If This Be Magic and Shakespeare in translation: some further thoughts

 1/ When asked whether we know a writer if we only read them in translation, I suppose most people would say either yes or no. I think it depends: I think some but not too much is lost if we’re talking about Jane Austen, Trollope, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Fielding, Balzac, Zola, Molière…; but Nguyễn Du in translation is no longer Nguyễn Du and I’d say the same about Shakespeare, Melville, or Wodehouse; and I can’t help feeling that I don’t really know Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, or Ovid. 

There’s a reason that non-Russians name Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Chekhov as the greatest Russian writer, whereas Russians say Pushkin. 

That doesn’t mean we reject everything in translation. We look at different translations; we do what we can. Am I going to learn ancient Greek? No, I have no gift for languages. To read as widely as I aim to do, I need translators, for whom I’m forever grateful. I’m just saying that sometimes we do lose a lot: Wodehouse’s comic genius is in the phrasing, so what do we have when his sentences are now rephrased by someone else? It’s something to keep in mind. 

2/ In my previous blog post about Daniel Hahn’s If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, I wrote: 

“When people read or watch Shakespeare in translation, his poetry is lost but his other qualities—his metaphors, his range, his characterisation and psychological insight, his examination of power and politics, his understanding of human nature, his sense of pacing and understanding of drama, and so on—are still there. When I read Racine, I suspected that much of his greatness was in the French alexandrine verse that got lost in translation.” 

Glad to later find Hahn making the same point in his book: 

“… Jean-Michel cited this distinction to explain why we see so few plays by Racine staged in English—he’s a writer for whom language is everything. A play like Bérénice has very little plot— ‘it’s all music, it’s all language.’ It’s a beautiful literary play, but Racine never wrote anything as generously, theatrically user-friendly as A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” (ch.32) 

The plays of Racine are all talk talk talk. 

If we leave aside the ancient Greek plays (different tradition of drama, with lots of singing), I have noticed that sometimes a long speech in someone else’s play is just the author writing poetry, whereas long speeches in Shakespeare are usually either rhetoric (a character trying to persuade another, which moves the plot forward), or a soliloquy (which depicts a character’s stream of thoughts). Spanish Golden Age playwrights, except for Lope de Vega, very often write those long speeches which neither move the plot forward nor do anything for characterisation (I’m looking at you, Tirso de Molina—what’s the point of that four-page speech about Lisbon?). The closet plays of Seneca, or Goethe’s Faust, have many passages and scenes that I know wouldn’t work well onstage. 

Shakespeare and Molière are performed widely around the world—in translation—because they understand theatre so well, having such a great sense of pacing and tension and pitch and dramatic effects (I once saw a bad production of Othello which still managed to make me tear up at the end).  

I’ve also noted that some of the playwrights who do well onstage in translation wrote in prose: Chekhov, Ibsen (except for some early plays)… Different beast, then. 

3/ Daniel Hahn’s book makes me have immense respect for translators of Shakespeare into other languages, and I do think many of the examples—the choices, the solutions to the problems inherent in translating Shakespeare—are brilliant. But at the same time, the book reinforces my view that Shakespeare is best appreciated in English, that I’m glad to read and watch his works in the original, and that it’s silly to call for a translation of his plays into today’s English. 

(Yep, over the years I’ve encountered lots of philistines who think readers of Shakespeare in translation have an advantage over us). 

When a translator finds a clever solution for a joke or a pun in Shakespeare, it might be funny (and the translator deserves an applause), but that joke or that pun is not Shakespeare’s. Hahn also explores many other problems and not everything gets a neat solution. What do you do when Shakespeare plays with the coexistence of Latinate/ Romance and Germanic words in the English language? Or when he marks an accent or regional dialect? Or when he includes words from another language? Or when he includes words from the target language itself (i.e. what does a French translator do with the French passages in the plays)? And if you make a choice between domestication and foreignisation, how far do you go and where do you draw the line? 

The translator is thus the second author. 

Hahn raises a million questions—sometimes there’s a brilliant answer, sometimes there’s no neat solution—and the book gets one to think more deeply about Shakespeare and about the art of translation. One aspect I’ve never considered, for example, is that a translator of Shakespeare tries to think about beats, rhythm, and rhyme, which is challenging enough if some languages (such as Italian or Greek) have longer words than English does, but things could be even further complicated by accents: a play translated by a Brazilian might end up losing some effects in the mouth of a Portuguese actor, as they pronounce syllables differently.

