Shakespeare in modern English

[angus]

Perhaps I would have done better had I had a poll of original Beowulf vs modern translation.
Or do you all speak fluent medieval English, as well:

http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/beowulf-oe.asp

Before Shakespeare it gets a little more difficult.  Same with Spanish before Cervantes, who was a contemporary of Shakespeare (they died one day apart.)  We had to read El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha in a senior-level Spanish course in college.  (Note the archaic spelling of Quixote.)  Then we had to write a report over it, in modern Spanish.  (There was no google or yahoo back then, as you might imagine.)  

I have trouble with Chaucer, and certainly anything before that, e.g., Beowulf.  One middle English poem/song I've always liked is Sumer is icumen in ("Summer has come" or "Summer is coming")  We read that in one of my English classes in college.  I liked it mainly because it had the word farteth in it, I suppose.  Our book showed us both the original 13th-century and modern versions.  I don't think I'd have been able to read it without the modern translation.

I do think that if you want to be a biblical scholar you should learn Greek and Hebrew.  No doubt.  I think if you want to read the Qur'an you should learn Arabic.  If you want to read Iching or be a confucian scholar, you should learn to read Chinese.

Also, is it comprehended?  Nowadays it means understand, but from the context I think it means something else in the line you quoted.  If the light shines in the dark, then the darkness is not dark any more.  (My training in wave mechanics and its application to the phenomenon of light prejudice me, perhaps, so I may have a little trouble feeling it exactly as the writer intended.  Is it from one books of the New Testament?  Seems like something that would be found there.)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The same poster making six posts in a row is bad form.

Two things--

1. My current username is my attempt at an anti-fascist slogan. Look up what '1488' means to neo-Nazis.
2. 'Comprehend' in that context means 'overcome.' No, most people reading it these days wouldn't know that, but they could easily be told so in a footnote, or a gloss.

I don't think anybody is saying that it's somehow wrong to provide footnotes, or glosses, or detailed exegeses or synopses. All of those are very good things. What people object to is the idea that the text itself, Modern English text, should be 'updated' or 'adapted' simply because it's in a register that isn't in use any more.

Also, Storebought, the Shakespeare/Joyce comparison makes some degree of sense looking at them both in the context of their own milieu, but the idea that they're comparable from our perspective now (and your implication that Shakespeare is harder than Joyce--wtf) is absurd.

[Storebought]

The same poster making six posts in a row is bad form.

Two things--

1. My current username is my attempt at an anti-fascist slogan. Look up what '1488' means to neo-Nazis.
2. 'Comprehend' in that context means 'overcome.' No, most people reading it these days wouldn't know that, but they could easily be told so in a footnote, or a gloss.

I don't think anybody is saying that it's somehow wrong to provide footnotes, or glosses, or detailed exegeses or synopses. All of those are very good things. What people object to is the idea that the text itself, Modern English text, should be 'updated' or 'adapted' simply because it's in a register that isn't in use any more.

Also, Storebought, the Shakespeare/Joyce comparison makes some degree of sense looking at them both in the context of their own milieu, but the idea that they're comparable from our perspective now is absurd.

I meant in the sense that their playing with language through puns and word invention and layered dialect was integral to the understanding of their works. Especially when the meaning of the word depends on its sound spoken in a specific dialect, like "hours" sounding exactly like "whores." Yes, Joyce was a self-conscious modernist who deliberately made his works obscure for artistic expression, but a pun is a pun no matter source of the inspiration.

[°Leprechaun]

1. My current username is my attempt at an anti-fascist slogan. Look up what '1488' means to neo-Nazis.

Thanks, I had a feeling that you chose it for a reason. I was not aware, obviously, of what 1488 represented; now I am.

[Frodo]

I heard once that Shakespearean English is actually closest to American English than it is to the English spoken in the British isles today. 

How true is this? 

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The same poster making six posts in a row is bad form.

Two things--

1. My current username is my attempt at an anti-fascist slogan. Look up what '1488' means to neo-Nazis.
2. 'Comprehend' in that context means 'overcome.' No, most people reading it these days wouldn't know that, but they could easily be told so in a footnote, or a gloss.

I don't think anybody is saying that it's somehow wrong to provide footnotes, or glosses, or detailed exegeses or synopses. All of those are very good things. What people object to is the idea that the text itself, Modern English text, should be 'updated' or 'adapted' simply because it's in a register that isn't in use any more.

Also, Storebought, the Shakespeare/Joyce comparison makes some degree of sense looking at them both in the context of their own milieu, but the idea that they're comparable from our perspective now is absurd.

I meant in the sense that their playing with language through puns and word invention and layered dialect was integral to the understanding of their works. Especially when the meaning of the word depends on its sound spoken in a specific dialect, like "hours" sounding exactly like "whores." Yes, Joyce was a self-conscious modernist who deliberately made his works obscure for artistic expression, but a pun is a pun no matter source of the inspiration.

All right. It seemed like you were implying things you weren't. Sorry.

[AtorBoltox]

Perhaps I would have done better had I had a poll of original Beowulf vs modern translation.
Or do you all speak fluent medieval English, as well:

http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/beowulf-oe.asp

You realize the original Beowulf was written in Old English, which is basically a different language, and Shakespeare's plays are written in modern English? Of course having a modern translation is useful to understand Shakespeare, but it's not better than the original just because it's easier for you to understand.

[AtorBoltox]

What about all those for whom English is a second language? That's an interesting question.
English is not an easy language to learn if it isn't your first language and I admit that I am not even fluent in other dialects of English, either, like British.

Ugh

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How true is this? 

Urban myth

[°Leprechaun]

Perhaps I would have done better had I had a poll of original Beowulf vs modern translation.
Or do you all speak fluent medieval English, as well:

http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/beowulf-oe.asp

You realize the original Beowulf was written in Old English, which is basically a different language, and Shakespeare's plays are written in modern English? Of course having a modern translation is useful to understand Shakespeare, but it's not better than the original just because it's easier for you to understand.

Yes, but what you call "modern English" is not the same as 21st century English.

Of course, if people want to read Shakespeare as he wrote it, that is all well and good as long as they realize that words change their meaning.
I enjoy some of Shakespeare in the original language, but 21st century translations make it easier for me to understand, as I have said.

btw, I don't know what the etymology of "ugh" is. Perhaps they used the term in Shakespeare's day.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

As somebody already said, with a lot of the verse you can't just "translate" without effectively dismembering the meaning. It would be like "translating" the lyrics of a mid-era Beatles song as "woah, I'm high as balls and see crazy stuff" - technically true, but kind of useless in practice.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with taking the bones of Shakespeare and making something new with it, changing and adapting their contexts, re-examining their themes, reframe the text under the lens of postmodernism or feminism or absurdism or what have you , but I just don't see the point of repeating everything but simpler. It just sounds boring.

Like, why would you see an ersatz Romeo and Juliet (with the same plot + setting but with all the poetry obliterated) when you can see West Side Story?

If you want some interesting adaptions and recontextualisations I would look up Kyle Kallgren on Youtuber, who is also an obsessive Bardolatrist with an ongoing series reviewing and analysing various Shakespeare adaptions and reinterpretations - Derek Jarmon's Tempest, Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear, Akira Kurosawa's Macbeth adaption Throne of Blood etc.

[°Leprechaun]

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I feel charming, oh so charming, it's alarming how charming I feel.