between the three

Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty  225 straight characters, Father, Son and Mistress, and the three comics, Neighbour, Slave and Cook. It is not that they cannot enter one another’s worlds, rather that the comic and serious are required to interpenetrate. Who should be uppermost and when will take a deal of deciphering. Whether we can find a proper balance the next month will show. The central relationship in the play is not Demeas and Chrysis, for all she is the title character, but Demeas and Moschion, father and adopted son. I had assumed that this would relegate the importance of Chrysis who anyway has only two main scenes, but early signs are that it may prove otherwise. Menander’s apparent lack of interest in female characters as a result of the limitations on women’s lives is offset by a strong sense of their power behind the scenes. Chrysis’ moments of potential pathos respond to ‘playing’. Demeas and Moschion are having difficulty keeping up with where their characters are in the plot. There is a complex sequence of belief here that is difficult for the actors at present. Unless they are absolutely clear what they think, when and why, the audience will become hopelessly lost. This is comedy of crossed purpose and needs signalling. What it also licences is a search for motivation amongst the serious characters, of which Hackett is wary in American actors, but which I think ought to be possible if the play is as psychologically consistent as I believe it to be. Of the three comics, Niceratos is the link character. It is clear from as early as the reading that his central function is to ‘up’ the tempo whenever he appears. As he is, of all the characters, the one who is most kept in the dark, he is a focal point for comic misunderstanding. The slave Parmenon is, as comic slaves are, the butt, the target of scorn and abuse to whom Menander allocates a speech to the audience in Act Five where he outlines everything that has happened and shows how none of it is his fault; only to conclude: ‘It makes no odds whether I’m in the right or not. One way or another I’ll catch it’. The third comic is the Cook, played here as a woman and by an actress, though originally written as a male character. The Cook is present in only one act, but has a vital function to perform in the most difficult scene in the play. With the actors still feeling their way, I have two main concerns. The first is the balance between farce and comedy. The actors relax only when they can latch on to the shtick. Robert Machray and Larry Randolph are splendid comic timers who instinctively find the false exit or the take. I am less sure this is necessary for Jay Bell as Demeas whose authority may be diminished if he becomes simply a figure of fun. It will take time for him to become confident with Demeas as an extension of himself rather than as a character role, but there are signs he is beginning to realize what is required here. In the case of Jon Matthews as Moschion, the problem is more intractable. I have written him as a diffident personality, somewhat effete, pleasant enough but spineless. In cricketing parlance he plays off the back foot. By now I can no longer tell whether this is Menander or my interpretation of Menander. Hackett believes an American audience will find the character

226  Greek and Roman comedy inaccessible. He wants Moschion played direct, manic even. Matthews obliges with a mixture of terror and bravado which renders the character less sympathetic than tiresome. I have to accept that Bertie Wooster as played by Hugh Laurie or, indeed, as though played by Hugh Grant, may appear more strange to an American audience than Woody Allen on speed. Matthews is Harvard-trained and with several Broadway credits to his name. He is as anxious as anyone to explore the character’s range. What is enthralling is being able to work seriously on what is so nearly a brand new classic.

Translating into American First discussions with Michael Hackett were by telephone several months before rehearsals began. At the time I indicated that I was not notably possessive about my translations and that he should feel free to change anything with which he was unhappy. What is surprising is how little we have to change when in rehearsal. Suggestions from director and cast improve the flow in places, but the actors are keen to make the text work as they find it. Some turns of phrase are rejected as too English. Most often they belong to Demeas whose style (in this translation) is confessedly blimpish. Some lines have the authority of Menander, but no American equivalent can be found. Demeas in Act Three talks of a servant as ‘some slip of a girl’. The Greek (in the dative) is a diminutive, therapainidio. That, sadly, becomes simply ‘some serving-girl’; his ‘beyond the pale’ becomes ‘too much’; ‘First thing I clap eyes on’, ‘First thing I catch sight of’. On the other hand ‘Here and now I parade myself before you as an unequivocal booby’, which has more rewrites than a Hollywood blockbuster, ends up with the original line reinstated, and a big laugh in performance. ‘Cuddle’ becomes ‘hug’ – do Americans really not know what a cuddle is? – ‘softy’ becomes ‘cissy; ‘greatcoat’ simply ‘coat’; ‘Same to you with knobs on’ crosses the Atlantic as ‘Same to you with a cherry on top’. The original description of Chrysis as ‘a Jezebel’ quickly returns to Menander’s ‘that Helen of Troy of mine’, but I get away with more anachronisms than I had feared. ‘Mâitre d’; ‘The man’s a positive dervish’; ‘Look at Androcles, always jogging’; ‘He says he’s going to barbecue the baby’: all these invoke a modern association. It is the actors who want to make them work. It soon transpires that there are virtually no changes in the linking passages that were written in for the missing parts of Acts One and Two. What is more they are proving funny and easy to rehearse. Initial satisfaction gives way to concern that what I have supplied may be simply ‘sit-com’ dialogue. American critic Sander Goldberg, whose The Making of Menander’s Comedy stands out amongst books written on Menander, is generous enough, after seeing the production, to call these additions ‘seamless’. I remain wary of them and still hope the real thing will turn up in a sarcophagus somewhere.

Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty  227 The play does have to be completed if it is to be performed, so the problem has presumably been addressed in any other production of the play. The plus is that it was necessary to add very few plot elements beyond what the context suggests. The one exception is the creating of a piece of dialogue where Moschion asks his father about his relationship with Chrysis: MOSCHION: DEMEAS: MOSCHION:

Would you marry her if you could? The question doesn’t arise. But would you? Because if so, the child is as good as legitimate. (187–8)

A hypothetical question because Chrysis is not the mother of the baby anyway, it still seems to fit with the scene and help to establish the level of discussion between father and son. In the expulsion scene in Act Three Bell’s instinct leads me to discover a mistranslation. Demeas thinks that Chrysis has betrayed him with his own son. He throws her and the baby out of his house. Demeas had the line ‘You’ve got the baby. That’s what you were after’. Bell says that the line does not ring true. He has already offered that insult: rhythmically the exchange needs something more. Returning to the Greek I find that Menander uses not ‘baby’ but ‘huon’, ‘son’. What the line should read is ‘You have a son. You have everything’ (387). Bell is right. Menander has not written another outward line, but an inward line, Demeas pointing to the contrast between Chrysis and himself now that he thinks that he has lost his son; or both his sons. Menander, as I had suspected and as the actors were proving, offers a rich and poignant subtext to the play. A small point in itself, this is symptomatic of the scrutiny that we find the text will bear. My greatest concern all along has been that we might be taking on the role of Frankenstein, creating Menander in our own image, and attributing to him a dramatic technique he never had. If this were to be so, the production would be alien to the spirit of the occasion and a far remove from a faithful revival. Already such qualms have been largely dispersed. However faithful to the appearance of the original the Lipari experiment may have been, I am prepared to stand by the present production as a truer stage version of what Menander created. Menander is liberally scattered with quotations and wise remarks, saws and proverbs. It was these which survived through the medium of other writers when the plays and their characters were lost. Some have become common currency – ‘Fortune favours the brave’ – others are rather smug – ‘Anger and haste hinder good counsel’. For the translator they present a problem in finding a suitable equivalent. For the actor finding a justification for such pomposities presents an unfamiliar challenge. For publication I had opted for anything from bastard Shakespeare to the nineteenth-century proverb. What Bain translated literally as, ‘It seems that the accidental is indeed a divinity and looks after many things we cannot

228  Greek and Roman comedy see’, I took the liberty of rendering as a mixture of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet: ‘ “There’s a divinity which shapes our ends”, as they say, “untalk’d of and unseen” ’. Demeas’ ‘Bite your lip and bear it like a man’ became, ‘Though hard be the task keep a stiff upper lip’ – thought to be too English until I point out that it is a quotation from American poet Phoebe Cary. It is Jay Bell, in rehearsal, who suggests changing an obscure quotation from Euripides’ lost Oedipus, to Lear’s ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!’ When it comes to ‘Love hath the better of temper’ or ‘Anger and haste hinder good counsel’, the actors incline to playing the lines as asides. Moschion is much happier with his when I suggest that perhaps he is quoting his father. This gives the words a different focus. What cannot happen is for the actor to apologize for these sorts of lines. They are part and parcel of Menander’s capacity to function simultaneously in a comic and a moral dimension. After all Moschion does say in a knowing line at the end of the play, ‘If you’d behaved like this in the first place, Father, we could have done without the moralizing’ (723–4).

Get-in The get-in is scheduled for 7.00 AM on 27 September. The first problem occurs when the lift – sorry, elevator – turns out smaller than expected and the pillars have to be carried up interminable stairs. But the set gets there, at least in its basic form, though much work remains on the painting and surrounding décor. The maximum of 25K power supply will produce headaches for the lighting designer. Side lighting proves too distracting for the widespread audience, front lighting tends to flatten the set. Then it rains. It never rains in California in late September, but it rains. It rains on the set and it rains off the first rehearsal on set. For heaven’s sake, I might as well be back in England. Hackett remains wonderfully unperturbed, though it is only one week to the first preview. Things will change. The rain passes and gives way to the Santa Anas, hot winds from the desert which are reputed to turn people crazy.

Final week All sorts of performances are coming together. Demeas now behaves like a wealthy man whose flaw is to assume that everything is right if he says it is. He is beginning to lead the company in the way that Randolph does wonderfully in the Plautus. Randolph, equally at home in a supportive role, appreciates that Niceratos’ main function is to change the mood whenever he appears. He brings that quality of complete reliability which an audience finds so reassuring, especially in such a confusing play. Matthews gets closer to a rounded personality the quieter he plays, and carries the last act confrontation with his father with maturity. Their relationship has a depth to it now.

Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty  229 Machray, an inventive comic who looks like a cross between Zero Mostel and Fernandel, injects a farcical element into a comedy of more and more believable people without ever becoming a cipher. Kinney, whose lines offer precious little in themselves, is turning in a delightful cameo like some animated windmill. Her intrusion into the scene where Demeas dismisses Chrysis serves the full purpose, not of defusing the cruelty, so much as penetrating a cruel scene and giving it a comic frame. Sharbough is providing a delightful calm centre to the household and justifies the play’s title because all the action revolves round her. Far from being marginalized as a catalyst or as a means of focusing on Demeas and Moschion, the whole life of the play now stems from her. Her plight is serious and affecting because everybody would be so lost without her. Hackett is excellent at heading for home. His concern is to keep the two plays from ‘bleeding into one another’. The Menander, he describes as ‘delightful and elegant’. In the Plautus ‘you all have to think of yourselves as flying penises’. I still have some concerns about the relationships and the balance of certain scenes. Demeas, I think, has two angry moods, one upfront and predictable, the other a desperate passion which stems from his belief that he has suffered the most cruel of betrayals. The two need differentiating because Chrysis and Moschion predict the first and know how to deal with it, but are appalled when confronted with the second. Moschion has to avoid what Hackett calls ‘brattishness’. If there is still an incompatibility between the writing and the performance, I am too close to tell any longer which is the real Menander. The balance between comic and serious is knife-edge. Sometimes it works, at other times a burst of energy is enough to send it too far one way. The whole play has a calculated tempo which the production emphasizes when things are going well. Hackett had originally thought the running time would be about fifty minutes. The first run was sixty. It now plays nearer seventy-five which is probably right. One reason why the cast find the evening tiring is that they are tackling two complete plays, not two oneacters. Each has the energy and concentration required of a much longer piece. The first preview will be for a UCLA audience. That should tell us whether we are on the right lines. The official first night for the audience who have flown in from all round the world for the opening of the Exhibition will be something quite different. That audience will be the great and the good and the wealthy whose expectations of, and response to, an ancient Greek comedy are anyone’s guess.

