Shakespeare in Japanese
Last night I was watch part of a rip of the Ninagawa production of "Comedy of Errors" with Shun Oguri, and I was thinking about how they translated it. I mean, for me, as a native English speaker and someone who's read a lot of Shakespeare and seen it performed, a lot of my enjoyment comes from the Elizabethan English as well as the meter, the enjambment and the rhymes.
I wonder how the Japanese translators handled that? Do they use archaic Japanese? I know that Japanese doesn't have meter and since the grammar is different, the rhymes are monotonous (always verb endings).
Or, maybe they just depend on the text to tell the story and put all their efforts into jumping around and pulling swords and swirling capes and dropping their trousers ...
A lot of Shakespeare is spectacle, after all, and I really enjoyed Ninagawa's staging (his set designer adores mirrors, from what I've seen, and his costumer has a thing for heavy gold chest pendants).
But I am curious about the language.
eta:
pinkujisatsu deserves credit for ripping the dvd. Thank you pinku-chan!
I wonder how the Japanese translators handled that? Do they use archaic Japanese? I know that Japanese doesn't have meter and since the grammar is different, the rhymes are monotonous (always verb endings).
Or, maybe they just depend on the text to tell the story and put all their efforts into jumping around and pulling swords and swirling capes and dropping their trousers ...
A lot of Shakespeare is spectacle, after all, and I really enjoyed Ninagawa's staging (his set designer adores mirrors, from what I've seen, and his costumer has a thing for heavy gold chest pendants).
But I am curious about the language.
eta:
pinkujisatsu deserves credit for ripping the dvd. Thank you pinku-chan!