4/ This is interesting: 

“Just as everyday English carries idioms drawn from our own greatest canonical translation, the 1611 King James Bible (and its more quietly influential predecessors), so translated Shakespeare looms large in other languages, phrases from his work inflecting people’s speech.” (ch.37) 

I like that. 

(Does this happen in Vietnamese? I have no idea). 

“We readers can become attached to [translations] in just the same way, and it’s hard to imagine the validity of alternative interchangeable versions. Just recall the stories that mattered most to you as a kid, when some of the strongest bonds were formed. For me, those books included classics that were definitely not called ‘Gretel and Hansel’ or ‘Cindergirl’, Lindgren’s Pippi Longsocks, Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘Small Mermaid’.” 

In Vietnam, some titles of classics—Giấc mộng đêm hè (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Bắt trẻ đồng xanh (The Catcher in the Rye), Đỉnh gió hú (Wuthering Heights), Cuốn theo chiều gió (Gone with the Wind), Tội ác và trừng phạt (Crime and Punishment), and so on—have become so iconic that retranslated titles would flop, or new translators don’t bother. It’s like Dostoyevsky’s Братья Карамазовы: since Constance Garnett, everyone has called it The Brothers Karamazov even though some later translators (such as Ignat Avsey) translated it as The Karamazov Brothers. 

We become attached to translations: I love Constance Garnett’s translations of Chekhov (still going through the 13 volumes); Aylmer and Louise Maude’s versions of Tolstoy are dear friends, including their War and Peace (revised by Amy Mandelker), though now the Anna Karenina copy I keep is by Rosamund Bartlett; I suspect I’m also attached to Robert Fitzgerald’s translations of Homer, which is why I (unreasonably) stick to Akhilleus when everyone else says Achilles, and so on. 

If This Be Magic is a very good book—a celebration of Shakespeare and a celebration of translators—and it’s certainly one of the books I’ve enjoyed most this year. 

Shakespeare in translation [updated]

1/ A Shakespeare fan never runs out of things to read. 

I’ve been enjoying If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation by Daniel Hahn. 

When the Royal Shakespeare Company commemorated the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, they had a sketch in which a bunch of (famous) Shakespearean actors argued about where to put the emphasis in “To be or not to be, that is the question”—the first “be”? the second “be”? “or”? “not”? “to”? “that”? “is”? “question”? In one chapter of If This Be Magic, Hahn listed (and briefly discussed) 15 different translations of the line into Spanish. 

A translator has to think about meaning, double meaning, ambiguity, tone, register, the constraints of language, the choice to make when a word in the source language is ambiguous but has to be one or the other in the target language, etc.; a translator of Shakespeare also has to think about verse form, rhyme, rhythm, metre, sound, speed, emphasis, performance, dramatic effects, puns, jokes, wordplay, homophones, etc. Much is lost in translation but also much is gained, Hahn argues (though of course he would say that, as he’s a translator himself). It’s a thought-provoking and fascinating book, and I like that he’s funny. 

(My only regret is that the book doesn’t discuss Vietnamese; it also doesn’t include Norwegian, but I’d make do with Danish).  

A similar book about translations of Homer (into English) would also be interesting, though of course I would understand it less as I can’t read Homer in the original.

If you like Shakespeare and/or language and translation, read If This Be Magic. 

2/ Is Shakespeare in translation still Shakespeare? I tend to think not. But it’s a fact—an interesting fact—that Shakespeare is one of the few playwrights who hold the global stage very well in translation. If we compare French dramatists, Molière is performed widely in many languages around the world—I have read Molière as translated by 5-6 different people and he’s always a hoot—but Racine doesn’t have the same appeal. When people read or watch Shakespeare in translation, his poetry is lost but his other qualities—his metaphors, his range, his characterisation and psychological insight, his examination of power and politics, his understanding of human nature, his sense of pacing and understanding of drama, and so on—are still there. When I read Racine, I suspected that much of his greatness was in the French alexandrine verse that got lost in translation.

Shakespeare in Swahililand by Edward Wilson-Lee is also an interesting read by the way. 

3/ I suppose I don’t need to tell you what I think about translating Shakespeare from English into (today’s) English. 

Have you heard of Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Retold by James Anthony? Let me ruin your evening/ morning. 

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29: 

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my out-cast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate.

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the Lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at Heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,

That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.

James Anthony’s rewriting: 

What awful luck! I’ve been humiliated,

And so I sob alone for no one cares;

Not even God hears I’m infuriated;

Only my mirror duplicates my swears.

