Shakespeare Translation Titles
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Kent Richmond, the translator of the plays, is a member of...
The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.
The National Council of Teachers of English
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages
California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
"Richmond has performed a service for English-speaking students everywhere."
—Boak Ferris, Calif. State Univ. Long Beach
"I wanted something more understandable. I found [Richmond's] script and loved it...The translation manages to maintain Shakespeare's brilliant form and rhythm."
—Shauna Huff, director of Romeo and Juliet: A Verse Translation, Jonathan Alder High School
"For the first time I see what Shakespeare is doing."
—university student
"I never thought Macbeth was a great play until I read this translation."
—university student
"I dearly hope that Kent Richmond will continue this immensely valuable and supremely necessary project of making the genuine Shakespeare available to modern readers. In importance to the literary heritage of the English-speaking world, I would compare this project to the production of the King James Bible in 1611. Please, please keep going."
—Robert B. Laney
Oxnard, California
Modern English Shakespeare Translations
ENJOY SHAKESPEARE brings you the artistry of Shakespeare
in accessible, stage-ready translations.
Shakespeare is the most celebrated of all English writers. Yet today we strain to understand stage performances and need help when reading. Even getting the gist requires an unsustainable level of concentration that tires us quickly. We admire Shakespeare—we even worship him—but do we enjoy Shakespeare?
Kent Richmond's ENJOY SHAKESPEARE translations increase comprehension and enjoyment yet maintain the literary quality of Shakespeare’s plays. These detailed and nuanced translations preserve Shakespeare’s verse and recreate in modern English all of Shakespeare’s techniques and effects.
Features
- Line-by-line verse translations, not prose paraphrases.
- Complete. No lines deleted or simplified.
- Accurate and authentic iambic pentameter.
- True to the feel and look of Shakespeare's original.
- Tone, complexity, and poetic devices preserved.
- Subtlety and richness revealed without the need of notes and glosses.
- For students, an accessible introduction to classic drama.
- Attractive, uncluttered, easy-to-read layout.
- Perfect for an audience-pleasing theatrical performance.
Now you can enjoy the true genius of Shakespeare with the passion, comprehension, and delight of audiences 400 years ago—the way Shakespeare intended. Order a copy today.
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Praise for Enjoy Shakespeare
"Too often, unless we read a Shakespeare play beforehand, we process the language as if it were coming from a poorly tuned-in radio station. Shakespeare didn’t write his plays to be experienced impressionistically as ‘poetry;’ he assumed his language was readily comprehensible. At what point does a stage of a language become so different from the modern one as to make translation necessary? Mr. Richmond is brave enough to assert that, for Shakespeare, that time has come. The French have Moliere, the Russians have Chekhov—and now, we can truly say that we have our Shakespeare.”
—John McWhorter, Manhattan Institute
Read John McWhorter's 5/19/09 Blog entry in the New Republic Online "Will Shakespeare's Come and Gone: Does the Bard's Poetry Reach Us Like August Wilson's? Come On--Really?"
And the followup
"Should We Have to Read the Bard Before Hearing Him? More on Shakespeare"
Romeo and Juliet Translation Excerpt
In this excerpt from Act Two of Romeo and Juliet, the rhyming couplet structure that Shakespeare employed remains—an example of the great care these translations take to be faithful to Shakespeare's original.
Scene Three. Friar Lawrence’s Cell
[Enter Friar Lawrence with a basket]
FRIAR LAWRENCE
The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Slicing the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And mottled darkness like a drunkard reels
From daylight’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels.
Before the sun can raise its burning eye,
To cheer the day and drink the night’s dew dry,
I must fill up this wicker crate of ours
With toxic weeds and precious-nectared flowers.
The earth, our natural mother, is a tomb;
What is her burying ground serves as her womb;
And from her womb come children of all kinds,
All sucking from her natural breast one finds,
Many with many powers excellent,
Not one without one, yet all different.
Each plant and herb and stone, innate in it,
There lies some rich medicinal benefit.
For on this earth the vilest things that live
Add to the earth some special good they give;
And every good when stretched past proper use,
Rejects its nature, stumbling on abuse.
