Unruly fidelity

Abstract

This article offers a discussion of the competing strategies of retranslating Shakespeare for the stage in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It presents a variety of translation policies used to legitimize the new translations of Shakespeare’s canon, with some special emphasis on the proliferation of theatrical rewritings, transpositions, tradaptations and cultural hybrids. The issues at stake include the ever-tantalizing concept of ‘translation for the stage’, the translators’ claims to authority, the multicultural dimension of the theatre, the increasing role of in-house dramaturges and the possible (if ominous) decline of the logocentric approaches to drama translation.