[Terese Coe]

I saw Moliere's Tartuffe in the Roundabout Theatre's NY production last night, and the Richard Wilbur translation is a triumph. Directed by Joe Dowling, with Henry Goodwin as Tartuffe ("The Hypocrite"), Brian Bedford as Orgon (Tartuffe's victim), and Kathryn Meisle as Elmire (Orgon's wife and the object of Tartuffe's lust).

It's rare to see a performance of any English play in rhymed iambic pentameter, and astounding how it speeds up the action, adds enormously to the wit, and keeps the audience alert and eager for the completed couplet. It's simply a natural addition to the progression of the dialogue when it's done well, and Wilbur does it brilliantly. Finally, a master poet who is worthy to translate a master poet/playwright.

The play of course is scathing: it sends up not only today's con-men and hypocrites, but brings to bear on politics, the investment banking profession, the legal profession, etc.: I mean it is as contemporary today as it was then.

Contemporary English phrases like "unpleasant/ Let's table this discussion for the present" were discernible, but seamless with the text. The dialogue never faltered, was never flat or forced or unlovely.

It's incredible that five feet can appear so short, so breathless. I don't think there's any better lesson in rhymed or any ip than to listen to Wilbur's Moliere, or read it.

Moliere milks exasperation, sarcasm and hysteria for farce even beyond what seems possible, and still the audience is laughing.

The entire family is insane. The tantrums and madness almost foreshadow O'Neill, but this is the other side of the tragic mask. False modesty, false embarrassment, false piety, false virtue, false lust, false blessedness, false good will, false charity, false accusation—until the only one speaking truth is the maid, and even she uses falsehood sarcastically. All the fundamentals of comedy and satire seem to be present here.

Orgon (the husband/father and primary butt of the humor) laughs that Tartuffe is so empathetic that he's even more jealous of O's wife than O is himself. He adds later that the truly pure and lowly "make no show of being lowly." A tour de force by any standard. A few sample rhymes:

"I would dare to claim/ I know true and false are not the same" (Orgon)

"...so wise/ ...a collar of such splendid size!" (the maid to Orgon, touching his vast lacey collar).

"...perhaps, but I shall be discreet about your lapse." (the wife to Tartuffe)

Toward the end, Moliere does not neglect his maxims, both double-edged and straightforward, and no doubt flattering to his King: "All deeds are glorious which obey the prince"; "The king makes more of virtues than mistakes"; "Betraying you, the rogue stood self-betrayed."

Leaving the theatre, I had the sense that Moliere's reality had leached offstage and into the lobby. The procession of characters who seemed to belong in the onstage parade included the man pushing others to exit; the heavily made-up woman in dyed and clipped chinchilla coat; the elderly person of no discernible gender in a raincoat, face totally burn-scarred, passionately kissing a young woman; the actor saying "Judy" and his companion saying, "Dench?"

Terese

[Michael Juster]

I saw a semiprofessional production of Wilbur's Tartuffe last year in Newton, MA, which was superb (and the actress who played Elmire almost stole the show). The Wilbur translation is astonishing--so good it makes me wonder why I even bother trying my hand at such things!

[Richard Wakefield]

I've read Wilbur's version but never seen it, although I've seen a production of a different translation. I can only dream of how splendid it would be to see and hear the Wilbur translation on stage.
Your comments on how natural the imabic pentameter sounds fit perfectly with my recollection of the text and with my ideal for formal verse. It seems to me that the best IP merely delineates the bones, so to speak, underlying the muscle and flesh of natural speech. Somebody somewhere has an essay on how lines of three to seven accents correspond to some basic unit of neurological process. Even if that should turn out not to be literally true, I believe it when I hear it.
RPW

[Terese Coe]

Michael and Richard


I'd like to see that essay on the number of accents relating to neurological processes.

If anyone is interested in the price of the Wilbur/Moliere at the Roundabout, we paid $44.50 each for spectacular orchestra seats, 6th row on the aisle. That's incredibly cheap these days for great seats on Broadway (usually I'm not much interested in most Broadway plays, though I want to see Medea).

The way to get this price is to go to the Roundabout Theatre online and order there or by the phone number they give there; it's a 20% discount as I recall. It's at www.roundabouttheatre.org (the play is still in previews).



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited December 12, 2002).]

[Richard Wakefield]

Terese:
No doubt you will call down devine retribution for suggesting that anyone tamper with Shakespeare. But why not? Of course you'd want the original texts to be available and widely performed -- and I don't see much danger that they'll fall into disuse, or not, at least, merely because dumbed-down versions have pushed them aside. Just as changing the setting of a play can bring out unexpected nuances, the same thing might happen with a good rewrite. Think of it as translation.
Still, I like the language, and I think most people find it unexpectedly accessible when they hear it from a stage. My kids, without any special tutoring, began enjoying stage productions of Shakespeare from the age of eleven or so.
RPW

[Tim Murphy]

The great Shakespearean scholar, A.L. Rowse, devoted his ninth decade to a total re-write of the Bard. What a waste of ten years! No, we just need to teach kids to understand Elizabethan English at an early age (like age six, which was what I was when Mom started reading him to me!) Terese, thanks for this sprightly review of Tartuffe. Yes, the rhymes are amazing. One of Wilbur's friends recalls finding him swinging from a tree limb in exultation and announcing "I just rhymed saber with neighbor!" That was when he was doing his first Moliere in the mid-50s. When he translates French drama, he proceeds at the rate of about four couplets per day, so the rhymes are chosen with great care and deliberation. No wonder they seem so effortless.