Conversations with the company Randolph auditioned for Demeas in the expulsion of Chrysis scene. ‘My agent said “Make it funny”. I knew instinctively it wasn’t funny. I was originally mystified, but intrigued’. Randolph, an experienced farceur

230  Greek and Roman comedy as well as a former university professor, ended up playing Niceratos as well as the lead in Casina. ‘Thank God I didn’t get cast as both leads. They’re so busy. Both would have been impossible’. At one rehearsal break, to me: ‘I know I’m not playing that line the way you wrote it, Michael, but I don’t want to give my Plautus performance early’. Bell, cast as Demeas, but who auditioned for other roles: ‘I felt sorry for the guy who was going to play Demeas. He’s everybody’s straight man’. Randolph: ‘What Jay brings (Bell as Demeas) is solidity and the comedic when needed. That’s not easy’. Bell: ‘At first I thought “What the hell is going on in this play?” Then I realized that this is a man who thinks he is in control, like Orgon in Tartuffe. There has to be someone who thinks he’s grounded. The important thing is finding out what happens in the transitions without taking thirty minutes over them’. Matthews: ‘It’s difficult remembering exactly what the others know at any time’. Hackett (the director): ‘The last act makes it a rites of passage play’. Matthews: ‘As Demeas learns how to trust, so Moschion grows up enough to become a husband. Otherwise the last act is pointless’. Sharbough: ‘Chrysis thinks she knows how to handle everyone. She’s cleverer than anyone else around. That’s why her rejection is such a shock. She can’t account for it’. Randolph (a Texan): ‘Very keen on the bloodline where I come from. Where I come from either you are a maid or you have a maid’. Kinney: ‘The situation is classic sit-com from the eighties and nineties’. Randolph (on the farcical Act Four): ‘These two (Demeas and Niceratos) have probably been carrying on like this ever since childhood’. Machray: ‘You can’t deal with these characters except as children. It’s always funny when someone with a serious problem is faced with a banana’. Machray describes the play as a mixture of comedy and sentiment: ‘lots of bananas and a lot of scoop’. Bell: ‘Most critics hate to see a mixture’. Hackett: ‘There is a risk of Niceratos becoming too dim-witted’. Randolph: ‘He’s not exactly the brightest bauble on the marquee. What I love about the character is that when he goes over the top he doesn’t know how to do it’. Bell: ‘This is “dramedy”. Enough of the schtick. I’ve got to go for the story’. Randolph: ‘You have to trust the language’.

Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty  231 Machray: ‘After playing Touchstone, Parmenon is like falling off a log’. Matthews: ‘There seems little awareness of any relationship except father and son’. Sharbough: ‘Chrysis has no role in the last act. But her story is complete. She and Demeas are together again. She’s not so much ignored as no longer necessary’. Randolph: ‘This is serious stuff, engrossing, human, real, logical’. Kinney: ‘I’ve learnt more in two days than I have in seven years in Hollywood’.

Opening The first preview before a university audience is the tonic required. The actors can relax in the knowledge that the audience are amused and touched. Now they can concentrate on refining their performances and playing the contrasts. The arrival of the Fleischmans and the opening of the Exhibition followed by the gala first night comes and goes, a social occasion so dazzling that afterwards it is hard to believe it has really happened. The gardens and the set look stunning under the lights. The weather is perfect. All that is lacking is a full moon to put a ring round. In such a night anything becomes possible and if Menander hardly appears another Shakespeare, at least his wealthy merchant proves he deserves a place on the world’s stage in Malibu as much as does Shakespeare’s Merchant, courtesy of Peter Sellars, ten miles down the road at Venice Beach.

Conclusions Working on The Woman from Samos tested some theories, both academic and theatrical, and demonstrated how reassuringly often they may be one and the same. It showed that the play could ‘play’ to a modern audience. What the company uncovered was dramatic inventiveness which went a long way to accounting for Menander’s reputation as a realist and theatre craftsman. There is a sense of relief in approaching an untried piece and finding it easier to perform because the playwright has done a proper job. That the Los Angeles Times should find The Woman from Samos ‘fast, funny and surprisingly tender’ is a justification for the choice of that play and that cast. That the same critic in the same review should suggest that ‘the Getty should consider keeping a permanent resident company devoted to performing classics’ is an endorsement that this was more than an academic exercise, a positive addition to keeping alive and renewing the world’s repertoire.2 Less predictably, the production demonstrated that, however based on a tradition of masked and hence physical theatre, Menander’s innovation was in subtlety. Throughout the play it was possible to find – and I refuse to put this down simply to anachronistic interpretation – a complex subtext.

232  Greek and Roman comedy This subtext works to reveal characters’ true feelings, whatever they happen to be saying. It is matched by a subtext of action which revolves around what people think is going on compared to what is really going on. Demeas not only tries to persuade himself that he is at all times in control when he patently is not: he also acts on the conviction that he knows what is going on, and tells other people that he knows what is going on, when in reality he is wrong. There is stage writing here of considerable sophistication. Menander has Chekhov’s capacity to concentrate the deepest feelings into the simplest of exchanges. As James Wood once wrote in a review in the Guardian of a volume of Chekhov’s letters (18 Sep 1997): ‘Chekhov is never afraid of the ordinary. But of course the banal is never really banal in his hands: it always shimmers oddly’. It may be ambitious to claim the same for Menander on the strength of this play alone, but there were moments in this production which shimmered. After overcoming their initial wariness, the actors relaxed and discovered that the motives of the characters might be complex, but were wholly understandable. This legitimized a search for whole and realized personalities who, at least in the case of Demeas, Moschion and Chrysis, had a past and a future as well as a present. If, as Hackett believes, the search for motivation can sometimes be the bane of American theatre, the rehearsal process here demonstrated that any approach to Menander that ignores a psychological throughline severely underestimates the way Menander made plays. Hackett and his company did institute a search for genuine feeling and rescued Menander from being simply cuteness and pratfalls. There is sentiment in The Woman from Samos, as well as farce, but the balance of the two is created by framing the serious with the ridiculous and allowing a view, again as does Chekhov, of personal crisis taking place often in the most absurd of contexts. Menander does not offer an easy stage world where all problems are miraculously solved by the final line. He is more hard-hitting than that, offering the solutions of a benevolent Fate as consolation for those lucky enough to enjoy her charity. What the Getty production demonstrated was that, at least in this interpretation, Menander’s dramatic method is not to insert a few poignant moments into a farce, but to demonstrate how in life the serious can so often get overtaken by the ridiculous. In this he looks forward to a far different comic tradition from that for which he is normally, and grudgingly, given credit.

Notes 1 See Arnott (1979) for a more detailed description of the recovery of the Menander texts. 2 Twelve years later and a new theatre was built on site in Malibu and by the time of writing has welcomed an impressive range of new classical productions and adaptations from the classical repertoire.

15 Shtick or twist Plautus to the musical National Theatre Platform Lecture (2004)

Members of the audience, greetings. First and foremost, I wish me well; and I wish you well, as well. I bring you Plautus, not in person, you understand, but to listen to. So I hope you’ll pin back your ears and pay attention to what I’m going to tell you.1 Those are the opening lines of Plautus’ best-known play, Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus). The speech is delivered by someone who is not a character in the play, nor even one of the peripheral deities like Lar, the Household God in The Pot of Gold; the constellation Arcturus in The Rope; or the personification of Luxury who is about to install her daughter Penury in the house of Lesbonicus in Trinummus. In a 1938 translation Trinummus is called The Three-Bob Day – now you’ll find it as The Thirty-Pound Day – but that’s inflation for you. The Prologue in Menaechmi is simply to settle the audience down and provide an exposition, a chance to identify who the characters are, where they live, the background situation and most of what is going to happen. The assumption is that the audience will either be incapable of working this out for themselves, or will be so busy trying that they’ll forget to laugh. In a nice twist, that splendidly Plautine television series Up Pompeii used to begin every week with Frankie Howerd announcing a Prologue that he never managed to complete because it, and he, and the rest of the cast got overtaken by circumstances of one kind or another. As the quickest way to empty a theatre, a lecture on comedy is second only to shouting ‘Fire’. Yet here I find myself, many years after I gave up any expectation of standing on this Olivier stage, faced with the academic equivalent of first house on a Saturday night at the Glasgow Empire. Hence, getting Plautus to give me a start, with one of his Prologues, to settle you down and offer my exposition. Whatever the billing says about my ‘revealing some of the funny things that happen in Plautus’, I intend to leave making you laugh this evening to the production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum which will follow soon after I finish. Think of me less as a Prologue than as a Programme Note, trying to explain what Burt Shevelove, who wrote the book with Larry Gelbart, might have meant when

234  Greek and Roman comedy he asserted: ‘We selected the characters from Plautus and created a plot’; how accurate Stephen Sondheim was being when he claimed: ‘The plotting is intricate [true enough], the comedy is never anachronistic [not quite true] and there are only two or three jokes – the rest is comic situation’ [more or less true]; or how accurate Phil Silvers was being when he wrote the script off as ‘old shtick’.2 To be accurate, A Funny Thing Happened is not by any stretch of the imagination the translation of a Plautus play, but rather, as its creators confess, translations from Plautus, a farrago, a hodge-podge, a potpourri from at least three plays, a soup whose main ingredients were his Pseudolus, Mostellaria (The Haunted House) and Miles Gloriosus (The Boastful Soldier). The three have no common source. One may be from a lost Menander play (The Treasure); the second perhaps from Philemon (The Ghost), the surviving fragment of whose work includes the first known burlesque of the Medea story; the third (The Boastful Soldier) from an anonymous Alazôn, alazôn being the Greek for gloriosus. The whole process of translating, adapting or conflating bits of old Greek comedies for a Roman audience involved a paradox. The process was both respectable – though under the heading of contaminatio which suggests that it was not – or a source of dispute, with playwrights accusing one another of plagiarism. But then the whole world of Roman comedy takes some unravelling, the stage, actors, audience, masks, business and songs. More is known via Plautus’ Menaechmi, celebrated for being the the principle source for Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (see Ch. 4: 46–9). And while The Comedy of Errors owed much to Plautus, Menaechmi was also the first Plautus play to be turned into a modern musical. Rogers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse originally opened in New York in 1938. A revival at Drury Lane with Denis Quilley and Bob Monkhouse, Ronnie Corbett and Henry Woolf, went into rehearsal in the first week of October 1963, the same week as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum had its London opening at the Strand Theatre. Clifford Williams’ production of The Comedy of Errors was revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company that December. Plautus was the flavour of the season. But to find the real genesis of A Funny Thing Happened we need to go back to ancient Rome and its open-air performances. There are GraecoRoman theatre buildings, or the ruins of them, all over the Mediterranean and beyond. You can find them in Lebanon and in Jordan, throughout the Middle East; there are some wonderful ones in Turkey and round the coast of the Black Sea, and one as far away as India; all over France and Spain; there are clusters, many of them the best preserved thanks to the the dry climate, in North Africa; there is a Roman theatre in St Albans and a manuscript that describes another in Brough, just outside Hull, though the most that local archaeologists can suggest is that the site is probably under the recreation carpark. In Sicily, which was colonized by Greeks before the period of Roman expansion, Greeks created their own Greek theatre as a

Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical  235 necessary part of their culture. The experience of seeing Greek plays there is said to have resulted in Roman soldiers campaigning for something of the same in Rome. Athens has a Roman theatre, the Theatre of Herodes Atticus, at the southwestern foot of the Acropolis. It was built by a celebrated orator called Vibullus Hipparchos Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes, a wonderful mix of Greek and Latin names, in the second century of the Christian era, a full three hundred years after the death of Plautus, but when Athens was part of the Roman Empire. That theatre, or ôdeion, which really means concert hall, is barely a quarter of a mile from the site of the Theatre of Dionysus where the first productions of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and probably Aristophanes were staged. If you go to Athens today you will see the remains of the precinct where all these fifth-century bce premières were staged, but it is no longer a working theatre space, merely a picturesque ruin below the south-eastern side of the Acropolis, almost under the shadow of the Parthenon. The annual festival of ancient Greek plays held each summer in Athens is in the Roman theatre of Herodes Atticus where there are also regular performances from orchestras and dance companies. These Roman theatres are stone and most of them huge. The great theatres at Ephesus, Orange or Arles hold more spectators than almost any closed theatre today. They were built to a pattern with a semicircular auditorium from where you look down on the semicircular orchêstra. This was once where the chorus danced, but became a place for dignitaries to be seated where they could both see and be seen. Masked actors played on a wide but shallow stage in front of a scenic facade which could be three storeys high, intricately decorated with statues. Everything smacks of spectacle. Most of the entertainment at the time of the Roman empire was dedicated to extravagance of one kind or another. You may wonder how the surviving plays of Plautus or Terence, which mostly deal with local and domestic issues about slaves and lovers, fitted into such a setting? The answer is that for the most part they never did. Plautus began writing about the year 210 bce. The laws against extravagance and indecency were so stringent at that time that no permanent theatre was permitted in Rome. Not until more than a hundred years after the death of Terence, the only other writer of Roman comedies apart from Plautus whose work has survived, was a permanent theatre built, and then it was a bit of a fiddle. Pompey got round the regulations by building a very small shrine at the back of a very large theatre and claiming that it was actually a shrine with a theatre attached, rather than a theatre with a shrine on top. Plautus wrote for something much more rudimentary. The theatre for the first performances of Roman New Comedy was a marketplace theatre, made of wood and scaffolding, with temporary bleachers for the audience. There was little scenery, though probably a number of alcoves, and doorways, and perhaps an altar, where characters could hide, eavesdrop or take refuge.3 The Prologue of Menaechmi suggests the setting. After quietening

