The current article’s title refers to the pair “page and stage” as the idea was theoretically proposed by Ortrun Zuber Skerritt who has argued:
For drama does not only exist as a literary work o f art expressed in written language and to be appreciated through reading, thinking and discussing; but drama lives in its theatre performance, the total experience expressed in oral and non-verbal language and appreciated by all physical senses as well as the intellect and emotions.
(Zuber-Skerritt 1984: 5)
However, the approach might just as well have been proposed as follows: from stage to page to stage. M ost plays are by default written for stage performances, but for the playwrights that are usually categorized as the classics - their texts are very often analyzed w ithout considering the aspect o f how these texts function when perform ed on stage. Shakespeare has been one o f those classics whose works have been scrutinized over centuries, very often focusing only on their purely literary qualities. In his book called Shakespeare the Player, John Southworth, him self an actor as well as a Shakespeare scholar, provides ample evidence that when writing his plays, Shakespeare had concrete stage and actor-orientated goals - while creating his characters, he had the members o f his troupe in his m ind’s eye, building this or that stage persona as a tailor designs a suite for a specific client; when considering the scene locations he thought o f the play house the troupe was currently giving performances in, etc. N ot to mention the well-know n
fact that at the tim e o f his w riting plays were not w ritten to be printed and published for reading, they w ere not considered a literature o f that m uch w orth. Even m ore, the playw rights tried to prevent their works from publication so that rival acting com panies could not use them for their own perform ances and get profit from it.
C onsidering all that, the prim ary objective o f Shakespeare’s plays as to be perform ed on stage, to be seen and heard, should not be doubted.
However, as Southw orth points out - Shakespeare’s plays, once printed as books, caused “an explosion o f scholarly interest and a still thriving academ ic industry - all centred, naturally enough, on the plays as literary texts” (Southw orth 2002: 6). He goes on arguing that the analyses on S hakespeare’s plays are more o f a m irror reflecting “the researchers’ own preconceptions and prejudices, and o f the values and assum ptions o f the period in which they are writing[...]” (ib. 7). He claim s that as long as they believe:
[...] that in writing his plays Shakespeare was primarily engaged in a form o f self-expression, rather than in responding to the practical needs of the theatres he served and the changing demands and tastes o f the public with whom he was in constant touch in the most intimate way possible - as an actor on the stage - they rest on a fallacious premise. (Ib.)
All this adds up to Shakespeare the classic having a kind o f a mythical aura about him. The same idea has been put forward by Boris Tuch, an Estonian theatre critic, though he talks about the myth o f Shakespeare in Estonia from the point o f view o f stage productions. In an article called “Shakespeare and his myth: deconstruction and compensation”
he argues that “The works (as well as the identity) o f Shakespeare are perceived largely mythologically. It is acceptable to consider the reception o f Shakespeare as a cultural myth in Estonia (as well as anyw here else)[...]” (Tuch 2004: 120). However, Tuch does not touch the m atter o f the translations into Estonian. This is done, though rather briefly, by another Estonian Shakespeare scholar, Maris Peters, in the same collection o f articles w here T uch’s paper can be found - “Playing Games with Shakespeare” 1 . Peters also focuses on some concrete stage
The collection con sists o f the proceedings o f the II International Shakespeare C onference, Gdansk, A u gu st 6 th -8 th , 200 4
productions o f Shakespeare’s plays in Estonia, but all through her article she keeps coming back to the m atter o f the translations used in them. According to her, most reviews on productions that used translations by Georg Meri (from The Collected Works o f Shakespeare, published in seven volumes from 1959-75, mention the shortcom ings of these translations when heard on stage. On the other hand, Peters says that according to the reviews some o f the more recent translations made on the commission o f theatres, are too bold in their use o f language, referring specifically to the ones made by Peeter Volkonski and Hannes Villemson, who work together as a team (Peters 2004:
149). Another thought-provoking idea by Peters in her article is:
Whereas the English-speaking world has spent much time and filled much bookshelf space discussing the controversies between page and stage, for Estonia, where no significant native textual criticism o f Shakespeare exists, Shakespeare is mainly a dramatist. (Peters 2004:
136)
The peculiarity o f this rightfully worded phenom enon stems from the fact that although Shakespeare may be first and forem ost a dram atist for the Estonians, he is the dramatist whom we know from the pages o f the
“bookish” (Peters 2004: 138) translations by Meri - a version o f Shakespeare that highlights more the reading drama qualities o f the plays than their potential as lively stage material.
All discussed above leads to the central topic o f the present article - the myth of Shakespeare in Estonia (here looked at only from the aspect of the plays’ verbal qualities, though not simply on page, and not in the framework o f all the factors that constitute a perform ance, i.e. the
“other-than-verbal” side o f a play). On the one hand there seems to be a perception that Shakespeare the classic is the texts as they are translated in The Collected Works - the numerous volum es o f poetical, serious, complicated and sophisticated verse (and prose), surrounded by lengthy forewords and thorough commentaries and footnotes. These translations have the status o f a canon o f Shakespeare in Estonian (for example, when there are quotes from Shakespeare in other works o f literature or criticism, the Estonian versions are almost always cited from M eri’s translations). Yet, as it has been implied, the theatrical circles have always considered these translations as not applicable to actual usage on stage (See Rähesoo 1995: 194), although there have been
productions that have used these translations w ithout (great) alterations.
This constitutes the core o f the myth w hich is actually only further strengthened by the fact that w hen a different approach has been taken in translating his plays, the “red light” is sw itched on, with the alert saying: do not take your liberties w ith the classic.
A ndre Lefevere and Susan B assnett have em phasised that:
“ [translation] is never innocent. There is always a context in which the translation takes place, always a history from which it emerges and into w hich a text is transposed.” (quoted in A lvarez and Vidal 1996: 7). And am ong all translations, those o f Shakespeare’s texts seem to belong to a rather unique category - the idea o f the influence o f translations of Shakespeare on receiving cultures has been stressed more and more since translation studies started to em erge as an independent discipline and has been extended by many scholars o f the field (e.g. Delabastita 1998: 222). Even so that the translations o f Shakespeare’s works and the reception o f them can be regarded as a “sign” o f status for a national culture, signalling maturity, m odernity and “equality” with early m odernizing cultures. As a result, the translations o f his texts have
“helped” to shape and form the cultural identity and literary as well as linguistic traditions o f different nations.
Such patterns can be easily perceived when looking at when and how different translations o f Shakespeare have been made in Estonia.
The first ones, m ade in the second h alf o f the 19th century were translated into Estonian via the German language and mostly directly for concrete stage productions2. The Germ an influence on Estonian culture was very strong at that tim e and m ost o f the major cultural im pulses came from there. In term s o f translation theory this phase did not pay so much attention to the source text and culture as those o f the target ones. M eaning the m atter o f the original, or the prototext, a text in English was not acknow ledged and the source text for a translation being a G erm an version o f Shakespeare was not so much a serious problem but ju st a practical matter, probably deriving from the translators’ better know ledge o f Germ an than English. However, an interest in introducing Shakespeare to Estonians cannot be questioned.
A lthough there w ere also som e “retellin gs” printed, for exam ple The Mer
chant o f Venice, published in 1856 under the title “ W enediko linna kaupmees.
Üks ju t tullulikuks aeaw iteks M a-rahw ale”, translated by R H . W ilberg from the version o f G. N ierits (and therefore also via G erm an) (A nnus 1995: 4 6 8 ).