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1 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Council OK using Pioneer Hall as shelter again ... Herb Rothschild Jr.: A delicate project ... What do you make of the street people downtown? ... Council OK using Pioneer Hall as shelter again ... Herb Rothschild Jr.: A delicate project ... What do you make of the street people downtown? ... RELOCATIONS Herb Rothschild Jr.: A delicate project Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Oct. 24, 2015 at 12:01 AM Posted Oct. 24, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News I’ve spent much of my life with Shakespeare. What wisdom I possess I largely owe to him. So the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s project of modernizing the play texts concerns me. Right now we can’t know the results. If I understand the project, they will vary from play to play. To judge in advance on general grounds would be mere prejudice. Modernizing Shakespeare’s language carries the twin challenges of any translation: making the text literally understandable and preserving the formal (sound) and semantic (sense) richness of the original. Fortunately, making Shakespeare’s language intelligible to modern English speakers is far less challenging than making it intelligible to non-English speakers. Still, let’s acknowledge that the passage of four centuries has created barriers to understanding. If an audience can’t make literal sense of what it’s hearing, that’s a problem. Take, for instance, the line at the end of the dialogue in “Antony and Cleopatra” when Antony teasingly responds with mere tautologies to the drunk Lepidus’ questions about the crocodile. Octavius, who has no patience with the fun of the drinking party, asks, “Will this description satisfy him?” Antony replies, “With the health that Pompey gives him, else he is a very epicure” (II.7). Playgoers may get that “health” here means a toast, especially if Antony raises his cup at that point (gestures can help audiences understand the language), but it requires rare erudition to know that “epicure” means “skeptic.” So suppose one changed “epicure” to “skeptic,” what would a gain in clarity cost? The rhythm and meter would be altered slightly, but since the line is broken between two speakers, the metrical change wouldn’t be noticed. As I often do, I asked Deborah to be my litmus. I read her several passages to see if she could gather from their context the meanings of words that have changed over time. Often she could, sometimes she couldn’t. For example, Macbeth, on the day of Banquo’s planned murder, invokes nightfall: “Come, seeling night,/ Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day” (III.2). Deborah understood that “seeling” meant something like “blindfolding” even though she heard it as “sealing” and didn’t know it was a technical term from falconry that meant sewing up the bird’s eyes to tame it. Here’s an opposite example. Early in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Helena laments that Demetrius loves Hermia even though she herself is considered as lovely: “Things base and vile, holding no quantity/ Love can transpose to form and dignity.” “Holding no quantity” (“lacking proportion”) stumped Deborah. Even so, she got the overall gist of what Helena was saying about the way love alters vision. But here’s the hard case: Suppose one can’t even get a general idea of the original, and changing one word won’t remedy the problem? And even harder: Suppose that making enough changes to convey the literal meaning threatens the way Shakespeare’s language there plays into the thematics of the entire play? Aye, there’s the rub. For an example, I’ll refer you to Othello’s speech to the Venetian signory (council) when he asks them to grant Desdemona’s request that she accompany him to Cyprus and swears he doesn’t ask because he wants to enjoy her sexually (I.3.260-74). Among many other challenges, what does Othello mean by “proper satisfaction”? Yet, “satisfaction” is a major motif in the play, so one doesn’t want to change the word. I commend to the projectors Horace’s maxim, “ars est celare artem” (it is art to conceal art). Let’s see what emerges. Herb Rothschild Jr. is chairman of the board of Peace House. DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Oct. 24, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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