Romeo and Juliet: A New Translation

 

About a year ago I put up a new 'translation' of Shakespeare's Macbeth that could be used in a mixed ability Stage 5 classroom. The provision of this as a single PDF allowed for the printing of booklets that could be read by the students without scanning back and forth to compare the modern English with Shakespeare's English (as is the case with the No Fear Shakespeare editions). Below you will find a similarly translated version of Romeo & Juliet that can also be used in a mixed ability Stage 5 classroom.

My reasons for doing this are as follows:

• I've gotten a lot of use out of the No Fear editions over the years but I wanted something that Western Sydney kids could engage in an easier way. Some of the language in the No Fear editions can feel 'clunky', or overly slavish to the original text - sometimes to the point of losing the essence of what Shakespeare was actually trying to say. For example, references to ancient Greek or Roman deities just don't make the same impact on teenagers these days. Why not replace such a reference with something else that gets the same point across?
• I've found that junior students can sometimes get confused by the reading pathway of the No Fear editions as they present the two versions of the text side-by-side. This is great for examining specific extracts but I think it can slow down the process of just enjoying Shakespeare's characters and plotting, especially if these are students who are already resistant to reading a 400 year old play.
• By working through the text and translating it myself I found I got a much clearer idea of what was happening in the play. This kind of close reading was incredibly valuable to me as a teacher. 

Undertaking this process also helped me form new opinions on things I hadn't really considered. I mean, it probably doesn't help that I'd never read the entire play from start to finish as an adult, but anyway... here are some of my favourite realisations!

• Romeo isn't in love. He just wants to have sex. By modern standards, the relationship he has with Juliet is actually kind of toxic. It's hard to read it so closely and not get the impression that Shakespeare is knowingly exloring the emotional detriment of a codependent relationship.
• Nurse is an incredibly irritating and self-contradicting character, and possibly one of my favourite Shakespearean comedy creations.
• It's actually a really rude text - plenty of people have written about this, but I never quite realised how rude it was until I got to the bit about medlar fruits and open arses.
• I take back what I said about Nurse, I think Peter might be my favourite comedic character in this play. The bit where he tries to talk to the musicians who have arrived for Juliet's wedding is still funny after all these centuries.
• Friar Lawrence is the most important character in the whole text. He encapsulates the play's theme of duality and reflects the Elizabethan concept of the Great Chain of Being through his discussion of the spectrum that exists between sin and virtue.
• The random introduction of the character 'Petruchio' into the Tybalt-Mercutio-Romeo fight scene led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about ghost characters. These are essentially characters that writers put in early drafts of texts and then later, while removing said character, accidentally remain in one or two references. Another ghost character, Valentine, is also mentioned earlier in the play - intended as Mercutio's brother but mostly removed when Shakespeare wrote later drafts.

Anyway, enough waffle, here is the play:

• Romeo & Juliet translated

(Disclaimer: apologies for any typos in the PDF above - I didn't get a chance to do a second draft as I was keen to give the text a try with my Year 9 students this upcoming term) 

Macbeth: A New Translation

Macbeth is, for many teachers, the gateway point for attempting to get students to love Shakespeare. Many schools teach it in Stage 5 English as an introductory point for students because of its accessibility and relative brevity. It has witches in it, lots of medieval violence, and that weird stuff about Lady Macbeth's milk ducts turning into bile. How could that not be interesting? It also happens to be one of Shakespeare's major Tragedy plays, and it works well as an access point for this genre if you're a teacher preparing students for Advanced English later in their schooling. Whether it's Hamlet, Othello, or King Lear, all of these plays make use of the Ancient Greek dramatic concept of hamartia (a fatal flaw that brings down a heroic character) and this is something that can be introduced with much discussion when teaching Macbeth. 

This year is my fifth time teaching Macbeth to Year 10. I've taught it to a wide variety of classes - from the high achieving to those who would rather see the play sacrificed to Hecate herself, and each time I've found the biggest challenge to be the language. Even the most literate and classically-minded student will struggle with decoding a lot of Shakespeare's highly stylised use of blank verse. This has often left me in a bit of a quandary; do I focus on Shakespeare's language and finding ways for students to come to a better understanding of the way he wrote? Or do I focus on Shakespeare's sophisticated use of plotting, characterisation, and concepts to create timeless works of universal worth?

Sometimes these two things aren't always compatible, especially when there's also Johnny McRandom, age 15, smearing pen ink all over his table, asking to go to the bathroom for the third time in the space of an hour, and asking me repeatedly which football team I go for while I try to teach the class about the wonder of iambic pentameter.