I wish I could be far more optimistic,

With ample friends who’ve got so much to say,

Like writers, thinkers, anyone artistic

Who’d help me look on life a different way.

Yet when I’m in despair, with self-made scorn,

I fondly think of you, then thoughts deploy,

Just like a warbling songbird marking dawn,

Alleviating pain with songs of joy.

For when I dream of you, my heart grows rich;

If offered wealth, I would decline to switch.

Ugh. 

Addendum: I suppose I could (and should) say that Daniel Hahn’s book is less about Shakespeare—whether Shakespeare is still Shakespeare in translation, why he has held the world stage so well for hundreds of years, and so on—than about the art of translation and the creativity of translators. The idea is essentially, this is what Shakespeare wrote and what he was doing, and these are the constraints of the language, so what do the translators do with it? 

Jean Racine: Andromaque and Bérénice

I read both plays in the translations by Samuel Solomon, who used the Latin names (Andromache, Orestes, Cephisa, Berenice, Paulinus…) rather than the French versions (Andromaque, Oreste, Céphise, Bérénice, Paulin…), so I’m going to do the same. 

Andromaque, or Andromache 

For context: Andromache was first performed in 1667; Molière’s The Misanthrope was in 1666 and The Miser was in 1668. 

Remember that love monologue in Love and Death? 

“It’s a very complicated situation, cousin Sonja. I’m in love with Alexei. He loves Alicia. Alicia’s having an affair with Lev. Lev loves Tatiana. Tatiana loves Simkin. Simkin loves me. I love Simkin, but in a different way than Alexei. Alexei loves Tatiana like a sister. Tatiana’s sister loves Trigorian like a brother. Trigorian’s brother is having an affair with my sister, who he likes physically, but not spiritually.” 

Woody Allen is parodying Chekhov, but it also works for Racine’s play: Orestes loves Hermione (his cousin, by the way); Hermione loves Pyrrhus (son of Achilles/ Akhilleus); Pyrrhus is betrothed to Hermione, but loves his Trojan captive Andromache (Hector’s widow); etc. One can probably add, Andromache loves her dead husband. Not having read Euripides’s play or any other Greek text about the story, I have no basis for comparison and could just say that the conflict of the play is the, er, love square, and Andromache’s choice between marriage with Pyrrhus or dignity and the death of her son. 

There’s another similarity with Chekhov. Samuel Solomon notes in Act 2 scene 1: 

“Like a character in Chekhov, centuries later, Hermione ignores Cleone’s questions and continues with her own passionate thoughts.”

My impression is that Racine doesn’t seem to have much interest in the political aspects of the story; he’s only interested in love, in depicting and dissecting the love of the four characters. All the characters are well-written, especially Andromache and Hermione, but I think the most complex and fascinating in the play is Hermione: her love moves from love to delusion to heartbreak to hate to urge for revenge to regret and grief. The focus moves from Pyrrhus and Andromache, to Hermione, who becomes the central character in the final Act.  

I don’t have much to say about the play, suspecting that much of Racine’s greatness is in the alexandrine verse that gets lost in translation, but this passage is interesting: 

“HERMIONE […] Just think of it! without a single prayer, 

My mother’s cause made all Greece spring to arms! 

For her fair eyes alone, ten years of war 

Saw twenty kings, strangers to her, expire! 

And I, who only seek a recreant’s death, 

And charge a lover to avenge my insult, 

A lover who may win me at this price, 

I give myself and still am not avenged?...”

(Act 4 scene 2) 

A daughter envies her mother. 

This is also interesting: 

“ORESTES […] Am I indeed Orestes?

I strangled deep down my divinest conscience; 

I forced myself to kill a king I reverenced;

[…] And am become a murderer and blasphemer.

For whom?...” 

(Act 5 scene 4) 

That is very good, especially the line “Am I indeed Orestes?”.  

Bérénice

Racine’s Bérénice was premiered in 1670, in the same month as Corneille’s Tite et Bérénice, about the same subject. 

Similar to Racine’s other play, this play has a love triangle (Titus and Antiochus both love Berenice). The political conflict is more eminent—as the Emperor of Rome, Titus cannot marry a foreigner such as Berenice, the Queen of Palestine (Judea)—but I would say that Racine isn’t particularly interested in the politics. I don’t even think he’s interested in Titus’s dilemma between the empire and Berenice, between duty and love—Titus has made his decision—the focus of the play is how he’s going to carry out his decision and say it to her, how Berenice reacts to the news when she has been hoping for a wedding, and how Antiochus reacts to everything that’s going on, as a close friend of Titus and an unrequited lover of Berenice. 

