Translating Classical Plays: Collected Papers

✍ Scribed by J. Michael Walton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 283
• Series: Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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with the three Greek tragedians, and the Greek and Roman writers of old and new comedy, ending with the hitherto unpublished text of a Platform Lecture given at the National Theatre in London comparing the plays of Plautus with Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the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.

✦ Table of Contents

Translating Classical Plays: Collected papers
Contents
List of illustrations and copyright
Acknowledgements
Part 1: Translation in English
Introduction
Notes
1 ‘An agreeable innovation’: Play and translation, Translation and the Classic (2008)
Notes
2 Theobald and Lintott: A footnote on early translations of Greek tragedy, Arion (2009)
Notes
3 Benson, ‘Mushri’ and the first English Oresteia,. Arion (2006)
Notes
4 Business as usual: Plautus’ Menaechmi in English translation, Ancient Comedy and Reception (2014)
Plautus the translator
The first English translation
Menaechmi in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Modern Menaechmi
Ancient and modern
Notes
Part 2: Processes and issues
Introduction
Note
5 ‘Good manners, decorum or the public peace’: Greek drama and the censor, Modes of Censorship and Translation (2007)
Stage censorship in England
Censoring tragedy
Censoring comedy
Notes
6 Vacuum or agenda: The translator’s dilemma, Classical and Modern Literature (2007)
A Rhesus about professionals
A Victorian Alcestis
Notes
7 Transfusion or transgression: The translator as director in Medea, Proceedings of the X and XI Meetings of the ECCD at Delphi
Notes
Part 3: Greek tragedy
Introduction
Notes
8 ‘Enough give in it’: Translating the classical play, The Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions
Aeschylus and The Oresteia
Sophocles and the common man
Euripides and the new realism
Conclusion
9 ‘Men as they ought to be’: Sophocles in translation, Brill’s Companion to Sophocles (2012)
The early translations and translators
Text in context
Words and concepts
The translation of suffering
Translation and ‘dramatic impact’
Notes
10 The translator’s invisibility: Handling irony, GRAMMA (2014)
Notes
11 Hit or myth: The Irish and Greek tragedy, Methuen Drama (2002)
Notes
Part 4: Greek and Roman comedy
Introduction
Notes
12 The line or the gag: Translating classical comedy, CTIA Occasional Papers (2006)
Notes
13 Aristophanes and the theatre of burlesque, The Comparative Drama Conference, 2005
Notes
14 Realizing Menander: Get-in at the Getty, DRAMA (1997)
The recovery of the play
Completing the play
The project
The plot
Act one
Act two
Act three
Act four
Act five
The company
The set
First meeting
First rehearsals
Translating into American
Get-in
Final week
Conversations with the company
Opening
Conclusions
Notes
15 Shtick or twist: Plautus to the musical, National Theatre Platform Lecture (2004)
Notes
Bibliography and works cited
Translations
Index