Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English

328 Pages·2006·0.95 MB·English

by  J. Michael Walton

FOUND IN TRANSLATION
GREEK DRAMA IN ENGLISH
In considering the practice and theory of translating classical Greek plays into
English from a theatrical perspective, Found in Translation also addresses the
wider issues of transferring any piece of theatre from a source into a target
language. The history of translating classical tragedy and comedy, here fully
investigated for the first time, demonstrates how through the ages translators
have, wittingly or unwittingly, appropriated Greek plays and made them reflect
socio-political concerns of their own era. Chapters are devoted to topics
including verse and prose, mask and non-verbal language, stage directions and
subtext, and translating the comic. Among the plays discussed as ‘case studies’
are Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Euripides’ Medea
andAlcestis.Thebookconcludeswithaconsiderationoftheboundariesbetween
‘translation’ and ‘adaptation’, followed by an appendix of every translation of
Greek tragedy and comedy into English from the 1550s to the present day.
J. Michael Walton was a professional actor and director before joining the
Drama Department at the University of Hull where he was Director of The
Performance Translation Centre and is now Emeritus Professor of Drama. His
books on Greek Theatre include Greek Theatre Practice, The Greek Sense of
Theatre: Tragedy Reviewed, Living Greek Theatre: A Handbook of Classical
Performance and Modern Production and Menander and the Making of Comedy
(withPeter Arnott).HewasEditorfor Methuen of CraigonTheatreandofthe
thirteenvolumesofMethuenClassicalGreekDramatists,andthreecollectionsof
GreekandRomanplays.HehastranslatedmanyGreekandLatinplays,several
withMarianneMcDonaldwithwhomhehascollaboratedonanumberofother
publications including Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy and
The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre.

FOUND IN TRANSLATION
Greek Drama in English
J. MICHAEL WALTON
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521102896
© J. Michael Walton 2006
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2006
Reprinted 2007
This digitally printed version 2009
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-521-86110-6 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-10289-6 paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in
this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Acknowledgements page vi
Introduction: ‘Summon the Presbyterians’ 1
1 Finding Principles, Finding a Theory 9
2 Historical Perspectives: Lumley to Lennox 26
3 Aeschylus and the Agamemnon: Gilding the Lily 43
4 Translating the Mask: the Non-Verbal Language 62
5 Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus: Words and Concepts 85
6 Text and Subtext: From Bad to Verse 106
7 Euripides’ Medea and Alcestis: From Sex to Sentiment 126
8 The Comic Tradition 145
9 Modernising Comedy 162
10 When is a Translation Not a Translation? 179
Appendix A Comprehensive List of all Greek Plays in English Translation 197
Notes 270
Select Bibliography 293
Index of Translators 309
General Index 316
v
Acknowledgements
Formal work on writing this book began during a period as a guest
scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2002 and has
concludedwith the assistance of a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowshipfrom
2004 to 2005. My considerable thanks are due to both institutions for
their assistance and, in particular to Mary Hart and Marion True, who
was at the time head of the Department of Antiquities, as my hosts at
the Getty; also to Kenneth Hamma who first invited me to work as
dramaturg on the production of one of my translations in Malibu in
1994.
IndividualthanksareduetonumerouslibrariansinLosAngeles,Dublin,
London,Oxford,CambridgeandHullwhobecameenthusedbythequest
for translators; and to individuals who offered their time, expertise and
goodwill, amongst them, Vicki Cooper, Nancy-Jane Rucker, Elizabeth
DaveyandRebeccaJonesatCambridgeUniversityPress,KaterinaArvaniti
andVickyMadeli(whohavealsotranslatedoneofmybooksintoGreek),
Christina Babou-Pagoureli, Peter Burian, Pat Easterling, J.J. Hall, Edith
Hall,TonyHarrison,FionaMacintosh,ChristopherStray(abeaveramong
researchers), Amanda Wrigley and Jozefina Komporaly (a diligent and
patient Research Assistant). My wife Susan has given valuable help
in drawing attention to reviews of nineteenth-century translations while
involvedinherownresearchintotheperiod.
Colleagues in the Drama Department and the Performance Transla-
tion Centre at Hull, past and present, and especially Tony Meech and
Carole-Anne Upton, have all contributed over many years to the testing
of ideas, as have the long-suffering casts who helped mould rehearsal
versions of my own translations into something reasonably presentable.
Translating for the stage is collaborative but such a wealth of creditors
begins to resemble the Old Man’s list in Ionesco’s The Chairs who
ends up thanking everyone from the joiners who made the chairs to the
paper-manufacturers, printers and proof-readers of the programmes.
vi
Acknowledgements vii
Nevertheless, I cannot omit offering thanks to fellow-translators, Peter
Arnott, Richard Beacham, Robert Cannon, Jeremy Brooks, Kenneth
McLeish, Fredric Raphael, Michael Sargent, David Thompson and Don
Taylor (some sadly no longer alive), as well as to an inspired and beady-
eyed copy editor for Methuen in Georgina Allen, with all of whom I
workedasgeneraleditorbetween1988and2003onthesixteenvolumesof
ClassicalGreekDramatists,aserieswhichhascoveredthewholeofGreek
drama and, latterly, some Roman comedy. Of these translators the late
KennethMcLeishmustbesingledout.Hewasresponsible,eithersoloor
in collaboration, for twenty-nine of the forty-six Methuen Greek
translations and was a close ally as well as mentor in the craft of
translation.
Onenameismissingfromtheabovelist,thatofMarianneMcDonald,
collaborator in a number of books and translations, several ongoing.
Without her prompt and assiduous reading of the manuscript at various
stages,inspiredsuggestionsandunflaggingsupportthiswouldbeamuch
poorer book.