A virtue turns to vice, when misapplied;
Acts born of vice are sometimes dignified.
[Enter ROMEO]
Within the infant bud of this small flower
Resides a poison and a healing power:
If it is sniffed, one sense is overjoyed;
If tasted, then all senses are destroyed.
These two opposing kings contest this place
In man as well as herbs—brute will and grace;
And anywhere the worst comes out on top,
The canker worm will soon wipe out the crop.
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Macbeth Translation Excerpt
Observe how this Macbeth translation captures the feel of Shakespeare's iambic pentameter. The couplets near the end of the speech are maintained.
from Act 2, Scene 1
MACBETH
Is this a dagger that I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Here, let me clutch you.
I do not have you, yet I see you still.
Are you not, fatal vision, evident
To touch as well as sight? Or are you but
A dagger in my mind, a false illusion,
Emerging from an overheated brain?
And yet this form looks just as tangible
As this one I now draw. [draws his dagger]
You guide me down the path that I was going
And are the instrument I was to use.
My eyes are either fools or worth more than
My other senses. I can see you still,
And on the blade and hilt are clots of blood,
Which were not there before.—There’s no such thing.
It is this bloody business which has done
This to my eyes. Across the world’s dark half,
Nature seems dead, encased in sleep, deceived
By wicked dreams. The sorcerer’s goddess Hecate
Receives the witches’ offering, and gaunt Murder,
Alerted by his sentinel, the wolf,
Its howl his timepiece, at a stealthy pace,
Moves ghostlike, with a rapist’s wary stride,
In on his prey. O, firm and stable earth,
Don’t hear my steps, or how they walk, for fear
These stones of yours will leak my whereabouts
And break the ghastly silence of this hour—
Which suits this deed. While I make threats, he lives.
Cold wind to cool hot deeds is all talk gives.
[A bell chimes]
I’ll go, and then it’s done. That chime’s my signal.
Don’t hear it, Duncan, for it is the bell
That summons you to heaven or to hell.
King Lear Translation Excerpts
Each Shakespeare translation in the Enjoy Shakespeare series maintains the line-by-line structure of the orginal. In this first soliloquy by Edmund, Shakespeare employed a rather complicated iambic pentamter structure that this translation preserves.
from Act 1, Scene 2
EDMUND
You, nature, are my goddess. To your law
My services are bound. For why should I
Endure the plague of custom, and thus let
The legal niceties of states deprive me,
Because I trail a brother by some twelve
Or fourteen moons. Why bastard? Why debased?
When my physique is just as well composed,
My mind as noble, and my shape the same
As lawful wives bring forth? Why brand us then
As base? With baseness? Bastardly? Debased?
Don't we from stealthy acts of natural lust
Receive more character and fiery vigor
Than comes from all the dull, stale, tired beds
That go to make whole tribes of fools conceived
Between the time we sleep and wake? Well then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
Our father loves the bastard son as much
As the legitimate. Fine word—legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter works,
And if my scheme goes well, Edmund the base
Tops the legitimate. I grow. I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
For Edmund's second soliloquy, Shakespeare chose to use prose.
Honoring Shakespeare's design, this translation also uses prose, reproducing as closely as possible the length and complexity of the original sentences.
From Act 1, Scene 2
EDMUND
So tremendous is the foolishness in this world that when our prospects sicken—often from the excesses of our own behavior—we lay blame for our disasters on the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and traitors by celestial predestination; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience to planetary influence; and all our evil done through divine provocation. An astonishing evasion for these whoring men to blame their goatish disposition on the authority of some star! My father coupled with my mother under the tail of some astral dragon, and the blessed event of my birth took place under Ursa Major, so it follows that I am brash and lecherous. Puh! I would have been what I am if the star of chastity itself had twinkled on this bastard’s making.
[Enter Edgar]
On cue! He arrives, like the climax in an old comedy. My part calls for severe melancholy, with the sighs of a panhandling lunatic. [aloud] O, these eclipses do foretell of this discord! Fa, sol, la, mi. [hums off tune]
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