. Footnotes 1)
The reception of Shakespeare in Portugal is not yet fully
studied although we can count on some texts such as
Estorninho, Carlos, "Shakespeare na Literatura Portuguesa",
in Ocidente, Vol. LXVII, Lisboa, 1964. Pp. 113 -124;
Jorge, Maria do Céu Saraiva, Shakespeare e
Portugal (Tese de Licenciatura apresentada à
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa), Lisboa, 1941
(dact.). back
to text 4)
Tinhorão, José Ramos, Os Negros em
Portugal. Uma presença silenciosa. Lisboa,
Editorial Caminho, 1997, 2ªed. (1988, 1ªed.)
back
to text .. last changes: December
2001
Shakespeare and Translation
Maria João da Rocha Afonso
Faculdade
de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Jealousy in Venice - The First Printed Version of a
Shakespeare Text in Portuguese
Portugal was slow to get to know Shakespeare. When he died
we were a part of Spain, and besides being an enemy, England
was not a cultural influence to Portugal. Spain was. During
the 17th century we got our independence back. But then
again, the English culture was not appealing to the
Portuguese despite the Windsor treaty of the 14th century
(1386). So, it came as no surprise that, when we got to hear
from Shakespeare, he came from France (*1)
. The first Portuguese Shakespeare's play was a translation
from Laplace's Othello, not Shakespeare's
(*2)
, and when we got both Hamlet and Othello on
stage, they were Ducis' texts once again (*3).
Portugal had to wait for the best part of the 19th century
before we could hear any of Shakespeare's characters talking
in Portuguese.
Even then, when they did, the source text was not the
original one. Perhaps Portuguese playwrights and translators
knew no other but, until the 1870's, it didn't cross
anybody's mind to look for the English text as a sole source
and so they translated or adapted from Ducis'. In European
terms, it is no wonder that it happened so, but it becomes
quite odd when you come to think of the circumstances in
Portugal. We did have a powerful treaty with England since
1386 but our main cultural influence was definitely France.
Portugal and France both have Romance languages and Latin
characters: that puts them close together. Nevertheless,
although our most important cultural influence was France,
the initial stage of Portuguese Romanticism was defined by a
strong English accent. The man who wrote the poems that set
the date for the new artistic movement in Portugal - Almeida
Garrett - had lived in England where he "discovered" the
poets of the Lyrical Ballads, Walter Scott and, more
important than these, Shakespeare. Yet, when he came back
from his exile in England and started to translate
Othello, it was Ducis' text that he used as source,
not Shakespeare's.
Having been quite a popular character in Portuguese theatre
between the 15th and the end on the 18th centuries, the
Blackman almost disappeared from the stage when the
political strife of the 1820's took place. The new
discovered ideas of the liberal change generated in the wake
of the French Revolution made it quite unsuitable to despise
someone that was "different". I'm not talking about what we
now call "politically correct" but about a new awareness of
all men being "equal" derived from the political ideas of
the French Revolution. That doesn't mean that the prejudice
- constantly tendered for four centuries - had vanished. On
the contrary the scornful tone turned from the satirical to
a kind of slapstick comedy tone: from the bitterness and
sarcasm, the prejudice took to anecdotal laughter. The
audiences reacted positively to the exotic - amusing
character of the Blackman. Nevertheless, and despite former
practice, this kind of character became quite rare on
Portuguese stages for the first part of the 19th century.
Black men were incorporated in the general characters that
represented the poor people (*4).
There was one exception, and this was Othello. For four
hundred years, Portuguese playwrights had created characters
of black people that were defined by various aspects of
prejudice, stereotype and reality. Black people were
associated with lust, savagery, history, music and low
status. In their uniformity, they were somewhat different
but they all shared a common characteristic: although the
sad, unhappy objects of humiliation from a white society,
they were never subjects of tragedy. Their unhappiness was
laughable for the white and bearable for themselves. Life
did go on despite their misery. I must point out, though and
before proceeding any further, that O Intrigante de
Veneza is not a tragedy, although at the beginning it
seems to be one: both Cassio and Emilia are able to tell the
whole story of Jacome's intriguing and mischief before
Othello even tries to kill his wife, thus preventing him
from committing a crime.
And this is one of the reasons that make the one exception
to this, such an interesting study object. Shakespeare's
Othello was not in the least the same type of character that
was so popular in Portuguese poetry and theatre
(5).
