Agnieszka Romanowska

The function of dance in Shakespeare’s plays, as in all Renaissance culture, has its roots in antiquity, in which dance symbolized concord and harmony that reflected the cosmic movements of celestial bodies. In this context the significance of dance in the ball scene at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet presents itself as a fascinating material to be studied from the perspective of the theatrical potential of the dramatic text. In this scene, music and dance play a symbolical role the aim of which is to highlight the dramatic irony realized by the fusion of rhetorical language and choreography, with the rich formalized poetic language and the ball situation as the key elements of the plot. This fusion opens a range of possible theatrical interpretations, each decision having a major influence on the meaning of this episode. In the article the ball scene is analyzed from the literary, dramatic and historical perspective. The realization of its theatrical potential is illustrated with chosen stage interpretations which prove this scene’s crucial role in suggesting possible interpretations of the whole tragedy.

The function of dance in Shakespeare’s plays, as in all Renaissance culture, has its roots in the antiquity in which dance symbolized concord and harmony that reflected the cosmic movements of celestial bodies. In this context the significance of dance in the ball scene at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet presents itself as a fascinating material to be studied from the perspective of the theatrical potential of the dramatic text. In this scene, music and dance play a symbolical role the aim of which is to highlight the dramatic irony realized by the fusion of rhetorical language and choreography, with the rich formalized poetic language and the ball situation as the key elements of the plot. This fusion opens a range of possible theatrical interpretations, each decision having a major influence on the meaning of this episode. In the article the ball scene is analyzed from the literary, dramatic and historical perspective. The realization of its theatrical potential is illustrated with chosen stage productions which prove this scene’s crucial role in suggesting possible interpretations of the whole tragedy. 

Star Dust or Sand in the Eyes?
In 1834 John Staples Harriot, an English offi cer and amateur linguist, published
simultaneously in Paris and London a play entitled Napoléon. Drame politique et
historique en cinq actes. A l’imitation de MACBETH, de Shakespear. Ideologically pro-
French, the play (written in French) was rooted in the aesthetics of the Shakespearian
drama and was composed at the time which naturally inspired its numerous artistic as
well as historical and political tensions. Therefore, Harriot tried to justify them and
secure for his work as big audiences as he could on both sides of the English Channel by
means of the extensive paratextual material. Apart from the appendix which lists various
historical sources, he wrote an elaborate preface addressed to his French audience,
where he defended the Shakespearian drama conventions, and an afterword with his
English version of the scenes borrowed directly from Macbeth, which was supposed
to persuade his English audience that the French play was faithful to the original
tragedy. Napoléon has never been staged, and is largely forgotten, but recently its
textual manipulations have become the focus of detailed historical and literary analysis,
which proves that studies of the paratext are important to translatological refl ection.
Such studies of varied and extensive material (Polish, French, Czech, Italian, Spanish,
Latin-American; fi ction and non-fi ction, children’s and specialized literature) were
conducted by a group of Polish scholars in Wrocław and published in 2009 in a volume signifi cantly entitled The Translator’s Glossary (Przypisy tłumacza), edited by Elżbieta
Skibińska. Through their detailed (therefore at times overwhelming) presentation, they
defy the stereotypical notion of the gloss, especially the footnote, as “dust” (Genette),
“parasite” or – less pejoratively – “censor” and “proofreader.” Instead of describing
the footnote as “pedantic” or “helpless”, they emphasize its role in conveying and
overcoming linguistic and cultural untranslatability. Paratext is a primary way of
marking and revealing the translators’ in-betweenness as their inherent positioning.

Czesław Miłosz’s Shakespeare

Czesław Miłosz translated only one play by Shakespeare, As You Like It, and the fi rst two acts of Othello. Both „Shakespearean episodes” by this otherwise prolifi c translator took place at the time of dramatic circumstances that were heavily affecting Miłosz’s life and work. The task of translating As You Like It was commissioned by the Polish Underground Theatre Board in 1943. The attempt at translating Othello had been undertaken just before the poet emigrated to France as a political refugee in 1951. The paper focuses on some of the areas of interest that the case of Miłosz’s Shakespeare opens for historico-literary analysis: the aims and conditions of Miłosz’s translation of Shakespeare marked by the extreme extra-textual conditions; Miłosz’s poetry about the Nazi occupied Warsaw vis-a-vis his artistic, intellectual and political involvement in translating As You Like It; the translated texts’ literary and theatrical reception versus the poet’s initial aims and his low opinion about his rendition; Miłosz’s decision to give up Othello in the face of the growing isolation from his homeland. The presented analysis highlights the position of translation within the wider context of Miłosz’s creative work as poet-translator.