Introduction:
‘Summon the Presbyterians’
ma ubu: You are married, Mister Ubu?
pa ubu: Too true. To a vile hag.
ma ubu: You mean to a charming lady.
pa ubu: An old horror. She sprouts claws all over, it’s impossible to get one’s
handup her anywhere.
ma ubu:Youshouldgiveherahandupkindlyandgently,honestMrUbu,and,
1
wereyoutodosoyouwouldseethatsheisjustasappealingasAphrodite.
(Alfred Jarry,UbuRex,translated byCyril Connolly)
Most of us wedded to translating Greek tragedy or comedy have
experienced Ubu’s marital problems. Translating anything from one
languageandcultureintoanotheristoughenough.Translationofdrama
adds a new dimension of risk; translators of classical plays find claws
sprouting wherever they lay a finger. Ubu’s wife (who is appropriately
enough disguised as a ghost) offers scant consolation to anyone who
recallsthefateofmostmortalswhotriedtogettheirhandsupagoddess.
The title of this Introduction reflects the complexity of finding lan-
guage in a theatre that is becoming ever more cross-cultural, something
which, for better or worse, seems to be inevitable. At the XIth Interna-
tional Meeting on Ancient Drama in Delphi in 2002 one of the most
exciting productions was a Beijing Opera performance called Thebais,
based on Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes and Sophocles’ Antigone.
Subtitles were screened in modern Greek and in English. At one point
Creon gave an instruction to the Chorus, subtitled into Greek as Kaleste
tous presbuterous, ‘Call the elders’. The English below it read ‘Summon
the Presbyterians’. Sometimes what looks like the obvious translation is
actually the most misleading, a ‘false friend’ as it is known to translators.
When the culture is at least two and a half thousand years old the
problems of transference are inevitably magnified. Many of those who
have made a study of such issues over the last three hundred years have
1
2 Found in Translation
tended to come up with proposals about Greek drama in English tied
only to the nature of language. The performing arts have never been at
their most creative when following literary formulae and many produc-
tions in the early part of the twentieth century seem to have suffered
accordingly. Too many of the kisses proffered in the hope of miraculous
transformation have resulted, not in the frog becoming a prince, but in
the princess turning into a frog.
It is a matter both of the classics and of drama. Within the translating
community those who know Greek and Latin are naturally enough more
sympathetictothespecialnatureofdealingwiththeclassicalworld.They
arefrequentlytheleastsympathetictothetightropethatthetranslatorfor
performance is constantly walking.
Even the word ‘translation’ is difficult to pin down, though based on
Latin – Latin authors being well versed in translation from the Greek.
The English covers a multitude of sins. If you pick up a copy of The 1811
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, with its subtitle of Buckish Slang, Uni-
versity Wit and Pickpocket Elegance, you will find ‘Translators’ between
‘Tradesmen’ (described as ‘Thieves’), and ‘Transmography or Transmi-
grify’ (‘to patch up, vamp or alter’). Translators are defined as ‘Sellers of
old mended shoes and boots, between coblers [sic] and shoemakers’. In
the theatre they may lay claim to being a bit more than that: original
artists,perhaps,butthereinliesaconflictofinterests.Whatisthepurpose
of translation? What are the function and responsibilities of the transla-
tor; and ‘the rules of engagement’, if any, in transferring a play from one
era to another? And why do most of the theories and methods of pro-
cedure that can be applied to translation in general prove inadequate for
the translation of a stage work? That is what this book is intended to be
about.
Most of today’s translators from Greek tragedy or comedy for per-
formance are aware of the need to leave open that ‘performance door’
which much literary and literal translation from the past seems to close.
There may be a positive virtue in the fact that so many translations will
have dated within ten years, but bring an immediacy which ensures that
the plays of the Greeks are accorded the same respect which has for years
been taken for granted for plays of the Renaissance: namely, that they
reflect both the time in which they were first performed, and the time for
which they are now being revived. There are special questions, in trans-
latingaswellasindirectingplaysfromtheclassicalperiod,astohowyou
cultivate a cultural context into which they will fit both theatrically and
historically. How do you find a voice that will speak of centuries before