By being a general and later the governor of Cyprus, he was
miles away in the social pyramid from the entertainers in
touradas (bullfights), servants and poor workmen of
the Portuguese stage. Othello is presented as a "nobleman"
(if only in character, not in birth) and the love Desdemona
feels for him is the absolute opposite from the traditional
situation of the black woman who loves a white man and is
punished for it that Portuguese theatre goers knew so well.
Nevertheless, prejudice pervades the whole play. But we will
come to that later…
So, how come Othello grew so popular in Portugal?
First of all, we have to consider the word "popular". During
the last quarter of the 18th century and first of the 19th,
it means "theatre goer" which is NOT "everybody", or even
"anybody". It means the noble and bourgeois families that
would attend a theatre or opera performance. At the same
time, we must bear in mind that, to that kind of audience,
Othello was, in fact, the most popular Shakespeare
play. It was the first to be translated into Portuguese,
during the 18th century - although not published! --, and
the first to be staged in a Portuguese version, albeit
deriving from the Ducis' text. Rossini's opera was equally
famous in our country, together with Zingarelli's I
Capuletti e I Montecchi. So, it comes as no surprise
that the first printed version would be the Moor's
tragedy.
In 1839, Portugal witnessed the publication of a play
allegedly by Shakespeare. And I say "allegedly" because, and
we'll see it later, we cannot duly ascribe the Portuguese
text O Intrigante de Veneza, to the British
Elizabethan poet. It's author, José Maria Silva Leal
(1812-1883), was a man of some substance in Portuguese
letters. He was a journalist and a liberal and eventually
became the director of one of the most influential Romantic
Portuguese periodicals, the Revista Universal Lisbonense
(1841-57). His connection with the theatre was a strong
one: in 1846 he became the Secretary of the
Conservatório (Lisbon High School for Drama) and the
President of the Jury for the annual drama competition, in
1879. These jobs came to him as a result of his interest in
playwriting. Starting in 1839 with O Intrigante de
Veneza, Silva Leal wrote quite a considerable number of
plays from various genres: historical drama, farces, opera
buffa, comedies and "mágicas" (fantasies). Having
stated that the publishing panorama was hard for the
playwrights, he launched a collection: O Dramaturgo
Português ou Collecção de Dramas
Originais Portugueses (Portuguese Playwright, or
Collection of Original Portuguese Dramas) in order to
develop playwriting in Portugal. This series was started in
1841 and the third play to be published was O Intrigante
de Veneza, which had been written two years before.
The first thing that catches our attention is the "conflict"
between the title of the collection (original dramas) and
the immediate recognition of the name of one of the
characters: Othello. How did Silva Leal manage to solve this
contradiction? In his opening words he states: "nowadays,
the idea of originality is a vain concept". So let us try
and find out what kind of concept lies behind the text we
are dealing with. In a very different attitude from
Simão de Melo Brandão, the 18th century
translator of Othello, Silva Leal does not claim to
have based his efforts on Shakespeare's text. In the
Foreword, Silva Leal claims that his original text was not
meant to be a translation or imitation from any other play,
but "having drawn its outline in my mind, I found out that
it looked so similar to that tragedy
[Othello], that I would be forced to get in
touch with it at several moments of the writing process. On
the other hand […] I decided to make use of its
theme and even of some of the thoughts of Shakespeare and
Ducis, fitting those into the scheme I had devised." (My
translation). In fact, Silva Leal made some significant
changes, the least not being the shift of the main
character: the title refers to Jácome (Jago) and not
to Othello, as do Shakespeare's and Ducis'. Although some of
the scenes are straight translations both from Shakespeare
and Ducis, Silva Leal rearranges them in quite a different
way. In short: can we talk about a translation even if from
a conflated text? Definitely not. Silva Leal's text,
although based on the two previous playwrights, is a new,
personal text. He recognized them as a hypotext but O
Intrigante… is a rewriting of those two, resulting
in a middle class, bourgeois drama: it is a very clear case
of what has become known as "domesticated text"
(*6).
The final product is a Portuguese play, dealing with
characters drawn from national traditions, debating themes
widely recognisable in our literary production.
The first major original difference of the Portuguese play
lies on the relationships between the various characters:
like the Ducis' Lorédan, Cassio is the son of the
Doge (who bears no name), but Jácome is Emilia's
brother and is in love with Sismonda [Desdemona].