236  Greek and Roman comedy the audience down and telling them exactly how the twin boys got separated when they were young, and why they both now have the same name, the anonymous actor tells the audience: This city’s Epidamnus, as long as this play lasts anyway. When we do another play it will be somewhere different. Same with the families who live in these houses. One day it’s a pimp, next a young man, then an old man, pauper, beggar, king, parasite, prophet. (Menaechmi: 70–5) So, except for certain occasions when a stage might be set up within the orchestra of a permanent bulding, the theatre for which Plautus and Terence were writing was fitted up in a day and taken down in a morning. The background is usually adjacent houses, sometimes with a shrine between, sometimes with a third house. This is a simple theatre, but it is also theatre with a level of sophistication, or, if not sophistication, an awareness of how theatrical conventions in comedy work. These prologues are your opening numbers, Sondheim’s ‘Something familiar/something peculiar/something for everyone, a comedy tonight’. Several of the prologues that survive in Latin were tacked on later to suit a new performance, but prove to be a mine of information about the occasion and about the reception the actors could expect: ‘Forget your debts. Today it’s the Games, a bank holiday, even for the bankers’, announces the Prologue to Casina: or A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Wedding, as Richard Beacham translated it (see Ch. 14). The comedies were presented at special events, often religious festivals where a number of days were reserved for the scaenici, dramatic performances. Sometimes the city authorities met the costs, on other occasions a private individual who offered them to the people in commemoration of someone who had died, to celebrate a marriage, or just to curry favour with the masses. A theatre manager would buy a play, then come to a deal over money with the aedile in charge, and try to increase his profit by ensuring that his company won first prize. Performances, as was the case in ancient Athens, were competitive, with playwrights and actors attempting to convince spectators and juries of magistrates that their production was the best. The audience got in free and were not always on their best behaviour. In Amphitryon Mercury asks for a good hearing because of all the benefits Jupiter has given to people, then says: Oh, yes, and my father [Jupiter] has asked me to make a special request for the security men to go round every seat in the house and, if they find any organised fan club for any backer or actor, to sling them out and fine them a toga for each offence. Magistrates too if they give a biased judgement. (Amphitryon: 64–8)

Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical  237 Direct address was part of the technique. In a delayed prologue in The Boastful Soldier (Miles Gloriosus which in A Funny Thing Happened becomes the name of one of the characters) we find Palaestrio in a delayed prologue saying: If you can’t be bothered to listen, get up and leave your seat for someone who will. (The Boastful Soldier: 81–2) It all gives some idea of what it was like out there in front of an audience who were only interested in entertainment. How precarious their goodwill could be is revealed in some of the prologues, not of Plautus, but of Terence, who was only about ten years old when Plautus died. Terence was altogether a cut above Plautus. Brought as a slave to Rome from Africa and subsequently freed, he preferred the more humane comedy of Menander as his source, but found it difficult to get a proper reception for his work. He used his prologues, not for a bit of pleasant backchat with the audience, but in order to voice his complaints about how he has been treated, accused of plagiarism and persecuted by another playwright, who went so far as to interrupt one of his rehearsals by shouting out that he, Terence, was ‘not a dramatist at all but a thief’ (The Eunuch: 22). There are two prologues to Terence’s The Mother-in-Law (incidentally, about the only sympathetic mother-in-law in all stage comedy). The first says that this is already the second time the director has tried to put the play on. Last time the performance was overtaken by some calamitas – the audience got distracted by a company of rope-dancers. There’s a second prologue which reveals that this second production was as ill-starred as the first, with a rumour spreading in the audience about a gladiatorial show to follow and such a scrum for seats that Terence’s play could not get a hearing. Third time lucky, he hopes, but we do get a vivid picture of what the playwright was up against and why Plautus was so concerned about keeping his audience happy. And why the translator of Plautus faces a similar challenege (see Ch. 4 for additional examples). Several of the Plautus prologues are surprisingly long, up to a hundred and fifty lines out of a total of not much more than a thousand. My favourite, though, is the shortest, in Pseudolus, the play (and character) who give their name to the leading slave in A Funny Thing Happened. Someone wanders onto the stage – we never find who – and says ‘You’d best get up and shift your balls about. This play coming up is a Plautus: and it’s long’. Then off he goes and the play begins. Subtlety you might think was inappropriate. How right you would be. Plautus was the most successful comic writer of his day, or of any day in the time of the Roman republic, or the Roman empire, if the survival and revival of so much of his work is any guide. We have twenty plays, and fragments of another. Large numbers of comedies were attributed to him, but

238  Greek and Roman comedy these twenty are the only ones that are guaranteed. His name was ruthlessly exploited and tagged onto any old piece of rubbish both during his lifetime and after his death. We are lucky enough to possess the best of Plautus, or what we assume is the best and the most authentic. As it happens, we have all of Terence, but he was only about thirty when he died and his life’s work amounted to six adaptations, mainly from Menander. I referred to the plays of Terence as ‘adaptations’: and so they were. So were all the plays of Plautus. Every single one of these was what is known as a comoedia (comedy) or fabula (story) palliata (meaning ‘in Greek costume’). In other words they were all versions taken from actual Greek comedies first performed in Athens at least a hundred years earlier. We know this only because the prologues sometimes describe the provenance, and hence, the pedigree of what is about to be played. Roman comedy, as we have it, was all derivative from the Greek. The analogy can be taken too far, but imagine the repertoire of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company being made up exclusively of adaptations from nineteenthcentury French well-made plays. Some history plays and local farces were performed in Rome and the rest of Italy, but nothing that did, or would have been likely to, survive in scripted form. This goes a long way to explaining the kind of society that Plautus portrays. Hollywood has made us prone to thinking of Rome as though it were always as dissipated and dangerous as in the times of the emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or Domitian. But when Plautus and Terence were writing it was much more strait-laced. The rights of a father over his children were absolute; laws against extravagance were strict; no permanent theatre was allowed in case it corrupted the populace or offended the gods. The most potent influences in society were summed up in words like gravitas (‘seriousness’), pietas (‘piety’) and honestas (‘respectability’). Punishment for minor misdemeanours was severe. Slaves could be tortured or put to death at the whim of their master or mistress. It was a world where the sort of antics and sheer brass neck of most of the slaves and oafish young men in Plautus’ plays would not have been tolerated. Accounting for this apparent discrepancy between the way characters behave in the plays and the way the audience would have been able to behave in real life is simple. The audience were in Rome. The stage characters are in Greece, but it is a sort of romanized Greece: Greek cities, Greek characters, Greek morality and loose Greek habits. In Stichus the slave turns to the audience and says: No need for you lot to be surprised at slaves drinking, going to dinnerparties and having love-affairs: we allow all that sort of thing in Athens. (Stichus: 445–7) But Plautus is also thoroughly Roman, in language, metre, the sense of occasion and, in the songs: songs, because the most Roman and original

Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical  239 aspect of all Roman comedy was the musical side. Up to a half, or more, of any play had a musical accompaniment, indicated in the texts by particular rhythms and actual references to the musician: ‘Back soon’, says Pseudolus as he exits, ‘meanwhile the tibicen (flute-player) will keep you entertained’. Michael Grant, the eminent classical historian, used to talk not of Roman comedy at all, but of ‘Roman opera’, seeing Plautus as the starting point for all musical theatre. The disappointment is that none of the music has survived. There was music in Greek tragedy and comedy, of course, but there appear to be whole sequences in Roman comedy of something between a dialogue and a patter song, solos addressed to the audience and even trios. No ancient playwright was better suited to adaptation for the musical. Musical comedy was Plautus’ major contribution to the history of theatre. Not a great deal is known about the lives of ancient playwrights, but there are snippets from later writers. Plautus was born at Sarsina in Umbria, inland from Rimini, sometime in the middle of the third century bce: that is some thirty or forty years after the death of the last great Greek comic writer, Menander. Plautus came to Rome as a young man and joined a theatre company playing in Atellan farces. The Atellan was an indigenous and part-improvised comic form which relied on four stock characters who were launched into various comic situations. Any similarity to the improvised comedy of the Renaissance and beyond known as Commedia dell’Arte becomes more conspicuous if you look at the four main characters of the Atellan: Pappus, a foolish old man like the commedia Pantalone, and three clowns,who have something about them of Harlequin, Brighella and the Zanni. Titus Maccius Plautus may have started out his career as an actor in these improvised and masked farces. The connection comes through two of his three names. Maccus was the Harlequin character in the Atellan who kept turning up in titles like Maccus the Soldier, Maccus the Innkeeper and Maccus the Maiden. And the cognomen Plautus is a synonym for ‘actor’. He made a bit of money, gossip tells us, as some actors do, put it into a commercial enterprise which went bust, as some actors also do, then worked in a mill, perhaps as a slave, before starting to write plays and becoming in short order the most popular playwright ever to write in Latin. The point which underpins all this, and which rings most true, is that Plautus had been an actor. The plays use a variable verse structure, alliteration and lots of puns. They can also, on the page, look monotonous, predictable and repetitive, as well as being something of a translator’s nightmare, a problem compounded incidentally by being the first Latin literature to survive and written in a sort of street argot. But the more you bring to them a theatrical perspective rather than a literary one, the more clear it becomes that these are farce texts. They are full of mask routines. They offer a whole range of comic ‘business’ and they were performed in the marketplace, not as art, but for money. The translator might be advised to pay more attention to these performance practicalities than to the almost incidental literary

240  Greek and Roman comedy refinements. If Plautus relied on his experience in professional theatre for his writing, perhaps the best translator should have the same background (see Ch. 4 for the translation history of Menaechmi). The routines are often in the form of the double act, with two characters of dissimilar perspective. They may be of different social class, different age, different sex or different temperament. You may get a resourceful slave dealing with a dim young man, a gullible master, a money-grubbing pimp or a worldly courtesan: or an elderly father deceiving his wife, arguing with his neighbour, threatening his slave or being conned out of his money by his son. Many scenes last for around seventy lines and the characters are almost always, as Sondheim noted, subordinate to the situation. Within broad outlines of who and what they are, these people have an immediate reality that is dictated not by any depth or consistency, but by what the routine requires. There is a great deal of direct address to the audience, sometimes by both characters without the other hearing, or only partly hearing. Sometimes speaking to the audience is simply an excuse to ‘play out front’. Could anyone who saw the ground-breaking asides and direct playing to camera in television’s Up Pompeii forget Frankie Howerd’s baleful response to a terrible pun, ‘Well, suit yourselves’, delivered with that wonderful hangdog expression of a bloodhound that has just been propositioned by a dachshund? This is the world of vaudeville, Phil Silvers, Zero Mostel and Buster Keaton (all of whom appeared in the 1966 film of A Funny Thing Happened), of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise rather than Michael Frayn or Alan Ayckbourn. One of the more complex of the plays is The Haunted House, or Mostellaria, from which A Funny Thing Happened borrows the idea of a father’s sudden return home at an inconvenient moment. His slave Tranio has to convince him not to enter his house because of a ghost. What is the trigger for a running gag (literally) in A Funny Thing Happened, with Erronius being packed off by Hysterium to walk seven times round the seven hills of Rome, is the central comic ploy in The Haunted House. The basic deception about the ghost leads to a series of routines with the desperate slave, Tranio, having to come up with more and more frenetic ideas to keep the newly returned father from discovering about his son’s drunken orgy indoors. Much of the business in the plays is physical or slapstick. It is shtick. Props are important in Plautus, most of them related to the plot, chests full of gold or boxes of trinkets; others such as fishing rods, crockery and cleaning equipment are simply ‘actors’ objects’. Rudens (The Rope) has a tug-of-war between two slaves which gives the play its name, and several of the characters arrive out of the sea, dripping wet. Above all there are the injokes: ‘You’ve no objection to the situation, have you?’, ‘No, just the acting’ (Two Girls Called Bacchis). ‘Where am I going to get a disguise from?’ ‘Oh, go and ask the stage-manager’ (The Persian Girl). Halfway through Curculio (The Weevil), and for no particular reason, the choragus, the director or company manager, turns up onstage and offers the audience a guided tour to the local villains and the best knocking shops.

Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical  241 Several of the situations are downright seedy. In Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses) there is a groping and piggyback scene which – with a little ­imagination – could be very rude indeed. In Casina there is what sounds like a homoerotic scene with the fevered Lysidamus apparently dripping with lust over his foreman. A slant on the battle of the generations has a wife and husband competing fiercely over which of two male slaves should marry a slave girl. The husband, Lysidamus, fancies the girl himself and thinks that, if his candidate is successful, once they are married, he can sleep with her as well; the wife wants the same, but for her son. The girl, Casina, is not only not consulted, she is never seen, one of the rare dramatic characters who lend their name to a play without ever turning up (like Beckett’s Godot or Mary Chase’s Harvey, though Harvey is a bit of a cheat because, though a six-foot-high white rabbit, he is also invisible). In Casina the father appears to win out, but finds himself thoroughly discomfited when the girl is substituted by a male slave in drag (song in A Funny Thing Happened, ‘Bring me my Bride’). In The Comedy of Asses the elderly Demaenus wants to spend a night with the girl his son Argyrripus fancies, as the quid pro quo for buying her for his son for a whole year from a mother who is happy to rent her out on an annual basis. Far from being disgusted, the son is delighted by the idea. Demaenus’ wife finds out and puts a stop to it but the epilogue announces cheerfully that: If this old fellow has been indulging his fancies without telling his wife, well, nothing new there, nothing that everyone else doesn’t do . . . (song in A Funny Thing Happened, ‘Dirty Old Man’) Girls who have been bought for a year and men who want to get round the arrangement turn up elsewhere too, notably in Two Girls Called Bacchis, but in that play the women are very much in the driving seat and call all the shots. Most of the female characters have no such luxury – see only the casual way in which the rapists of New Comedy deign to marry the girls they have attacked and impregnated. Not much romance here whatever they protest. Young men do not fall in love: they fall in lust. The strong women are usually the most unprincipled. Almost everything comes down to money and sex, usually a combination of the two. It takes considerable goodwill to feel concern when the entire cast is made up of unscrupulous, unlikeable people who represent all that is least sympathetic about their demi-monde. There’s a play called Truculentus, in which a courtesan juggles the affections and wallets of three equally unpleasant men, with the help of her maid (A Funny Thing Happened ‘Everyone should have a maid’), who manages to corrupt the only honest character in the play. Tasteless? Yes, but these are farces which depend for their comedy on the frustration of the characters in them, in one way or another. The sex farce is not

242  Greek and Roman comedy about people having sex, but failing to do so. There is no need to sympathize with any of them any more than you might with the men and women of the Restoration or the Fin de Siècle, of Wycherley or Feydeau. They hint at a sour world, but a sour world where? Rome? Greece? Or neither? Plautus’ talent is in the creation of a variety of stage worlds. The more cynical plays may be called his pièces noires, in the way that Anouilh labelled some of his plays pièces noires and others pièces roses. But this is not quite the whole story. Plautus does write his own pièces roses, plays about kidnapped children and foundlings, innocents whose virtue is rewarded. There is affection and sentiment in The Carthaginian, The Rope and even in Plautus’ ‘miser’ play, The Pot of Gold. Casina and Asinaria apart, there are not a lot of filthy bits in Plautus and a lot less innuendo than might be expected. The popular view is that Plautus’ plays were all formula-driven, with more or less the same plot; and always the same characters, pimps (brash), cooks (insensitive), parasites (hungry), soldiers (boastful and randy), courtesans (unscrupulous but sometimes randy), virgins (rare), wives (angry), old men (also randy), young men (wasteful and randy), slaves (crafty and loveable without the time to be randy). The more plays you read – most of them are seldom performed any more – the greater the range of situation and of character: but, more surprisingly, the greater the range of tone too. One play, Stichus, has no real plot. Two wives are missing their husbands who have been away seeking their fortunes for three years: then the husbands come back. That’s it. There is amongst Plautus’ work – and perhaps this makes the seedy plays even seedier by contrast – a tranche of ‘moral’ plays, something of a surprise when you have been led to expect a world of Greek types. In Prisoners there is no sex, there are no love affairs, just a situation created in the aftermath of war, with two men behaving honourably to try and free their sons who have been taken prisoner by opposing sides. There is an epilogue which tells the audience: Spectators you’ve seen today A highly edifying play: No sex, no secret love-affairs, No baby smuggled in backstairs. Here is no fraud or knavery, No boy buys girl from slavery. Such plays Are far from common nowadays. (Prisoners: 1029–33) True as this may be, Prisoners is not unique. The prevailing morality of the plays can be overlooked. At one point in The Merchant an eighty-four-yearold slave complains about the double standards that are applied to men and women: A woman’s situation is so unfair compared to a man’s. If a husband brings home some whore and his wife finds out,

Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical  243 He gets off scot-free. If she puts as much as a foot outside the  front-door Without her husband’s knowledge, he has grounds for divorce. There should be the same rules for women and for men. If husbands were held to account for having a bit on the side, There’d be more single men around than there are now women. (The Merchant: 817–29) Plautus can take you by surprise. He creates a much more complex social structure than might be expected, and a large range of slaves, some of whom are as conscientious and nervous as others are brash and crafty. Interaction with an equally versatile line of tradespeople suggests an intricate structure of status and influence, not necessarily tied to citizenship. There is another play, The Persian Girl, where a slave, Toxilus, is trying to raise some money, not to free himself, but so that he can free a girl with whom he has fallen in love. In fact Toxilus is a very superior sort of slave, a major domo amongst a servant class which is as hierarchical as in the film Gosford Park and just as volatile (song in A Funny Thing Happened, ‘Pretty Little Picture’). Now I would not want to suggest that Plautus is deep down a serious playwright, but I would not want to suggest either that he wrote nothing but extended review sketches. What does need recognizing is that it is in the mechanics of performance rather than in any theories of comic discourse that Plautus’ skill resides. That needs actors – but actors of a very special kind. Phil Silvers was in vaudeville from the age of twelve, as he recorded in his autobiography, and in burlesque during the doldrum years between being a child star and becoming lead comic, First Banana. When Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove first came up with the project for A Funny Thing Happened, the part of the slave, Pseudolus, was written with Silvers in mind. As Silvers told it: Old Plautus understood a farce situation; some of his gimmicks were used by Shakespeare and Minsky’s circuit. Still, I thought, the musical version was too precious, too artsy. It was to be called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I didn’t want to hurt my friends’ feelings with a rejection, so I quickly got involved in a musical by Garson Kanin. (Silvers 1974: 231–2) A different version (from Craig Zadan in Sondheim and Co) suggests that he was unwilling to do the show because it was ‘old shtick’, and that you couldn’t get concerned about any of the characters. That, I would suggest, is precisely what this Plautus is, ‘old shtick’, where the audience may get invited to follow the fortunes of one or more of the characters, but with the reservation that what happens to them is only for now, only in the moment, and only happening to actors. In the first London production in 1963 Frankie Howerd was cast as Pseudolus, while Senex was ‘Monsewer’ Eddie Gray of the Crazy Gang who

244  Greek and Roman comedy had started his career as a juggler in vaudeville. Robertson Hare, a veteran of the Aldwych farces of the 1920s, played Erronius. These are the sort of actors that Plautus needs, to transform what is basically mask comedy into open face. Plautus had been an actor and he was, in his way, a translator too who knew, much better than did Terence, what would play for his holiday audience. There is a pedigree here of popular theatre, but a pedigree that is irevocably flawed for the simple reason that most such material never gets written down. Broadway and Shaftesbury Avenue are probably the best places for such plays to end up: Something appealing, something appalling, Something for everyone––a comedy tonight! Something esthetic [sic], something frenetic, Something for everyone––a comedy tonight!4 Something that’s Plautine, Something that’s Sondheim, Something for everyone––a comedy tonight!

Notes 1 Translations from Plautus here and following unless otherwise attributed are my own and unpublished. 2 All quoted in Zadan, Craig (1994), Ch. 6 ‘Send in the Clowns’: 65–76. See also Sondheim (2010): 79–109. 3 The Plautine stage was convincingly recreated by Richard Beacham and used in a production in 1994 of Plautus’ Casina, in a double bill with Menander’s The Woman of Samos, in the Inner Peristyle of the reconstructed Roman Villa in Malibu (see Ch. 14). 4 A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum by Stephen Sondheim. Burthen Music Company, Inc. (Ascap). All Rights Administered by Warner/ Chappell North America Ltd.

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250  Bibliography and works cited Saddlemeyer, Ann (ed. 1982). Theatre Business: The Correspondence of the First Abbey Theatre Directors: William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J. M. Synge. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe. Sandbach, Francis H. (1977), The Comic Theatre of Greece and Rome. London: Chatto and Windus. Savory, Theodore (1957), The Art of Translation. London: Jonathan Cape. Scolnicov, Hanna and Holland, Peter (eds 1989), The Play Out of Context: Transferring Plays from Culture to Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seary, Peter (2008), ‘Theobald Lewis’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004; online ed. 2006). http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27169 (last accessed October 2, 2008). Segal, Erich (ed. 2001a), Oxford Readings in Menander, Plautus, and Terence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— (2001b), ‘The Menaechmi: Roman Comedy of Errors’, in Segal, E. (ed.) Oxford readings in Menander, Plautus, and Terence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 115–26, rpt. from (1969), Yale Classical Studies, 21. Shaked, Gershon (1989), ‘The Play: Gateway to Cultural Dialogue’ in Scolnicov, Hanna and Holland, Peter (eds), 7–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shattuck, Roger (1958), The Banquet Years. New York: Doubleday. Shellard, Dominic and Nicholson, Steve with Handley, Miriam (2004), The Lord Chamberlain Regrets – A History of British Theatre Censorship. London: The British Library. Sierz, Aleks (2005), ‘Sir Tom in the Doghouse’, The Daily Telegraph, October 10, 2005, 25. Silvers, Phil with Saffron, Robert (1974), The Man Who Was Bilko. London: W. H. Allen. Sondheim, Stephen (2010), Finishing the Hat. London: Virgin Books. Steiner, George (1975), After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stephens, Frances (1958), ‘Review of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata’, Theatre World, February, 8. Stoker, D. (1993), ‘Greek Tragedy With a Happy Ending: The Publication of Robert Potter’s Translations of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles’, Studies in Bibliography, 46, 282–302. Stoppard, Tom (2005), Heroes, Le Vent des Peupliers, trans. Gérald Sibleyras. London: Faber and Faber. Stray, Christopher (ed. 1996), The Mushri-English Pronouncing Dictionary: A Chapter in 19th-Century Public School Lexicography. Berkeley: Swansea; Wellington: University of Reading. Suetonius (1914), The Life of Terence, vol. 2, trans. J. C. Rolfe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Symposia Proceedings of the X and XI International Meetings on Ancient Greek Drama. Athens: The European Cultural Centre of Delphi, 2008. Trewin, John C. (1960), Benson and the Bensonians. London: Barrie and Rockliff. Trypanis, Constantine (1981), ‘Modern Productions of Ancient Dramas’, in Exchange Lecture With the University of Athens, from ‘The Proceedings of the British Academy’, vol. LXV (1979). London; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tytler, Alexander Fraser [Lord Woodhouselee] (1790), Essay on the Principles of Translation. Edinburgh: corrected ed. 1813; rpt. Ernest Rhys (ed. 1907), Everyman’s Library. London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton.

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Translations

Translations and versions quoted or particularly referred to are listed chronologically as individual plays with their source identified when part of a collection. For publication details of translations mentioned peripherally, but not quoted, see the Appendix to Walton (2006).

Various Lennox, Charlotte (1759), The Greek Theatre of Father Brumoy (3 vols), with translation of seven tragedies, summaries and part-translations of the other extant plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. London: printed by Mess(rs) Millar, Vailland, Baldwin, Crowder, Johnston, Dodsley, and Wilson and Durham.