[Richard Wakefield]

Tim:
Wonderful anecdote about Wilbur! Although far, far from his level, I know how good it feels to discover a rhyme, as if my poem has been lying latent in the language for a thousand years.
As for the idea of "translating" Shakespeare, you're right of course that the problem in not in our bard but in ourselves. One thing I point out to my students when I teach a Shakespeare play (and that's not often, since I'm primarily an Americanist) is that no one ever talked that way. The Elizabethan audience didn't expect to pay money to listen to people use the language in ordinary ways, any more than we'd pay to go to a concert to hear a pianist who plays no better than your run of the mill amateur. He was using the language to its fullest, and even the groundlings (or even some of them) expected to have to stretch a little bit to reach it -- and no, their self-esteem doesn't seem to have been seriously damaged when they encountered long swatches that they didn't get.
RPW

[Terese Coe]

Richard and Tim

I like the anecdote too; it's fun to know RW takes his rhymes to heart like that, and rejoices in them!

It's true that bright children can catch on to acted Shakespeare at an early age. When my husband and I lived in Utah and I was a drama critic for the local theatres, I took my 4-5 year-old daughter to lots of plays, including Midsummer Night's Dream, and she sat rapt. All she (or her younger brother) needed was a handle on the story beforehand. I've always been a great believer in theatre for children: my son was also brought to children's theatre in toddlerhood. There was free Shakespeare not only in Central Park but closer, in Washington Square Park, every summer (not this past year, unfortunately), and he ended up holding one of the huge flashlights in Wash. Sq. for the actors: for him, he wanted to participate in the worst way from the first. Since the Shakespeare in Washington Square were very low-budget (original text but shortened) productions which moved from one park setting to another close by, then back again, followed by the audience (seating on the grass), the boy was always looking for a way to get closer to the actors. When they performed near the wooden jungle jim, he climbed up to the top horizontal bar (about ten feet above the action) and sat on a four-inch wide beam to watch; he was about six then. He was awfully proud of his fine seat.

(I see I've been a bit prolix here, but it was the great accessibility of Wilbur's Moliere which inspired me to wonder about more accessible Shakespeare. Shakespeare's action can carry the play for kids, of course, but it helps a great deal for them to have, first, the experience of and a love for oral stories, and second, a personally transmitted love for theatre. More than anything, theatre makes them want to participate immediately.)

I want to add a word about the maid in the Moliere: J. Smith-Cameron was superb! (Possibly more later on her.)

Terese



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited December 15, 2002).]

[Dan Scheltema]

I love the Wilbur translations too. I haven't yet had the opportunity to see one performed, but it's likely I will if I pay attention to The Shakespeare Tavern's schedule.

I never had much difficulty with Shakespeare's language. That's not to say some words weren't foreign, but being brought up reading the KJV (not the NKJV or the other "modernized" versions) ensured Shakespeare's language didn't seem all that unnatural. Along with the weakness in educating kids, I suspect the move to a more secular society has also handicapped many as potential Shakespeare fans.

I do catch most of the film versions, and while the "modernized" ones may play well to their audiences, I find them a bit insipid. The real flavor is in the exact combinations of words. Those that stick to the original text but play with the settings and costumings tend to interest me more.

I did a shortish paper comparing several film versions of Hamlet. That was fun. Mel Gibson got panned.

[Kevin Corbett]

I just read Wilbur Tartuffe and found it good--if a little short (but that's not Wilbur's fault). It'd be lovely to see a staged version of it, but I can only wonder at how natural one can be reading end stopped couplets--that is, in French it comes off a lot easier because the rhymes are more subtle, but couplet tend to kill plays in English, and only a few originally coupleted plays are much read today.

On the topic of Shakespeare, I find the idea of messing with Shakespeare's language really abhorant for three reasons. A: Any "modernized" version would destroy the music of Shakespeare's verse and thereby would kill a part of Shakespeare, a big part. B: Dr. Johnson said that the pun was Shakespeare's Cleopatra for which he gave the world and was glad to lose it, and this would kill a lot of his puns, if not all of them. C: Shakespeare uses different kinds of langauge for different people and uses language for nuances in his charecterization. Modernization would in effect work like a steam roller, flattening a good deal of each charecters personality.

The point is that if you screw with Shakespeare's words, you screw with Shakespeare. You might as well go and normalize Milton and Spenser and take the huge chunk out of their art that is their eccentricity. Heck, even Chaucer doesn't absolutely neccesitate a translation. Leave English authors alone--their language, at the bottom of it, is still our language, modern English, and will continue to be for some time.

-Kevin

[This message has been edited by kevincorbett (edited January 18, 2003).]