Emilia is in love with Cassio - who loves her -- and Rodrigo
loves Emilia. In Silva Leal's play Branca plays the part of
Emilia as a friend of Desdemona's in Shakespeare's. Ducis
cuts this character.
Silva Leal divides his text into five acts, assigning each
one to a different character: Othello (1), Jácome,
(2) Cassio (3), Brabancio (4), and Sismonda (5). The
emphasis in each act is given to the characterization of the
title character, and the action is centred on an event that
helps to it. In the first act we find Othello facing the
Council of the Ten to justify his marriage to Sismonda. But
there are three important additions to it: Jácome
reveals to us that he was the instigator of the marriage and
kidnapping of Sismonda from Brabancio's house, he states
himself as an important citizen of Venice and a mischievous,
treacherous character, and justifies his hatred for Othello
by the love he bears to Sismonda. It is Jácome's
jealousy, not Othello's that drives the whole action.
Jácome's feeds Othello's jealousy to serve his own.
Shakespeare makes Jago hate Othello because he wants his
place as a general and a governor, Ducis' Pézare does
not offer any explanation, he just plots to destroy Othello,
and we do not know why. Ducis relies on the audience's
previous knowledge of the play, which Silva Leal does
not.
On the second act, Silva Leal creates one of the most
horrifying scenes of the whole play: Jácome meets
Sismonda, declares his love for her and threatens her with
the death of Othello and the imprisonment of Brabancio if
she does not yield to his desire. This confrontation does
not exist in any of the previous plays and here it assumes a
very violent character. Sismonda reaches the extreme of
picking up a dagger and threaten to kill herself to force
Jácome to abandon his pledge for the time being. But
he leaves the room claiming for revenge: "That's enough,
Sismonda, no more words! In my house, I rule as a lord. Do
pay attention: if anyone gets to know the slightest bit of
what happened between us, if the smallest rumour runs that
you are here by force, you will loose both your father and
the Blackman at that very same moment." (My translation)
There is a point that deserves some attention, although it
rests on a peculiarity of the Portuguese language.
Jácome addresses Sismonda as "tu" - second person,
singular -, which is a very familiar way of addressing
anyone and is in complete contrast with the "vous" Ducis
employs. Of course, in English, we do not have such a
distinction, but in Portuguese, it makes all the difference.
That meant that Jácome's arrogance is so great that
he does not even show that minimum of politeness that would
be expected in a relationship of that sort.
This act presents two more innovations. Emilia's role is
very different from Shakespeare's Emilia and Ducis'
Hermance. Under threat of blckmail from her brother, she
tries to destroy Sismonda's marriage to Othello. She is not
very eager in doing it but, nevertheless, she tries to. The
second one is Sismonda's attitude towards the assumption of
her marriage to Othello. Like a dutiful Portuguese catholic
daughter, she wants her father's blessing and, when Othello
expresses the wish to consummate their marriage, she asks
him to wait for one day so that "my heart may regain the
peace he has lost" by trying once again to get her father's
forgiveness. That obedience to her father's will was a very
important aspect of 19th century Portuguese society: girls
would be sent into convents for this kind of
disobedience.
In the third act, Jácome manages to destroy Cassio's
love for Emilia, convinces him that Sismonda is in love with
him, and makes Cassio declare his love for Sismonda, in a
scene that echoes Ducis'. Like in Ducis' Sismonda freely
offers Cassio a token for his help in freeing Brabancio from
the accusations the senate bears against him. And, like in
the previous text, she chooses a gift Othello had given her.
But Silva Leal's choice was a much stronger one: Sismonda
gives Cassio her wedding ring. A possible explanation may
lie upon the very strong case for Sismonda's virtue Silva
Leal makes repeatedly all along the play. Nowhere in the
text there is the slightest hypothesis of anyone not
trusting it. And that includes Othello. So, what object
could have a stronger significance than the wedding
ring?
The language of Silva Leal's play does not bear in the
least, the sexual innuendo that Shakespeare's does. Nor
looks for grandiose words or speeches like Ducis'. But it is
much stronger, in what concerns race. Othello is always
referred to as "the Blackman" or "the African". He himself
utters those words. Emilia says to Sismonda, "You're
devoting yourself to a Blackman!", but it is in the fourth
act that the language and the racist comments reach their
utmost. Once again, Jácome is the author of the
violence: he calls Othello "the vagabond African" and talks
about prospective grandchildren of Brabâncio's as
"little African monsters, and extravagant grandchildren". He
feels himself to be superior to Othello because he is white
and he considers Othello's love for Sismonda to be an
aberration which he wants to destroy out of a combination of
jealousy and racism. Brabancio follows him and calls Othello
"monster". And they repeatedly use the word "Blackman".