Racine not only follows the classical unities (unity of place, unity of time, unity of action)—he also simplifies the story, cuts out everything unnecessary, and focuses on the feelings of the three main characters. But if Pyrrhus in Andromache behaves dishonourably towards both Andromache and Hermione, and the passionate love of various characters in that play is mixed with intense hate, the three main characters in Berenice are all noble and sympathetic. 

I’d note one thing: 

“BERENICE Ah, cruel man, why say such things so late? 

What have you done? I thought myself beloved. 

My soul used to the joy of seeing you 

Lives but for you. Did you not know your laws

When for the first time I confessed my heart?

Why did you lead me on to love so well?...”

(Act 4 scene 5)

Many women today are gonna find that relatable. 

But as we can see, Titus is a noble man, who has to make the difficult choice of giving up his love for duty. The ending is moving. 

I just can’t help thinking that, even though I can see Racine’s psychological insight and power of characterisation, much of his greatness seems to be in the verse—I can hear the grandeur of his poetry—that gets lost in translation. 

My 20 favourite plays not by Shakespeare [updated]

There was a time when pretty much all I read was novels and short stories; the plays I knew were those assigned at school or university. Then I got into Shakespeare and my favourite plays a couple of years ago were all by Shakespeare. 

But now I have got a better grasp of drama, especially classical drama, so here’s a list of favourites that aren’t by Shakespeare (listed chronologically by the dramatist’s birth year, and grouped by country): 

• The Oresteia by Aeschylus, which is actually three plays: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides 
• Prometheus Bound, attributed to Aeschylus 
• Oedipus the King 
• Antigone 
• Electra by Sophocles 
• Hippolytus 
• Hecabe 
• The Bacchae by Euripides 
• Lysistrata 
• The Frogs by Aristophanes 
• Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe 
• The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster 
• The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley 
• The Revenger’s Tragedy by Thomas Middleton or Cyril Tourneur 
• Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca 
• Tartuffe 
• Don Juan 
• The Misanthrope by Molière 
• Phèdre by Jean Racine 
• The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen 

______________________________________

What can we see here? My tastes are predominantly Greek (and Shakespearean): 10 out of 20 plays are by the Athenian playwrights (or 12 out of 22 if you don’t count the Oresteia as one). Molière is another favourite. 

Only one play from the 19th century. No Goethe. No Chekhov—is that a surprise?—I struggled with his plays, having read only two, and much prefer him as a short story writer. No Oscar Wilde, simply because I haven’t read him—if “allowed” to include plays I’ve seen onscreen, I would name The Importance of Being Earnest (though it’s hard to say which play I would remove to make place for it). 

No Tennessee Williams, whom I liked at university. No one contemporary, but then the only one I know is Tom Stoppard—one day I’m going to read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which I would probably like. 

Now this list is a bit of a cheat—a list of favourite plays, by Shakespeare and other dramatists, would be much, much harder. 

Name your favourite plays. 

Update on 19/3/2026:

I would probably replace The Revenger’s Tragedy or The Changeling with Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen. Now this is a great, psychologically complex, haunting play. 

Phèdre by Jean Racine and the Phaedra myth

1/ Wouldn’t you agree it’s a good idea that I, instead of going straight from Molière (1622–1673) to his contemporary Racine (1639–1699), read Racine’s greatest play now when I’m already acquainted with the versions by Euripides and Seneca (and they’re still fresh in my mind)? As with the Electra myth under the hands of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, it’s fascinating to watch great artists play with the same material (which is very different from the mind-numbing tedium of Hollywood pumping out sequels and remakes for easy money). 

I read the translation by Robert Bruce Boswell, who uses the names Phaedra, Hippolytus, Theseus, Aricia, Oenone, Theramenes, etc. instead of Phèdre, Hippolyte, Thésée, Aricie, Œnone, Théramène, etc.

Starting from the same myth about Phaedra fancying her stepson Hippolytus, Euripides simplifies the plot, in which Theseus is simply away; Seneca complicates it, emphasising Phaedra’s background and the image of the bull, having Theseus go to the underworld to help a friend abduct Persephone, and mentioning that Theseus killed Hippolytus’s mother Antiope; Racine complicates the plot even more by creating the character of Aricia, daughter and sole survivor of the royal house supplanted by Theseus and the woman with whom Hippolytus has fallen in love. I guess the French wouldn’t buy a character who is indifferent to love and women. Racine also has Theseus rumoured to be dead, which is believed to lead to a rivalry for the throne between Phaedra’s son, Hippolytus, and Aricia, but which actually causes Phaedra to act on her feelings for Hippolytus and Hippolytus to confess his feelings to Aricia. That sounds more French. 