Aeschylus Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers (Choephori), The Furies (Eumenides), see under The Oresteia.

The Oresteia Potter, Robert (1777), The Plays of Aeschylus. Norwich: J. Crouse. Swanwick, Anna (1865), Agamemnon. London: Bell and Daldy. Morshead, Edward Doidge Anderson (1877), The Agamemnon. London: Smith, Elder and Co.; (revised 1881) in The House of Atreus: being the Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, and Furies, of Æschylus. London: Kegan Paul and Co. Warr, George Charles, (1900), The Orestean Trilogy (The Oresteia of Aeschylus), translated and explained by George Charles Winter Warr, The Athenian Drama, vol. 1. London: George Allen. Murray, Gilbert (1920), Agamemnon. London: G. Allen and Unwin. —— (1928), The Oresteia. London: G. Allen and Unwin. MacNeice, Louis (1936), The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. London: Faber and Faber. Lattimore, Richmond (1953), Aeschylus I: Oresteia. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Translations 253 Lowell, Robert (1978), The Oresteia of Aeschylus. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Raphael, Frederic and Kenneth McLeish (1979), The Oresteia: The Serpent Son. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; revised (1991) as Oresteia: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides in Aeschylus Plays: Two. London: Methuen Drama. Harrison, Tony (1981), The Oresteia. London: Rex Collings; (2002), Faber and Faber. Hughes, Ted (1999), The Oresteia by Aeschylus. London: Faber and Faber. Shapiro, Alan and Peter Burian (2003), The Oresteia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Prometheus Bound Morell, Thomas (1773), ‘Prometheus in Chains’, in Stanley, Thomas (ed.), Aeschylus: Single Works, Prometheus Vinctus. London: T. Longman. Paulin, Tom (1990), Seize the Fire. London: Faber and Faber.

Aristophanes Acharnians Henderson, Jeffrey (1998), ‘Acharnians’, in Aristophanes vol. I. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press (Loeb), 54–207.

Birds A Member of One of the Universities, Birds (1812), in Aristophanes’ Comedies Translated into English (Clouds translated by Richard Cumberland, 1786/1797; Plutus by Henry Fielding and William Young, 1742; Frogs by Charles Dunster, 1785; Birds by a Member of One of the Universities). London: A. J. Valpy for Lackington, Allen and Co. Hookham Frere, John (1839), The Birds in Aristophanes’ Frogs, Acharnians, Knights, Birds. Malta: The Government Press; (1840, without Frogs). London: Pickering. Planché, James Robinson (1846), “The Birds” of Aristophanes. A Dramatic Experiment in One Act, ‘Being an Humble Attempt to Adapt the Said “Birds” to This Climate, by Giving Them New Names, New Feathers, New Songs, and New Tales’. London: G. S. Fairbrother and W. Strange: London; rpt. (1864) in Lacy’s Acting Edition, vol. 20. —— (1879), The Extravaganzas, vol. III, including The Golden Fleece or Jason in Corinth and Medea in Colchis and “The Birds” of Aristophanes. London: Samuel French. Liveright, Horace (1912), Birds in Aristophanes: The Eleven Comedies. Privately printed for the Athenian Society; (1943). New York: Liveright Publishing Co. Rogers, Benjamin Bickley (1924), Birds in Aristophanes, vol. II. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Arnott, Peter D. (1958), The Birds and The Brothers Menaechmus [Plautus]. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

254  Translations Arrowsmith, William (1961), The Birds in Aristophanes: Three Comedies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. McLeish, Kenneth (1970), The Birds in The Frogs and Other Greek Plays. London: Longman’s; rpt. (1993), in Aristophanes Plays: Two. London: Methuen Drama. Muldoon, Paul with Martin, Richard (1999), The Birds. Oldcastle: The Gallery Press. Henderson, Jeffrey (2000), Birds in Aristophanes, vol. III. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press (Loeb). O’Brien, Sean (2002), The Birds by Aristophanes. London: Methuen Drama.

Clouds Stanley, Thomas (1655), in The History of Philosophy, Part III. London: printed for Humphrey Mosley and Thomas Dring.

Lysistrata Fitts, Dudley (1955), Lysistrata, ‘An English Version by Dudley Fitts’. London: Faber and Faber.

Wealth (Plutus, Ploutos) Randolph, Thomas (1651), A Pleasant Comedie, Entituled [sic] Hey for Honesty, Down With Knavery. ‘Translated out of Aristophanes his Plutus’, by Tho. Randolph, augmented and published by F. J. [F. Jaques]. London. H. H. B. (Henry Burnell, 1659), The World’s Idol, Plutus. London: sold by Richard Skelton. Theobald, Lewis (1715), Plutus: Or, the World’s Idol. London: Jonas Brown.

Euripides Alcestis Lennox, Charlotte (1759), Alcestis in The Greek Theatre of Father Brumoy, vol. I. London: printed by Mess(rs) Millar, et al. Potter, Robert (1781), Alcestis in the Tragedies of Euripides, vol. I. London: J. Dodsley. Way, Arthur, S. (1912), Alcestis in Euripides, vol. IV. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Aldington, Richard (1930), Alcestis. London: Chatto and Windus. Hadas, Moses and Maclean, John (1936), The Plays of Euripides. New York: The Dial Press. Vellacott, Philip (1953), Alcestis in Euripides: Three Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Lattimore, Richmond (1955), Alcestis in Euripides I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roche, Paul (1974), Alcestis in Three Plays of Euripides. New York: Norton.

Translations 255 Kovacs, David (1994), Alcestis in Euripides, vol. I. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Davie, John (1996), Alcestis in Medea and Other Plays. London: Penguin. Walton, J. Michael (1997), As Alkestis in Euripides Plays: Three. London: Methuen Drama; rpt. (2002) in Six Greek Comedies. London: Methuen Drama. Blondell, Ruby (1999), Alcestis in Women on the Edge: Four Plays of Euripides, New York: Routledge.

Bacchae Vellacott, Philip (1954), The Bacchae in Euripides: The Bacchae and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Arrowsmith, William (1959), The Bacchae in Euripides V. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mahon, Derek (1961), The Bacchae: After Euripides. Old Castle: Gallery Books. Walton, J. Michael (1998), Bacchae in Euripides Plays: One. London: Methuen Drama; rpt. (2002) in Six Greek Tragedies. London: Methuen Drama. Gibbons, Reginald and Segal, Charles (2001), Bacchae in The Complete Euripides, vol. IV. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Children of Heracles Potter, Robert (1771), The Heraclidae in The Tragedies of Euripides, vol. I, London: J. Dodsley. Gladstone, Ralph (1955). The Heracleidae in Euripides I, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Vellacott, Philip (1972), The Children of Heracles in Euripides Orestes and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Taylor, Henry and Robert A. Brooks (1981), Children of Heracles in The Complete Euripides vol. III. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kovacs, David (1995), Children of Heracles in Euripides II, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Davie, John (1996), The Chidren of Heracles in Euripides: Medea and Other Plays. London: Penguin.

Cyclops Wodhull, Michael (1782), The Nineteen Plays and Fragments of Euripides, vol. III. London: J. Walker and T. Payne. Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1819), Cyclops, published by Mrs Shelley (1824) in Posthumous Poems, London: printed for John and Henry L. Hunt. Way, Arthur S. (1912), Cyclops in Euripides II. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Sheppard, Sir John Tressider (1923), The Cyclops: Freely Translated and Adapted for Performance in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green, Roger Lancelyn (1957), Euripides’ Cyclops in Two Satyr Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

256  Translations Economou, George (1980), ‘The Cyclops, Euripides’, in Doria, Charles (ed.), The Tenth Muse. Athens, Ohio, Chicago, London: The Ohio University Press, 175–202. Walton, J. Michael (1991), Cyclops, in Euripides Plays: Two. London: Methuen Drama; rpt. (2002) in Six Greek Comedies. London: Methuen Drama. Kovacs, David (1994), Cyclops in Euripides I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Davie, John (2002), Cyclops in Heracles and Other Plays. London: Penguin.

Electra Vellacott, Philip (1963), Electra in Euripides: Medea and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Hecuba West, Richard (1726), Hecuba: A Tragedy in Five Acts, and in Verse; Translated With Alterations. London: printed for W. Wickens.

Ion Potter, Robert (1781), Ion in The Tragedies of Euripides, vol. I. London: Dodsley. Lennard, Henry Barrett (H. B. L., 1889), The Ion of Euripides. London: Williams and Norgate. Way, Arthur S. (1894), Ion in Euripides with an English Translation. London: Macmillan; rpt. (1912) in Euripides IV. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Vellacott, Philip (1954), Ion in Euripides:The Bacchae and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Willetts, Ronald F. (1958), Ion in Euripides III. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lan, David (1994), Euripides: Ion. London: Methuen Drama, 1994. McLeish, Kenneth (1997), Ion in Euripides Plays: III. London: Methuen Drama.

Iphigenia in/at Aulis Lumley, Lady Jane (c. 1555), Iphigenia at Aulis, reproduced from ms. (1909). London: Malone Society Reprints; rpt. (2000) in Three Tragedies by Renaissance Women. London: Penguin.

Medea Kennelly, Brendan (1991), Medea: A New Version. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books. Mahon, Derek (1991), Medea: After Euripides. Oldcastle: The Gallery Press. Raphael, Frederic and McLeish, Kenneth (1994), Medea. London: Nick Hern Books. Walton, J. Michael (2000), Medea in Euripides Plays: One. London: Methuen Drama; (2002); as a student edition. London: Methuen Drama. ——— (2000), Medea Complex. unpublished.

Translations 257 Orestes Vellacott, Philip (1972), Orestes in Euripides: Orestes and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin. McDonald, Marianne and J. Michael Walton (2006), unpublished.

Phoenician Women Gascoigne, George and Kinwelmershe, Francis (1572), Phœnissæ, English, Jocasta: A Tragedie Written in Greke by Euripides, in [Gascoigne] A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres Bounde Up in One Small Poesie, etc. London.

Rhesus Way, Arthur, S. (1912), Rhesus in Euripides I. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Walton, J. Michael (1997), As Rhesos in Euripides Plays: VI. London: Methuen Drama.

Suppliants Wodhull, Michael (1772), in the Nineteen Plays and Fragments of Euripides, vol. II, trans. London: printed for J. Walker and T. Payne.

Trojan Women Kennelly, Brendan (1993), Euripides’ The Trojan Women: A New Version. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books.

Menander Allinson, Francis G. (1921), Menander. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Casson, Lionel (1971), The Plays of Menander. New York: New York University Press. Bain, David (trans. 1983), Menander: Samia. Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Miller, Norma (1987), Menander: Plays and Fragments, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Walton, J. Michael (1994), The Malcontent (Duskolos) and The Woman from Samos in Aristophanes and Menander: New Comedy. London: Methuen Drama; The Woman from Samos rpt. (2002) in Six Greek Comedies. London: Methuen Drama.

Plautus (Titus Maccius) Amphitruo (Amphitryon) Echard, Laurence (1694), Amphitruo in Plautus’ Comedies, Amphitryon, Epidicus, and Rudens. London: printed for A. Swalle and T. Childe.

258  Translations Casina Beacham, Richard (1995), Casina or a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Wedding in Plautus: The Comedies, vol. I. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press; rpt. (2003) in Four Roman Comedies, London: Methuen Drama.

Menaechmi W[arner] W[illiam] (1595), Menaec[h]mi,). London: T. Creede; also (1779) in Six Old Plays on Which Shakespeare Founded His Measure for Measure, Comedy of Errors: etc., vol. I. (1779). London: John Nicols. Thornton, Bonnell and Warner, Richard (1767–72), The Menaechmi in The Comedies of Plautus. Warner’s Menaechmi (1772) in vol. III. London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt. Cotter, Rev. George Sackville (1827), Menaechmi in Seven Comedies of Plautus translated into English. London: J. F. Dove. Riley, Henry Thomas (1852), The Menaechmi in the Comedies of Plautus. London: Bohn; rpt. (1900) The Menaechmi of Plautus. London: G. Bell and sons. Nixon, Paul (1917), The Two Menaechmuses in Plautus II. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Copley, Frank O. (1949), The Menaechmi. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Arnott, Peter (1958), Two Classical Comedies (Aristophanes, The Birds and Plautus, The Brothers Menaechmus). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Bovie, Palmer (1962), The Brothers Menaechmus. San Francisco: Chandler; rpt. in Robert W. Corrigan (ed. 1985), Classical Comedy: Greek and Roman. New York: Applause; (1995) as The Brothers Menaechmus in Plautus: The Comedies, vol. IV. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Casson, Lionel (1963), The Menaechmus Twins, in Six Plays of Plautus. New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books. Watling, Edward Fairchild (1965), The Brothers Menaechmus in Plautus: The Pot of Gold and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Segal, Erich (1969), The Brothers Menaechmus in Plautus: Four Comedies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Parker, Douglass (1999), Menaechmi as Double Bind in Plautus and Terence: Five Comedies. Indianapolis: Hackett. Walton, J. Michael (2007), The Comedy of Terrors: or Menaechmi Behaving Badly. Unpublished.

Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian) Nixon, Paul (1932), The Carthaginian in Plautus IV. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Burroway, Janet (1995), The Little Carthaginian in Plautus: The Comedies, vol. III. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Stichus (445–7), The Captives (1029–33), The Merchant (817–29). Walton unpublished.

Truculentus Nixon, Paul (1938), in Plautus V. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb).

Translations 259 Tatum, James (1995), James Tatum as The Savage Slave, in Plautus: The Comedies, vol II. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Sophocles Ajax Theobald, Lewis (1714), Ajax of Sophocles. London: B. Lintott. Francklin, Thomas (1759), Ajax in The Tragedies of Sophocles, vol. 2. London: T. Davies. Coleridge, Edward Philip (1891), Ajax in the Tragedies of Sophocles. London: George Bell. Moore, John (1957), Ajax in Sophocles II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dutta, Shomit (2001), Ajax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Antigone Adams, George (1729), Antigone in Sophocles Translated into English Prose, vol. II. London: C. Davis and S. Austen. Francklin, Thomas (1759), Antigone in the Tragedies of Sophocles, vol. II. London: T. Davies. Potter, Robert (1788), The Tragedies of Aeschylus. London: Robinson. Anon (1823), Antigone, the Oxford Translation. Oxford: for Talboys. Buckley, Theodore Alois (1849), Antigone in The Tragedies of Sophocles, the Oxford translation (Anon, 1823) revised. London: Henry Bohn. Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse (1888), Antigone in Works: Plays and Fragments/ Sophocles. Part 3, Antigone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; (1902), The Antigone With Abridged Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Don (1986), The Theban Plays. London: Methuen. Lloyd-Jones, Hugh (1994), Antigone in Sophocles II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Kennelly, Brendan (1996), Sophocles’ Antigone: A New Version. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books. McDonald, Marianne (2000), Sophocles Antigone. London: Nick Hern Books. Mueller, Carl and Krajewska-Wieczorek, Anna (2000), Sophokles: The Complete Plays. Hanover NH: Smith and Kraus. Morrison, Blake (2003), Antigone in Oedipus and Antigone. Halifax: Northern Broadsides. Heaney, Seamus (2004), As the Burial at Thebes. London: Faber and Faber.

Electra Wase, Christopher (1649), Electra. Translated in verse with an epilogue shewing the parallell in two poems, the Return and the Restauration by C[hristopher] W[ase]. The Hague: S. Brown. Theobald, Lewis (1714), Electra, a Tragedy. London: B. Lintott; rpt. (1780) London: for Harrison and Co. Adams, George (1729), Electra in The Tragedies of Sophocles, vol. I. London: C. Davis and S. Austen.

260  Translations Lennox, Charlotte (1759), Electra in The Greek Theatre of Father Brumoy, vol. I. London: Millar et al. Potter, Robert (1788), Electra in The Tragedies of Sophocles. London: Robinson. Anon, The Oxford Translation (1823), Electra in The Tragedies of Sophocles. Oxford: D.A. Talboys; revised ed., Theodore Alois Buckley (1859), London: H. G. Bohn. Campbell, Lewis (1873), Electra in Sophocles: Seven Plays in English Verse. London: Kegan and Paul. Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse (1883), Electra in Works: Plays and Fragments/ Sophocles, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; rpt. in (1908) The Electra with abridged commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morshead, Edward Doidge Anderson (1895), Electra in Ajax and Electra. London: Methuen and Co. Storr, Francis (1913), Electra in Sophocles II. London; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). Watling, Edward Fairchild (1953), Electra in Sophocles: Electra and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Kitto, Humphrey, D. F. (1962), Electra in Three Tragedies. Oxford: Oxford University Press; rpt. (1994). McLeish, Kenneth (1990), Electra in Sophocles Plays: Two. London: Methuen Drama. Lloyd-Jones, Hugh (1994), Electra in Sophocles I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb). McGuinness, Frank (1997), Electra, a new version. London: Faber and Faber. March, Jenny (1998), Electra. Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Ewans, Michael (2000), Elektra in Sophokles: Three Dramas of Old Age. London: J. M. Dent (Everyman). Roche, Paul (2001), Electra in Sophocles: The Complete Plays. New York: Signet Classic. McDonald, Marianne and J. Michael Walton (2004). Sophocles Electra. London: Nick Hern Books.

Oedipus at Colonus Yeats, W. B. (1934), ‘Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus: A Version for the Modern Stage’, in Clark, David and Rosalind, E. (eds 2001), The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, vol. 2. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave, 401–42.

Oedipus Tyrannus Theobald, Lewis (1715), Oedipus, King of Thebes: A Tragedy. London: B. Lintott; rpt. (1765).

Philoctetes Sheridan, Thomas (1725), Sophocles Philoctetes. Dublin: J. Hyde and E. Dobson. Francklin, Thomas (1759), Antigone in the Tragedies of Sophocles, vol. 2. London: T. Davies.

Translations 261 Heaney, Seamus ([1960]1990), The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes. London: Faber and Faber. Ussher, R. G. ((1990), Sophocles, Philoctetes. Warminster: Aris and Phillips.

The Women of Trachis Jebb, Sir William C. (1892), Trachiniae in Sophocles: Plays V. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watling, E. F. (1953), Women of Trachis in Electra in Sophocles: Electra and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Pound, Ezra (1956), Women of Trachis, a version. London: Neville Spearman. Ewans, Michael (1999), Young Women of Trachis, in Four Dramas of Maturity, London: J. M. Dent (Everyman).

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus Newton, Thomas (1581), Seneca, His Tenne Tragedies (2 vols), imprinted at London in Fleetstreete Near unto Saint Dunston’s Church by Thomas Marshe. Dedicated “To Sir Thomas Heneage knight, Treasure of her Maiestie’s Chamber”. The ‘Tenne’ include Octavia, a play on a contemporary Roman theme which is no longer believed to be by Seneca.

Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) Graves, Robert (1963), The Comedies of Terence. London: Cassell and Company.

The Girl from Andros Echard, Laurence (1705), in Terence’s Comedies Made English With His Life, and Some Remarks at the End. London: J. and B. Sprint. Riley, Henry (1867), Andria: The Fair Andrian in Terence and Phaedrus Literally Translated. London: Bell and Daldy (Bohn). Radice, Betty (1976), Andria in Phormio and Other Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Brothers Sargeaunt, John (1912), The Brothers in Terence II. London: Heinemann (Loeb). Walton, J. Michael (2003), in Four Roman Comedies. London: Methuen.

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Index

Featured translators will be found in the bibliography and works cited. Aaltonen, Sirkku 11 Abbado, Claudio 1 Abbott and Costello 208 Adams, George 17, 28, 73, 133 – 4, 140, 143, 146, 152 adaptation see translation Aeschylus 5 – 6, 9 – 17, 21 – 2, 25 – 8, 30 – 9, 42, 66 – 8, 73, 88, 108, 119, 122, 125 – 7, 136, 145, 158 – 63, 169, 171, 175 – 6, 178, 184, 187, 192, 196, 235; Oresteia  30 – 42, 68,  111, 114, 121 – 2, 126 – 7, 129 – 33  (Agamemnon 22, 27, 31 – 2, 35, 37, 39, 42, 66, 121 – 2, 129 – 33, 160 – 1, 176; Eumenides 14, 27, 111, 121, 129 – 33, 149, 166, 172; Libation-Bearers 14, 132 – 3, 161, 166, 176); Persians 6, 27, 65, 186; Prometheus 16 – 17, 19, 27, 106, 174; Seven Against Thebes 19, 27, 174; Suppliants 27 Aldington, Richard 136 Alexander-Willis, Hope 222 Allen, Woody 226 Allinson, Francis, G. 200 – 1 Alma-Tadema, Lawrence 31 Andronicus, Lucius Livius 12 anon (the Oxford translator) 79, 134, 135, 147, 198 Anouilh, Jean 67, 154, 180, 242 Aristophanes 5, 7, 11, 15 – 17, 20 – 3,  25,  28, 46 – 8, 50 – 1, 62n6, 63n19, 67 – 8, 73, 76, 78 – 86, 126 – 8,  135 – 6, 144, 160, 167, 172,  179, 189 – 93, 195 – 6, 198, 200, 203 – 4, 207 – 15, 217 – 19, 135;

Acharnians 80, 82 – 3, 209; Birds 16, 21, 78 – 81, 128, 136, 190, 198 – 200, 209 – 10, 212 – 15;  Clouds 20 – 1, 25, 28, 73, 86n11, 160; Frogs 16, 42n3, 86n11, 144, 189 – 90, 205n2, 209; Knights 80, 204, 209; Lysistrata 15, 21, 75, 83, 208 – 9; Peace 16; Wasps 86n11; Wealth (Ploutos) 20 – 1, 73, 191, 196, 209 – 10; Women at the Thesmophoria 167, 208, 210; Women in Power 83, 196, 208 Aristophanes of Byzantium 217 Aristotle 29n4, 65, 136, 144, 195, 196; anagnoriseis and peripeteiai 121, 129; Poetics 136, 144 Arnott, Peter D. 52, 55, 81, 87n12 Arnott, William Geoffrey 56, 218, 232n1 Arrowsmith, William 162 – 3, 170, 192, 199, 203 – 4 Artaud, Antonin 185 Athenaeus 160 Auletta, Robert 157n12 Ayckbourn, Sir Alan 5, 240 Babou-Pagoureli, Christina 8n2 Baldwin, Thomas 63n8 Bannister, James 19 Barker, Harley Granville 21, 31, 36 Barrett see Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, David 192 Barton, Roxy 38 Bassnett, Susan 11, 166 Beacham, Richard 62n1, 216, 219, 222 – 3, 236, 244n3 Beardsley, Aubrey 21

264 Index Beare, William 43, 62n4, 63n17 Beckett, Samuel 182, 241 Bell, Jay 222, 225, 227 – 8, 230 Belloc, Hilaire 53, 155, 198, 203 Benjamin, Walter 121, 172 Benson, Constance 34, 37 Benson, Sir Frank 30 – 9, 42, 127 Berkoff, Steven 154 Billington, Michael 183 Birnbaum, Nathan 224 Blondell, Ruby 136 Bond, Edward 74, 86n5 Booth, Edwin 31 Booth, John Wilkes 31 Boucicault, Dion 55 Bovie, Palmer 55, 56, 60 Brahms, Johannes 1 Brandt, George 72 Brea, Luigi Bernabo 218 Brecht, Bertolt 108, 139, 195 Brook, Peter 14 Brooks, Robert A. 166 Brough, Robert 208 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 17 Browning, Robert 17, 31 Brown, Jonas 28 Brown, Peter 44 – 5, 62n5 Bruce, Lenny 208 Brumoy, Pierre 15 – 17, 24, 76 – 7, 79, 136, 147 Buckley, Theodore Alois 135, 147 Bullough, Geoffrey 62n7 Burian, Peter 133, 162, 169n2 burlesque 24, 55, 75, 80, 192, 207 – 15, 234, 243 Burne-Jones, Edward 31 Burns, Robert 85 Burroway, Janet 202 Burryau, John 76 Caecilius, Lucius Iucundus 45 Caesar, Julius 39, 47, 63n10, 185, 196 Campbell, Lewis 31, 42n1, 135, 143, 147 Carr, Marina 174, 180 Carroll, Lewis 63n22, 86n6 Carson, Anne 151 Cary, Rev. Henry 209 Casson, Lionel 55, 57, 201, 218 censorship 16, 65, 68, 71 – 86, 196, 210, 213 Chase, Mary 241 Chekhov, Anton 5, 47, 169, 186, 232 chorus 38, 69, 76 – 8, 111 – 15, 149, 166 – 7, 178,  183