Nowhere in the play is he referred as "the Moor", like in
Shakespeare.
Having travelled all over the world, the Portuguese were
quite familiar with black people and, as I said before, they
were a quite common character in Portuguese literature. And
the word "Blackman" was the usual one. The distinction
between "preto" and "negro" (the politically correct word
today) did not exist at the time. But in this text, and
because of the context provided by Jácome's hatred
towards Othello, it becomes a very violent word.
Silva Leal does include another original scene in this act:
Emilia and Cassio talk to each other and expose
Jácome's wickedness. As a result, they reconcile
themselves and Cassio gives her the ring so that she can
return it to Sismonda. Once again using violence,
Jácome threatens his sister with a dagger and manages
to take the ring away from her. He plans to use it later.
And the fourth act ends with Sismonda pledging her love to
Othello and her husband asking for her forgiveness.
And, finally, we do have the fifth act, the one which is
entitled "Sismonda". Deeply convinced of Sismonda's virtue,
Othello threatens Jácome. As a result of the
villain's insistence, Othello asks for proof of her adultery
and that is when Jácome produces the ring and a note
Sismonda had signed without reading, and which states her
intention of divorcing Othello and marrying Cassio in
obedience to Brabâncio wishes. And, Jácome
adds, he has already killed Cassio. This is the point where
Silva Leal turns away from his sources and writes something
absolutely new, according to the aesthetics of the bourgeois
drama he followed: everything is pointing towards the
traditional tragic dénouement but, with a sudden
twist, just before the final blow, the author creates the
opportunity for the characters to explain everything to each
other thus exposing the criminal and allowing for general
happiness according to the rules of society. In a rage,
after having, once more, listened to Jácomes
intrigues, Othello holds a sword, a much more visually
effective weapon than a pillow, or a dagger, and runs into
Sismonda bedroom, where she has just sung Ducis' version of
the "Willow Ballad", to kill her. Confronted with the ring
and the note, Sismonda tries to explain but she only manages
to fall down on her knees and put her arms against Othello's
(a gesture created in Ducis play, where Hedelmone helds her
father's knees, while asking for his forgiveness).
The entrance of the Doge, Brabâncio, Cassio, Emilia,
Branca and servants to the amazement of Othello who thought
Cassio dead, prevents the slaughter of Sismonda. Like in
Ducis text, Brabâncio comes in to bring forgiveness to
his daughter. But, this time, he does not arrive too late
and they all get reconciled. Cassio exposes Jácome's
evil and the play ends, according to the conventions of the
"drame bourgeois" with a moral lesson and the punishment of
the guilty: Jácome poisons himself and dies avowing
full conscience of his deeds: "Sismonda!… I die!…
My crimes exceeded the limits of depravity!… Egotism,
wickedness and hypocrisy have always led my actions!…
And I would crown my career in evil with a new crime…
which would make you all eternally execrate my odious
life!… I poisoned myself… (Falls down, dying) (My
translation). The reaction of the characters on stage echoes
the readers' "Oh, horror!"
O Intrigante de Veneza cannot be taken out of its
context. There were reasons for the particular place
Othello held in Portuguese preferences. Ducis wrote
his play in the obvious influence of the French Revolution
ideals: he talks about "citoyens" and makes some
considerations about the power of the nobility. I do not
think Silva Leal was a republican but he certainly was a
liberal. In 1839, when he wrote this play, Portugal had
lived through a period of political strife having witnessed
the internal fights between absolutists and liberals. The
queen, D. Maria II, had come to the throne in 1835, when she
was just 15 and the country was slowly recovering its peace.
In art and literature, the Romantic ideas were creeping and
all this was well in tune with a play depicting a virtuous
woman claiming that "when there are virtues we can do
without ancestors" bringing the nobility of character as a
means of social elevation into the limelight.
At the same time, jealousy, fear of cuckoldry and intense
love had made regular appearances in Portuguese theatre
since Gil Vicente, considered to be the father of Portuguese
theatre, who lived in the 16th cent.. Shakespeare was a name
of authority in Portugal. So, what Silva Leal did was to
apply what Sebastião José Guedes e
Albuquerque, in 1818, defined as "imitation", which was "to
say things that bring to mind some excerpt we recognize due
to their similitude to it or making one's own the thought of
an author by the new shape we give it either by enlarging or
restraining it and by depicting the same objects using
different images." (My translation) (*7).