2/ Racine’s version is closer to Seneca’s in terms of plot. In both plays, the gods are mentioned but don’t appear. In both plays, Phaedra tells Hippolytus her feelings. In both plays, the rape accusation—the idea of attacking first—comes from the nurse. In both plays, Phaedra is alive as she falsely accuses Hippolytus (though Racine’s Phaedra only insinuates, the nurse is the one making the accusation). In both plays, Phaedra kills herself in front of Theseus after Hippolytus’s death. However, like Euripides, Racine has Theseus confronting Hippolytus and the son trying to defend himself. 

The central difference between Racine and Seneca, however, is that Seneca’s characters are all base and repulsive, whereas Racine’s characters are nobler and more sympathetic. Phaedra, or Phèdre, struggles against her own passion. 

“PHAEDRA […] I look’d, alternately turn’d pale and blush’d

To see him, and my soul grew all distraught;

A mist obscured my vision, and my voice

Falter’d, my blood ran cold, then burn’d like fire;

Venus I felt in all my fever’d frame,

Whose fury had so many of my race

Pursued. 

[…] I fled his presence everywhere, but found him--

O crowning horror!—in his father’s features.” 

And when she confesses her feelings to Hippolytus (or Hippolyte), not knowing about Aricia: 

“PHAEDRA […] I love. But think not

That at the moment when I love you most

I do not feel my guilt; no weak compliance

Has fed the poison that infects my brain.

The ill-starr’d object of celestial vengeance,

I am not so detestable to you

As to myself.” 

She only yields to Oenone’s persuasions when she—everyone—thinks Theseus is dead. Later she gets a bad conscience as she, following Oenone, smears Hippolytus’s name to save her own honour.  

Now look at her when she realises that he loves someone else. 

“PHAEDRA […] Ye gods, when, deaf to all my sighs and tears,

He arm’d his eye with scorn, his brow with threats,

I deem’d his heart, impregnable to love,

Was fortified ’gainst all my sex alike.

And yet another has prevail’d to tame

His pride, another has secured his favour.” 

How could anyone not pity her? 

“PHAEDRA […] Alas! full freedom had they

To see each other. Heav’n approved their sighs;

They loved without the consciousness of guilt;

And every morning’s sun for them shone clear,

While I, an outcast from the face of Nature,

Shunn’d the bright day, and sought to hide myself.”

She is nobler, and more psychologically complex than Seneca’s character. Her suffering is a mixture of shame and guilt and heartbreak. 

Like Euripides, Racine also gives a sense of nobility to Hippolytus and Theseus—something Seneca doesn’t do—Hippolytus’s death in Racine’s play is heartbreaking, as he previously decided to remain silent about Phaedra’s sexual advances because “Let us trust to Heav’n/ My vindication, for the gods are just.” The irony! 

3/ Aricia, Racine’s added character, is dull, barely alive. But the character of the nurse is the most interesting one in the three plays, because of the relationship between her and Phaedra. 

When Phaedra, at the beginning of the play, wants to kill herself, Oenone tries to dissuade her, saying that her suicide would offend the gods and be a betrayal of Theseus and her children. When that doesn’t work, she says: 

“OENONE […] Think how in my arms you lay

New born. For you, my country and my children

I have forsaken. Do you thus repay

My faithful service?” 

Racine develops their relationship further and emphasises her devotion: Oenone is the one who tells Phaedra to stay alive; she is the one who persuades her to speak to Hippolytus after Theseus’s supposed death; and she is the one who comes up with the rape accusation. And yet: 

“PHAEDRA […] What hast thou done? Why did your wicked mouth

With blackest lies slander his blameless life?

Perhaps you’ve slain him, and the impious pray’r

Of an unfeeling father has been answer’d.

No, not another word! Go, hateful monster […]. 

OENONE (alone) O gods! to serve her what have I not done?

This is the due reward that I have won.”

I’m not telling you what happens in the end, but Racine turns her into a tragic character. Unlike Seneca, he gets you to understand and have pity for all the characters, even when they do wicked things. 

This is a great play.