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ABSTRACT.
IN SKETCHING THE PROCESS BY WHICH "THEIR" SHAKESPEARE BECAME "OUR" SHAKESPEARE IN ROMANIA, A NON-ENGLISH-SPEAKING AND LATIN-ORIGIN CULTURE, THE FOCUS IS ON THE APPROPRIATION, ASSIMILATION, AND TRANSFORMATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S LANGUAGE THROUGH TRANSLATIONS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. WHEN DEALING WITH EARLY TRANSLATIONS, A NUMBER OF ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS CAN BE RAISED. THIS PAPER TRIES TO ANSWER SOME OF THESE QUESTIONS, BASED ON THE EXAMPLE OF EMINESCU'S ADAPTATIONS OF THE SHAKESPEAREAN TEXT. THE ESSENCE OF EMINESCU'S ARGUMENT IS THAT ROMANIAN PLAYWRIGHTS MUST STUDY ATTENTIVELY THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE AND PROFOUND SYMBOLISM OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS BEFORE BEING ABLE TO DRAW ON HIM EFFECTIVELY.
KEY WORDS: ADOPTION, TRANSLATION, STRUCTURE, DRAMA, ADAPTATION
In surveying the nineteenth-century translations of Shakespeare in Romania, it becomes visible how various translators interpreted the allusions existant in the Shakespeare text. The underlying inference is that the early Romanian translators addressed the complex philosophical issues in the tragedies in a particularly orthodox mode. Despite the popularity of the Roman plays with the theatrical audiences in the three provinces, and later in the unified Romania, the four tragedies, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear, provided material that could satisfy the public's need for interiority. In addition, the cultural authority of the Shakespeare figure was perceived as a means of facilitating the country's exit from the status of a marginalized Balkan elsewhere. By promoting mostly the translations of Shakespeare's plays that they perceived to raise the universal issues of humanity, Romanian intellectuals during the 1848 revolutionary period and later hoped to advance the people's cultural interests and integrate them in the European family of nations.
The Romanian 19th century is deeply marked by the Shakespearean obsession. The Shakespearean repertoire found its foremost position among the first theatrical representations; it is the reason why its translation into Romanian started at the same time with the founding of the first Romanian theatres. During a few decades only, the taste of the audience, refined by the Shakespearean productions, came to sanction plagiarism and the cheap localization and to firmly encourage the original plays. This aspect of the stimulation of original creativity is by far the most important of all, as it is difficult to find a Romanian playwright who was not influenced by the Shakespearean model.
In sketching the process by...