Although Silva Leal does recognize his debt towards the two
previous playwrights, he manages to create a play with a
Portuguese flavour: the characters would be familiar to a
Portuguese audience, as would the jealousy theme, the
insistence upon Sismonda's virtue, the relationship
father/daughter defined by parental absolute authority as in
the one between Sismonda and Brabancio, the amorous
harassment from Jacome, the idea of a tragedy/sin that goes
from parent to child (Sismonda and her mother) and that
comes from the past to haunt the present and all the
references to "fate", "destiny", "death by love" and
"presentiments". All these would ring very strong bells.
But, despite all this, as far as we know, the play was not
performed. At least, not in Lisbon and not until 1856 and it
is quite unlikely that it was performed afterwards
(*8).
Portugal would have to keep on waiting for a
Portuguese-speaking Shakespeare character to jump from page
to stage…
2) Afonso, Maria João da Rocha,
"Simão de Melo Brandão and the First
Portuguese Version of Othello" in European Shakespeares.
Translating Shakespeare in the Romantic Age, 1993,
Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Pp. 129-146.
back
to text
3) Afonso, Maria João da Rocha,
"Othello estreia-se nos palcos portugueses", in Revista
de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses, Lisboa, CEAP, 1996. Pp.
121-36.
back
to text
5) Idem, ibidem. back
to text
6) Franklin, Colin, Shakespeare
Domesticated. The eighteenth-century editions,
Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1991.
back
to text
7) Albuquerque, Sebastião José
Guedes e Albuquerque, "Prefácio", Arte de Traduzir
do Latim para Portuguez, reduzida a principios. In
Pinilla, José Antonio Sabio e Sánchez,
María Manuela Fernández, O Discurso Sobre a
tradução em Portugal, Lisboa,
Edições Colibri,
1998.
back
to text
8)
Vasconcelos, Ana Isabel Pereira Teixeira de, O Drama
Histórico Português do Século XIX ou
Ficções da Representação
Histórica no Tempo de Almeida Garrett (1836-56),
Lisboa, Tese de Doutoramento Apresentada à
Universidade Aberta, 1999. In this essay, the author makes a
complete list of all the plays that were performed both in
professional and amateur theatres in Lisbon, during this
period. From what we know about the theatrical panorama of
the time, we can quite safely assume that O Intrigante de
Veneza was not performed. back
to text
SOURCE
TEXTS:
SHAKESPEARE, William, Othello, Ed. By Norman
Sanders, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997
(1984).
DUCIS, Jean François, Othello ou Le More de
Venise. Représentée pour la première
fois, a Paris, sur le Théâtre-français,
le 26 Novembre 1792. Paris, Michel Lévy
Fréres, Éditeurs.
LEAL, José Maria Silva, O Intrigante de Veneza.
Drama em 5 Actos e 8 Quadros., Lisboa, Typographia de
Antonio Sebastião Coelho, 1842.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCE:
FLOR, João de Almeida, "'Beyond a Common Joy':
Evocacções Shakespeareanas em Fernando de
Mello Moser" in Cunha, Gualter (coord.), Estudos
Ingleses. Ensaios sobre Língua, Literatura e
Cultura, Coimbra, Minerva, 1998.
HOMEM, Rui Carvalho, "Of Negroes, Jews and Kings: On a
Nineteenth-Century Royal translator", in The
Translator, Volume 7, Number 1, April 2001. Pp. 19-42.
Manchester, St. Jerome Publishing.
--- "Of Power and Race and Sex - With Due Respect: on Some
Portuguese translations of Othello" in SEDERI, 10,
1999. Pp. 193-204.
LANSON, G., Histoire de la Littérature
Française, Paris, Hachette, 1951.
LISBOA, Eugénio (coord.), Dicionário
Cronológico de Autores Portugueses, 1990. Vol.
2.
MATTOSO, José (dir.), História de
Portugal, Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores, 1993.
5º Volume, "O Liberalismo. 1807-1890".
SILVA Jorge Miguel Bastos da, "Um Contexto para a
recepção deShakespeare no Romantismo
Português: os Dados dos Periódicos", in
Revista de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses, Lisboa, Centro
de Estudos Comparados, 2000. Número 9, pp. 43-86.
Dec. 2001
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