In the past I've used No Fear's version of Macbeth with students but I haven't always found a lot of success with the No Fear editions. So this year I decided instead to create a fresh translation of the text that could be used with my class. Reasons for this are as follows:

• No Fear makes use of two columns for each page - showing the original text side-by-side with the modern translation. Some students tend to find this both distracting and confusing.
• I wanted the dialogue to be a little bit more naturalistic and less stilted. I don't think I necessarily succeeded at this in the earlier scenes but I felt like I got into the swing of it a bit more as the play went on.
• Shakespeare's plays are notoriously light on stage direction when compared to their modern counterparts - I wanted to layer an interpretation of the characters' actions into the text so that students could visualise the energy of the play a little bit more.
• I found that, by working through the original text and translating it piece by piece, I also personally arrived at a much better understanding of the play.

The last reason given here is driven more by self-interest than the others. Just because I'd taught Macbeth several times that didn't mean that I'd really read it properly that many times. Sometimes I would just work through a couple of key scenes with particular classes and then give them plot summaries - but I found that this was becoming a carbon-copy version of understanding the play. I knew the essence of it, but I couldn't always answer with the complete confidence why certain characters did what they did. By reading through the entire play really carefully, and having to consider how I would translate each and every line for an audience made up of 15-year-olds, I was able to arrive at a whole new sense of clarity in regards to the text.

For instance, here are some things I realised for the first time (no judgement please!)

• Ross and Macduff are cousins. 
• There's an 'unseen' scene between Act 1, Scene 6 and Act 1, Scene 7 where Macbeth entertains King Duncan at his dinner table.
• I was finally able to pinpoint the exact parts of the play that obliquely refer to Lady Macbeth having once had a child. 
• The 'bell' that Macbeth refers to at the end of his soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 1 is an actual bell that Lady Macbeth rings off-stage to signify that the poisoned drinks are ready for the servants.  
• There are several references to owls throughout the play - this motif is symbolic of the fact that this bird of prey hunts under cover of night and, therefore, is somewhat representative of Macbeth's duplicity and subterfuge. 
• There is a rivalry between Macbeth and Macduff long before Macduff actually suspects Macbeth of murdering the King. You can see this in Act 2, Scene 3 when Macduff and Macbeth both compete to be the one to wake the King up. Yes, Macbeth is hoping to control the flow of events here as he has just murdered Duncan, but Macduff is unaware of that at this point and is quite insistent on being the first person the King sees in the morning, suggesting that Macduff is not willing to defer to Macbeth in any situation.
• Macbeth starts using the collective pronoun 'we' in Act 3, Scene 1. This royal pronoun is used to expressed the monarch's collective grouping with God, and demonstrates a subtle shift in how Macbeth presents himself after assuming the throne.
• The 'Murderers' that Macbeth sets onto Banquo aren't actually hired killers but are apparently just really angry peasants. Macbeth has somehow convinced them that Banquo is responsible for every piece of bad luck in their lives (we aren't actually told how Banquo is supposed to have done this, Macbeth just tells the peasants this and they buy it almost immediately).
• During the banquet scene, Lady Macbeth tells the other guests that Macbeth suffers from seizures (to cover up for his seeing Banquo's ghost). What isn't clear here is whether Macbeth truly did suffer seizures at some point prior to the narrative of the play or whether Lady Macbeth has made this up on the spot. 
• Also in the banquet scene, Macbeth makes a reference to nature moving the trees in order to enact revenge on the guilty (foreshadowing the apparition's premonition about Birnam Wood in Act 4).
• Hecate, the evil spirit that rules over the witches, actually seems to think that Macbeth isn't a good target for the witches. Is this because he is unsuited to the demands of evil? She also mentions Macbeth's destiny, which implies that he was always meant to become King - perhaps the witches haven't actually manipulated him into this position as much as we might think?
• When Macbeth threatens the witches in Act 4, Scene 1, he says that he is willing to destroy churches in order to get more information - a symbolic threat that indicates the full extent of his tyranny and his new alignment with evil.
• The witches refer to the apparitions as their 'masters' and reprimand Macbeth for talking directly to them. Previously I had believed these apparitions to be a conjuring trick, but now I see them more as spirits that the witches are servants to.
• The King of England, Edward, is described but not seen in Act 4, Scene 3. He provides a point of contrast with Macbeth in that he is a Christian and good King, and has inherited the power to heal people through his family line - illustrating the idea that God works His power through official royal lines of succession such as Edward's (rather than those who have established themselves as King through unholy means, such as Macbeth). Another interesting aspect of Edward is that he is said to have the power of seeing into the future - like the witches!
• The whole bit with Macbeth killing Young Siward makes a bit more sense after reading the part where the older Siward, who presides over Northumberland (the land between Scotland and England), is introduced. Siward-the-elder is said to control a large army populated by teenage boys who will prove themselves in the battle to come. This harkens to the values of the time in which violence is seen as the test of true manhood. Compare old Siward's introductory scene here with his final scene in the play, where he hears that his son died fighting Macbeth and is quite cheerful about the death provided that his son died with battle wounds in the front of his body (rather than the back). There is also a line prior to this where the older Siward remarks that you can't win a battle without a few losses (a fine example of dramatic irony as the audience is already aware here that his son has died, even though old Siward is yet to be informed).