Christie, Agatha 85 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 45, 62n3 Clair, René 85 Clark, Davis R. 173 Cocteau, Jean 154 Coleridge, Edward P. 77, 135, 143, 152, 153 Colman, George 52 Commedia dell’Arte 46, 239 Congreve, William 28, 49 Connely, Willard 62n7 Constantine, David 185 Copley, Frank O. 60, 62n5 Corbett, Ronnie 234 Corneille, Pierre 142 Cotter, Rev. George Sackville 52 – 3, 56, 59 – 60 Courtney, W. L. 75 Coward, Noel 82 Craig, Edward Gordon 36, 119, 172 Cumberland, Richard 7, 20, 49, 86n11 Dacier, Anne 63 Davie, John 78, 136, 166, 170 Davis, Edna C. 63n14 Delphi 3, 68, 105 – 6, 108, 116f, 117 Devine, Loretta 222 Dickinson, Patric 192 Dillon, John 157n13 Diphilus 43, 46 Dover, Sir Kenneth 122, 127 – 8, 203 Downes, Edward 8n1 Drury Lane Theatre 17, 19 – 20, 24, 28, 38, 49, 52, 73, 140, 234 Dryden, John 22, 28, 75, 126, 142 – 3 Duckworth, George 43, 62n4, 63n17 Dunlap, John 20 Dutta, Shomit 153 Echard, Laurence 13 – 14, 49 – 51, 63n14, 191 Eckland, Britt 208 Economou, George 78 Economou, Thomas 172 Eco, Umberto 194 – 5, 198 Eliot, Thomas Stearns 154 Elizabeth I of England 13, 72 Elizabeth, Princess 18, 140 – 1 Ennius, Quintus 12, 45 Euripides 5, 6, 9, 13, 14 – 23, 24 – 9, 32, 42n4, 45, 66, 67 – 8, 73, 75, 76, 78, 84, 86n6, 89, 90 – 104, 106 – 17, 120 – 2, 125 – 7, 132, 136 – 9, 144, 149, 152, 158, 160 – 70, 171 – 4, 176, 178 – 87, 195, 196,

Index  265 205n2, 209 – 12, 214, 217, 228, 235; Alcestis 19, 20, 22, 32, 68, 69, 98 – 104, 117n2, 136, 164; Andromache 12, 165; Bacchae 20, 111, 162 – 3, 180 – 3; Children of Heracles 166, 179; Cyclops 19, 15, 16, 76 – 8, 86n7, 12, 160, 170n8, 196 – 7; Electra 14, 121, 149, 161, 164 – 6, 176; Hecuba 12, 17, 19 – 20, 23n4, 73, 126 – 7, 187; Helen 165, 196, 210; Hippolytus 13, 14, 20, 21, 36, 75, 84; Ion 137 – 9; Iphigenia Among the Taurians 19, 111, 196; Iphigenia in Aulis 7, 19, 22, 24; Medea 12, 13, 14, 20, 68, 75, 76, 89, 105 – 17, 121, 179, 180, 184 – 5, 209, 210; Orestes 19, 164, 166 – 8, 170n9; Phoenician Women 13, 19, 174; Rhesus 68, 89 – 98, 106, 160, 165, 170n8; Suppliants 9, 16, 111, 174; Trojan Women 13, 14, 19, 179, 184, 187 Ewans, Michael 148, 152 fabula Atellana 46 fabulae palliatae 43 – 4, 46, 238 Farquhar, George 28 Fernandel 229 Feydeau, Georges 83, 242 Fielding, Henry 7, 21 Findlater, Richard 72, 82, 86n2 Fischer-Lichte, Erika 169n1, 170n10 Fitts, Dudley 83 Fleischman, Barbara 219 Fleischman, Lawrence 219 Fo, Dario 173 Foster, F.M.K. 25, 28n1 Francklin, Thomas 143 Frayn, Michael 240 Frere, John Hookham 48, 53 – 4, 63, 80, 83, 86n11, 190, 199, 209, 214, 215n1 (as Whistlecraft) Friedkin, William 208 Friel, Brian 174, 186 Garrick, David 17, 20, 49, 51, 86n3 Gascoigne, George 19, 23n3, 29n4 Gelbart, Larry 53, 233, 243 Gémier, Firmin 72 Gibbons, Reginald 162 – 3 Gladstone, Ralph 166 Gladstone, William 31 Goldberg, Sander 226 Goldsmiths, Oliver 49 Grainger, Dr. 16, 77

Grant, Michael 239 Graves, Robert 63n14 Gray, ‘Monsewer’ Eddie 243 Gray, Terence 172 Green, Dorothy 38 Green, Peter 82, 84, 89, 154 Green, Roger Lancelyn 78 Greene, Robert 63n11 Gregory, Lady Isabella Augusta 173, 187n1 Guthrie, Sir Tyrone 172, 186 Hackett, Michael 219, 222, 224 – 6, 228, 230, 232 Hadas, Moses 136 Hall, Edith 8n4, 24, 25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, 42n1, 49, 154, 157n3, 208 Hall, Sir Peter 35 Hamilton, Edith 154 Hardwick, Lorna 157n13 Hare, Robertson 244 Harrison, John 23n4, 127 Harrison, Tony 23n4, 86n7, 126, 127, 131 – 3, 155 Hart, Lorenz 53, 234 Headlam, C.E.S. 119 Headlam, Walter 119 Heaney, Seamus 122, 127, 135 – 6, 174, 176 – 7, 187n2 Henderson, Jeffrey 7, 81 – 3, 86n9, 160, 192, 214 Herbert, Sir Henry 73 Hern, Nick 23n4, 127, 154, 203 Herodes Atticus 235; theatre of 120, 135 Heywood, Jasper 14 Homer 12, 27, 32, 42n4, 65, 119, 129, 132, 135, 144, 160, 171, 217 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) 11, 22, 105, 142 Horton, Priscilla 212 Howerd, Frankie 55, 233, 240, 243 Hughes, Ted 14, 98, 126, 127, 131 – 3 Ibsen, Henrik 67, 74, 88, 164, 169, 180 Imoru, Nike 105, 108 Ingram, William Henry 25 Irving, Sir Henry 31, 86n3 J. Paul Getty Museum 7, 62n1, 192, 216 – 32 Jacob, Giles 25 Jaeger, Alex 224 Jarry, Alfred 71 – 2, 74

266 Index Jebb, Sir Richard 135, 143, 147, 151, 157n3, 157n5 Jenkin, Fleeming 31, 42n1 Jenkyns, Richard 144 Johnson, Samuel 16, 79 Johnston, John 86n2 Jones, Peter 82 Jones, Richard Foster 25 – 6 Jonson, Ben 14, 52 Jowett, Benjamin 31 Kane, Sarah 139 Keaton, Buster 240 Kennelly, Brendan 127, 155 – 6, 173 – 4, 178 – 80, 184 – 7 Kilroy, Thomas 186 Kinney, Kathy 222, 229 – 31 Kinwelmershe, Francis 19, 23n3 Kitto, Humphrey Davy Findley 18, 148, 168 Kovacs, David 78, 86n6, 136, 166, 197 Krajewska-Wieczorek, Anna 135 Kyd, Thomas 14 Lahr, Bert 208 Lan, David 138 Lanuvinus, Luscius 45 Lattimore, Richmond 130 – 3, 136 Lawson, Malcolm 32 Lee, Nathaniel 126, 142 Lefebre, Gustave 216 – 17 Lefevere, André 166 Lemon, Mark 208 Lennox, Charlotte 15 – 17, 19, 24, 76 – 7, 79, 136, 147, 150, 152 Lintot(t), Barnaby or Bernard 24 – 9 Lloyd-Jones, Hugh 135, 148, 155 Lord Chamberlain, Office of 68, 71 – 5, 81, 84, 86, 213 Lowell, Robert 127 – 8, 130 – 1,  133 Lucretius 142 Lumley, Lady Jane 7, 9, 22, 24 Lycurgus 88, 106 Machray, Robert 222 MacNeice, Louis 176, 180 Maeterlinck, Maurice 74 Mahon, Derek 180 – 3 Maltby, Robert 63n8 March, Jenny 148 Marlowe, Christopher 14 Marshall, Christopher W. 44, 63n17 Marston, John 14

Martin-Harvey, Sir John 75 masks and masked acting 46, 68 – 9, 89, 110 – 11, 117, 121, 159, 165, 172, 185, 190, 197, 218, 235, 239, 244 Master of the Revels, Office of 72 – 3 Mathews, Aidan Carl 180 Matthews, Jon 222, 225 – 6, 228, 230 – 1 Mayakovsky, Vladimir 207 McDonald, Marianne 23n4, 127, 136, 149 – 52, 154, 157n12, 167 – 8, 170n9, 178, 181, 186, 189, 193 McGoohan, Patrick 88 McGuinness, Frank 23n4, 126 – 7, 148, 155, 176 McGuire, James B. 173 McLean, John 136 McLeish, Kenneth 117n3, 138 – 9, 130, 131, 133, 136, 138 – 9, 148, 150, 152, 185, 192, 199 Mee, Chuck 139 Menander 5,6,12, 14, 15, 21, 45, 47, 50, 51, 62n6, 73, 126, 127, 164, 170n6, 190, 191 – 2, 195 – 6, 201 – 6, 216 – 32, 234, 237, 238, 239, 244n3; The Arbitration (Epitrepontes) 206n3, 217; The Bad-Tempered Man (Duskolos) 196, 200, 218; The Shorn Girl (Perikeiromenê) 217; The Woman from Samos (Samia) 21, 164, 196, 200, 216 – 32 Meyer, Michael 27, 88, 89 Miller, Arthur 121, 175 Miller, Norma 201, 218 Minghella, Anthony 4 Miola, Robert S. 63n8 Mitchell, Thomas 80, 86, 135, 209, 214 Mnouchkine, Ariane 30, 42n4, 126 Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin) 47, 67, 108, 173 Molnar, Ferenc 3 Monkhouse, Bob 234 Monk, W.H. 32 Moore, John 153 Morecambe, Eric 240 Morell, Thomas 16 – 17, 19 Morris, Mowbray 33 Morrison, Blake 155, 156 Morshead, Edmund Doidge Anderson (Mushri) 31, 33 – 5, 39 – 42, 147, 150, 157n8 Mostel, Zero 240 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 180

Index  267 Mueller, Carl 135 Muldoon, Paul 200 Murphy, Fionnuala 23n4 Murphy, Tom 174 Murray, Gilbert 21, 36, 42n3, 75 – 6, 119, 130, 131, 133, 143, 153–4, 206n3, 217 Murray, Thomas C. 174 Naevius, Gnaeus 45 National Theatre 81, 110, 126, 192, 233 – 44 Negri, Richard 88 Nestroy, Johann 3 Nevyle [Neville], Alexander 14 Newton, Thomas 14 Nietzsche, Friedrich 183 Nixon, Paul 54, 56, 63n21, 210 – 12 Nowlan, David 178 Nuce [Newce], Thomas 14 O’Brien, Sean 81 O’Casey, Sean 174 Okhlopkov, Nikolai 131 Orton, Joe 83 Osborne, John 82 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) 1, 52 Owen, Robert 214, 215n2 Pacuvius, Marcus 45 Parker, Douglass 54 – 5, 58, 61 Parratt, Walter 31, 32 Paulin, Tom 174 – 5 Pavis, Patrice 4, 6 Peel, Robert 52, 74 Perry, Grayson 169 Pheidias 144 Philemon 43, 45, 234 Phrynichus 144, 189 Pickard-Cambridge, Sir Arthur 104 Pinter, Harold 2, 8n2, 82 Pirandello, Luigi 3, 74 Planché, James Robinson 21, 81, 128, 208 – 15 Plato 1, 25, 28n1, 144, 160, 183 Plautus, Marcus Atellus 6, 7, 12 – 15, 43 – 63, 81, 123n2, 190, 192, 195, 201 – 4, 216, 217, 219, 222 – 3, 224, 228 – 9, 230, 233 – 44; Amphitryon 13, 49, 50, 236; The Boastful Soldier (Miles Gloriosus) 234, 237; The Brothers Menaechmus (Menaechmi) 2, 13 – 14, 43 – 63, 202, 233 – 4,

