Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Shakespeare's plays in modern English


The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has commissioned translations into modern English of all of Shakespeare's plays, and intends to have those new versions ready to perform on stage in three years. 

John McWhorter makes the case in the WSJ for what Conrad Spoke calls a "revolutionary 10% translation" that enables "every student to make contact with the original text." McWhorter notes, "Much of Shakespeare goes over our heads because, even though we recognize the words, their meaning often has changed significantly over the past four centuries."

Publishers Lunch

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