Shakespeare Translation Project

Romeo and Juliet Translation

Twelfth Night Translation King Lear Translation Much Ado About Nothing Translation

Shakespeare Translation Project

Macbeth Translation

I am translating Shakespeare's major dramatic works into contemporary English. These line-by-line translations preserve the complexity of the original and conform to the metrical conventions that Shakespeare favored when he wrote the play. My goal is to preserve as much as possible the metrical form, rhyme, and syntactical complexity of the original.

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John McWhorter's article "The Real Shakespearean Tragedy" in the January 2010 issue of American Theater Magazine calls for translations and praises Kent Richmond's Shakespeare Translation Project.

Macbeth Excerpt
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Titles

Excerpt from Macbeth

Act 2, Scene 2

(Macbeth and Lady Macbeth meet after Macbeth commits murder.)

Scene Two. Inside Macbeth’s Castle

[Enter LADY MACBETH]

LADY MACBETH

That which has made them drunk has made me bold.

What’s doused their flame has brought me fire.—What?—Nothing!

An owl just screeched, the bell for the condemned,

The harshest of good nights. He’s doing it.

The doors are open, and the stuffed attendants

Scoff at their job with snores. I’ve drugged their nightcaps,

So nature’s forces battle here to see

If they will live or die.

[MACBETH enters through the open door]

MACBETH

[from beyond the door] Who’s there?—What’s that?

LADY MACBETH

Oh, no! I am afraid they’ve woken up

And it’s not done. Attempt without the deed

Will wreck us.—Listen!—I laid out their daggers.

He couldn’t miss them.—Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I would have done it.

My husband?

[Enter MACBETH, holding bloody daggers]

MACBETH

I’ve done the deed. Did you hear any noise?

LADY MACBETH

I heard the owl screech and the crickets cry.

You did not speak?

MACBETH

When?

LADY MACBETH

Now.

MACBETH

As I descended?

LADY MACBETH

Yes.

MACBETH

Wait!—The next room, who’s in it?

LADY MACBETH

Donalbain.

MACBETH

[Looking at his hands] This is a sorry sight.

LADY MACBETH

A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.

MACBETH

First one laughed in his sleep, and one cried, “Murder!”

Enough to wake each other. I froze and listened,

But then they said their prayers and settled down

And fell asleep.

LADY MACBETH

The two share the same room.

MACBETH

One cried, “God bless us!” The other said, “Amen.”

As if they’d seen me with these hangman’s hands.

Hearing their fear, I could not say “Amen,”

When they had said, “God bless us.”

LADY MACBETH

Don’t think too deeply.

MACBETH

But why could I not say the word “Amen?”

I need his blessing most, and yet “Amen”

Stuck in my throat.

LADY MACBETH

We must not think about

These deeds this way, or it will drive us mad.

MACBETH

It seemed I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!

Macbeth has murdered sleep,”—yes, innocent sleep,

Sleep that rewinds unraveled threads of care,

The death of each day’s life, hard work’s warm bath,

Salve for hurt minds, and nature’s biggest course,

Chief nourishment in life’s feast.

LADY MACBETH

What do you mean?

MACBETH

Still it cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house.

“Glamis has murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more!”

[scene continues]

Shakespeare Translation and Adaptation Bibliography

Writers have been adapting Shakespeare's plays since at least the late 1600s. Two of the more well-known and frequently performed adaptations were Nahum Tate's version of King Lear, The History of King Lear (1681) and Colley Cibber's The Tragical History of King Richard III (1700/1718). Both became the most widely performed versions of Shakespeare's play for about 150 years. Now the subject of almost universal derision, the two are no longer performed, with the last known performance of Tate's play being in 1967 in Berkeley. Olivier used three of Cibber's lines ("Off with his head!" "So much for Buckingham," and "Richard is himself again") in the film version (1955).

Tate's adaptation has been reprinted recently in Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays (Routledge, 2000), Edited by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier. Cibber's play, along with some commentary and defense of it, can be downloaded from The Richard III Society Web Page (http://www.webcom.com/r3/bookcase/cibber1.html).

For at least 100 years, the purist's and traditionalist's denial of the difficulty of Shakespeare's language has not gone unnoticed. Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Harvard University Press, 1988) devotes a long chapter to the Gilded Age highbrowing of Shakespeare, transforming an evening at the theater from something to be enjoyed into something to be endured. John McWhorter's The Word on the Street; Fact and Fable about American English (Plenum, 1998) makes the case for Shakespeare translation in a chapter titled "In Centenary Honor of Mark H. Liddell: The Shakespearean Tragedy." In calling for careful, "richly considered" translations by "artists of the highest caliber," McWhorter recounts Liddell's article "Botching Shakespeare" from the October, 1898 Atlantic Monthly, in which Liddell demonstrates how little we understand of Polonius's farewell to Laertes in Hamlet.

In his article "Is it Time to Translate Shakespeare?" in English Journal (March, 1982), Richard Eastman makes a case for translation and sets some guidelines for carrying out such a project.

And, of course, for several hundred years, Shakespeare's works have been successfully translated into many of the world's languages. Here is a piece of August Wilhelm von Schlegel's much performed Hamlet translation:

HAMLET

Sein oder Nichtsein; das ist hier die Frage:

Obs edler im Gemüt, die Pfeil und Schleudern

Des wütenden Geschicks erdulden oder,

Sich waffnend gegen eine See von Plagen,

Durch Widerstand sie enden?