235 – 6, 240; The Carthaginian 201, 242; Casina 216, 219, 222, 230, 236, 241, 242, 244n3; The Comedy of Asses 241; Curculio 240; Epidicus 13, 49; The Haunted House (Mostellaria) 234, 240; The Merchant 242 – 3; The Persian Girl 240, 243; The Pot of Gold (Aulularia) 13, 50; Pseudolus 234, 237; The Rope (Rudens) 13, 49, 240; Stichus 238; The Three-Bob Day (Trinummus) 44, 233; Truculentus 202, 241; The Two Bacchises 240 Pliny the Elder 52 Plumptre, E.H. 135 Plutarch 200, 217 Pompey the Great (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus) 235 Poole, Adrian 26 Pope, Alexander 24, 27, 28 Poseidippus 43 Potter, Rev. Robert 9 – 10, 12, 16 – 17, 19, 22n1, 24, 28, 30, 77, 126, 129 – 32, 134, 137, 143, 147 Pound, Ezra 204 prologues 12, 32, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 62, 98, 100, 137, 141, 182, 204, 218, 219 – 20, 233, 235 – 8 Quilley, Denis 234 Rackham, H. 45 Radice, Betty 13, 62n5 Rame, Franca 173 Randolph, Larry 222, 225, 228 – 31 Randolph, Thomas 20, 73, 191, 193n2, 209, 222 Raphael, Frederic 130, 133, 185 Reinhardt, Max 75, 172 Riehle, Wolfgang 63n8 Riley, Henry Thomas 13, 53, 63n18 Robards, Jason Jr 208 Robert, Deborah 190 – 1 Roberts, Peter 84 Roche, Paul 136, 148, 150, 192 Rogers, Benjamin Bickley 63, 81, 83 Rogers, Richard 234 Roper, Alan 142 Rouse, William H.D. 62n7, 63n9 Rowe, Nicholas 25, 27 Royal Court Theatre 21, 84, 86n5 Royal Shakespeare Company 23 Russell, Willy 53

268 Index Saddlemeyer, Ann 187 Sandbach, Francis H. 62n5 Sargeaunt, John 202 Sartre, Jean-Paul 74 satyr plays 15, 16, 30, 68, 76 – 7, 85, 86n7, 98, 140, 155, 160, 196 – 7 Savory, Theodore 65, 121, 128 – 9 Scarbrough, Earl of 83 Schiller, Friedrich 169 Schnitzler, Arthur 3, 74 Schumann, Robert 101 Segal, Charles 162, 163 Segal, Erich 57, 63n8 Sellars, Peter 157, 231 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 6, 11, 13, 14 – 15, 49, 126, 142 Shaked, Gershon 6 Shakespeare, William 5, 7, 11, 14, 17, 24, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 46, 49, 49, 52, 53, 67, 72, 80, 86n3, 89, 98, 102, 103 – 4, 106, 122, 129, 143, 171, 180, 186, 192, 205n2, 214, 227, 231, 234, 243; The Comedy of Errors 7, 46, 48, 53, 62n7, 63n11, 122, 234; Hamlet 36, 37, 129, 228; King Lear 37, 80, 228; Merchant of Venice 135, 231; Romeo and Juliet 33, 228; The Winter’s Tale 98, 102 – 4,  122 Shapiro, Alan 132, 162, 169n2 Sharbough, Tressa 229 – 31 Sharpe, Gregory 16 Shattuck, Roger 192, 203 Shaw, Fiona 129, 185 Shaw, George Bernard 180, 205 Shellard, Dominic 86 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 77 Sheppard, Sir John 78 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 47, 49, 52, 67, 73, 140 Sheridan, Thomas 17, 22, 73 Shevelove, Burt 53, 233, 243 Sibleyras, Gérald 3 Silvers, Phil 208, 243 Skelton, Red 208 Smith, Samuel 21 Socrates 135, 160, 183 Sondheim, Stephen 53, 205n2, 233 – 44; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 53, 233 – 4 Sophocles 5, 6, 13, 15, 17 – 18, 21, 22, 24 – 9, 45, 66, 67, 68, 73 – 5, 86n7, 89, 106, 114, 120, 121,

122, 125, 126, 127, 132, 133 – 6, 140 – 57, 158, 160, 161, 162, 164, 170n7, 171, 173 – 4, 176 – 80, 181, 184, 187, 195, 210, 235; Antigone 17, 22, 27, 122, 133 – 6, 139, 140, 145, 155 – 6, 174, 176, 177, 178 – 9, 180, 181, 182, 187n2, 210; Electra 14, 17 – 18, 24, 25 – 9, 45, 73, 121, 133, 140 – 3, 145, 146, 149 – 50, 161, 176; Oedipus at Colonus 17, 145, 157n9, 173 – 4, 177; Oedipus Tyrannus 17, 25, 27, 28, 74, 75, 133, 140, 145, 157n9, 164 – 5, 170, 173 – 4, 177; Philoctetes 15, 17, 27, 73, 133, 145, 151 – 2, 176 – 7; The Women of Trachis 17, 25, 27, 66, 133, 140, 145, 151 – 2, 177, 204 Stanley, Thomas 20, 73 Steele, Richard 28 Stein, Peter 30, 68, 114, 126, 127 Stephens, Frances 84, 85 St Jerome 11, 185 Stoker, David 22n1 Stoppard, Tom 3, 8n2, 47, 129, 132, 192 Storr, Francis 149 Strauss, Botho 125 Strauss, George R. see Theatres Act Stray, Christopher 39, 157n8 Strindberg, August 67, 74, 169 Studley, John 14 Suetonius 63 Swanwick, Anna 130 – 2 Synge, John Millington 173, 174, 187 Tatum, James 202 Taylor, Don 135 Taylor, Henry 166 Tennyson, Alfred Lord 31 Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) 6, 12 – 15, 43 – 6, 47, 49 – 51, 52, 53, 62n5, 63n10, 65, 190 – 2, 195, 196, 201, 202 – 5, 217, 219, 235, 237 – 8, 244; Brothers (Adelphi) 12, 45, 62n5, 65, 202; The Eunuch 12, 45, 62n5, 204, 237; The Girl from Andros (Andria) 12, 13, 14, 45, 62n5; The Mother-in-Law (Hecyra) 45, 62n5, 237; The Phormio 62; prologues 12, 44 – 5, 62n5, 237; The Self-Tormentor (Heauton Timoroumenos) 12, 45, 62, 204

Index  269 Terry, Ellen 31, 42 Theatre of Dionysus 235 Theatre of Herodes Atticus 235 Theatres Act of 1843 74, 213 Theatres Act of 1968 74 Theobald, Lewis 17 – 18, 24 – 9, 73, 75, 140, 143, 146 Thoreau, David 17 Thornton, Bonnell 15, 49 – 52, 56 Thornton, Richard Warner 58 Thrasymachus 160 Tibullus 16 Tilney, Edmund 72 Tolstoy, Leo 74 Tonso, Jacob 28 translation: accent 135, 185; accuracy 4, 205; action and business 43, 52, 54, 83, 190, 194 – 5, 198, 224, 234, 239, 240; adaptation 6, 12, 24, 34, 44, 45, 65 – 8, 98, 100, 117, 120 – 2, 143, 159, 176, 179, 232n2, 238, 239; ambiguity 100, 145 – 6, 149; anachronism 48, 51, 53, 67, 77, 174, 191, 196, 198, 212, 231, 234; aphorism and maxim 107, 198, 227 – 8; appropriation 5, 171, 198; atmosphere of the word 53, 128, 132, 155, 159, 198, 203; bowdlerisation 80; censorship 68, 71 – 87; characterisation 66, 109 – 10, 164 – 7; comic licence 46, 53, 68, 127, 195 – 6; contamination 45, 62n4, 234; context 3, 4, 11, 21, 30, 44, 65, 68, 82, 90 – 8, 100, 122, 126, 139, 144 – 5, 54, 160, 161, 169, 174, 176, 187, 194 – 5, 199, 205, 209, 227; culture 1, 4 – 5, 11, 13, 44, 66, 68, 85, 106, 112, 120, 122, 141, 154, 172 – 87, 191, 203 – 5; deception 90, 136, 161, 183; definitions 44, 55, 62, 139, 142, 158, 161, 192; and direction 115 – 17, 98 – 104, 105 – 17; equivalence 5, 158 – 9, 190, 195, 198, 205; faithful and spirited 53, 190; false friends 3 – 4; fidelity 127, 190; foreignness 121; give 125 – 39; grief 117n3; Hellenizers and modernizers 128 – 9; imagery 87, 89, 90; invisibility 158 – 70; irony 68, 158 – 70; knowledge of original language 159; Latin translation 6, 13, 43 – 6, 49, 62n3, 100, 159, 171, 190, 201, 204; literals 2,

63n18, 67, 107, 115, 127, 155, 170, 176, 227; metaphor 7, 47, 77, 82, 84, 107, 117, 122, 173, 174, 186; modernizing 6 – 7, 14, 21, 128, 155, 193, 204; names 54, 55; neutrality 122, 129, 159; obscenity 71 – 88, 196;  performance text 4 – 5, 11, 22, 68 – 9, 126, 143, 145, 149, 158, 198; propaganda 81, 207; respect for the original 119, 125, 214, 218; source and target 1, 3, 22, 65, 86n6, 106, 125 – 8, 157, 158 – 9, 190 – 4, 197; speakable 49, 68, 120, 127 – 8, 149, 226; spirited 48 – 9, 53, 190; spirit of the original 14, 28, 48, 52, 86n7, 127 – 8, 154, 158, 169, 197, 208, 212, 217, 227; stage directions 9 – 10, 53 – 6, 82, 102, 119, 123n2, 143, 149, 158, 182, 199, 202; subtext 2, 43, 68, 69, 107, 121, 160, 164, 174, 200, 208, 227, 231 – 2; suffering 145, 151 – 3; topicality 185, 190, 192, 204; translocation 6, 44, 68, 68, 89, 98 – 104, 139, 186; verse 2, 10, 14, 25 – 7, 46, 51, 89, 121, 127, 141 – 3 147, 149, 151, 154, 158, 197, 199, 224, 239; vis 47, 51, 185, 196 Trewin, John C. 33, 35 – 7, 42 Trypanis, Constantine 120, 123 Tucker, Sophie 208 Turgenev, Ivan 186 Turpio, Lucius Ambivius 45 Tytler, Alexander Fraser (Lord Woodhouselee) 13 – 14, 50, 157n2, 191 Udall, Nicholas 14 Up Pompeii 53, 55, 233, 240 Ussher, R.G. 152 Vanbrugh, Sir John 49, 52 Vellacott, Philip 136, 138, 163 – 6, 168, 170n5 Vestris, Madame Lucia Elizabeth 212 Vibert, Trevor 72, 74 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 27, 142 Volonakis, Minos 84 Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) 191 Walton, J. Michael 8n4, 10, 15, 18, 20, 29n4, 42n2, 48, 62, 69n1, 75, 78, 84, 86n8, 92, 94, 96, 98, 101,

270 Index 104n2, 123n2, 129, 136, 149 – 52, 157n4, 164, 167 – 8, 169n1, 170n4, 181, 189, 191, 193n1, 197, 203, 209 Warner, Richard 15, 49, 50 – 2, 58 – 9 Warner, William 13, 47 – 51, 52, 56, 58 – 9, 62n7,  63n9 Warr, George 31 – 6, 39 – 40, 42, 133 Warter, John 209 Wase, Christopher 18, 24, 140 – 2, 146, 150 Watling, Edward Fairchild 57, 58, 150, 151 Way, Arthur S. 77, 90 – 1, 93, 95, 97, 100 – 1, 102, 103, 136 – 6 Wedekind, Frank 74 Wheelwright, Charles A. 21, 86, 209 Whistlecraft see Frere, John Hookham Willetts, Ronald F. 137 – 8

Williams, Clifford 234 Wilmer, Stephen E. 157n13 Winchester College 9, 31, 33, 35, 39 Wise, Ernie 240 Wodhull, Michael 9 – 10, 12, 19, 77, 137 Wood, James 232 Woolf, Henry 234 Woolf, Virginia 121 Worrall, Nicholas 139 Wycherley, William 242 Yaari, Nurit 185 Yeats, William Butler 72, 75, 127, 172, 173 – 4, 178, 180, 185, 187n1 Zadan, Craig 243, 244n2 Zajko, Vanda 157n13