Anyway, here's the play itself: the play's the thing.

The Lure of the Lighthouse

In our travels around the Sapphire Coast yesterday, Nicole and I skimmed past a turn off to 'Green Cape'. This point is situated several kilometres south of Eden at the tip of the next bay and, as it's been the site of several shipwrecks over the past 150 years (leading to the aptly-named 'Disaster Bay' to the south), it bears some significant connection to the local history we had already explored. Amongst theses wrecks was the tragic destruction of the Ly-ee-moon, the second worst maritime disaster known to Australia.

The view from Disaster Bay Lookout is deceptively picturesque but these inky blue waters hold the wrecks of at least 9 ships from the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries. At least one of these wrecks is of an unidentified vessel from the 1850s, the remains of which may be attributed to either of two ships lost at sea in this area around this time.

Getting to Green Cape lighthouse was a mission and a half. The road was unsealed and so it took nearly an hour for Nicole and I to drive across just 20 kilometres. The journey was definitely worth it though as I have long held a deep and unexplained fascination with lighthouses. Maybe it's attached to my fear of heights, or maybe it's attached to a beloved Doctor Who serial from the 1970s in which the Doctor travels to a 1900s lighthouse and faces off against an alien jellyfish (pictured below):

You should check it out. It's great.

The Green Cape lighthouse was built in the late 19th century and is supported by several Victorian-era houses. Despite the isolation of the lighthouse keeper and his two assistants, the houses were kept separated by fences so that a class system of sorts could be kept intact. You can now stay in these houses as they have been kept on as accommodation. Note the huge solar panel at the end of the path in the picture above, which demonstrates the changing face of lighthouse-technology.

It's quite easy to imagine the damage that these rocks could do to a ship if it ran aground near here. The Ly-ee-moon was found smashed to pieces in 1886, and 71 bodies were recovered from the water nearby. The second photograph above is taken by Nicole.

While walking back inland along the headland I stopped to take a photograph of something random. Nicole quickly grabbed me and whispered urgently, "Stop! Don't move. You scare everything off". I slowly turned around to see that she had spotted an echidna snuffling around in the dirt just a few metres from us. Its only defense its spines, the echidna tucked its little legs in and wedged itself up against some nearby sticks so that all we could see was a black ball of fur and yellow spikes. Once it thought we had gone it started moving again.

As you can see from Nicole's photograph above, the echidna lifted itself up out of its little hollow once we stopped moving. Random echidna fact: the Short-Beaked Echidna (the Australian species of echidna pictured here) has one of the shortest spinal chords of any mammal, and its entire body is covered by a large muscle just beneath the skin known as the 'panniculus carnosus'. This muscle allows the echidna to change the shape of its body to minimise vulnerability when it perceives danger to be nearby.

Our travel inland on the cape was to find the Ly-ee-moon Cemetery, which is only about half a kilometre or more from the lighthouse. The bodies that were pulled from the wreck were all buried on the cape as it wasn't possible in the late 19th century to transport them back to their families from such a remote location.

The graves of the 71 recovered travellers are unmarked but a plaque of their names was erected about 30 years ago by local historians who had pulled together available records. Sadly, some names have been lost in time, with at least three of the bodies listed as being of unknown identity (one is just described on the plaque as 'a Greek man, invited onto the ship by the cook'). Equally sad is the sign back at the lighthouse that implores visitors to pay their respects to this cemetery as "the families of the victims of this tragedy would never have been able to come visit their loved ones back in the late 19th century".