The first Portuguese Version of Shakespeare’s Othello
The first Portuguese Version of Shakespeare’s Othello
Presentation by: Frederica Pereira & Mariana Freitas
ID: 569203641
· November, 17. 2022 ·
Table of contents
01
02
03
Aspects of the Portuguese Theatre During the Eighteenth Century
Shakespeare in Portugal: the First References
The Authorship of ‘Othello, or O Mouro de Veneza’
Table of contents
04
05
06
The Source Text and Other Preliminary Matters
Brandão’s Approach as a Translator
Conclusion
The first Portuguese Version of Shakespeare’s Othello
01
Aspects of the Portuguese Theatre During the Eighteenth Century
ID: 569203641
· November, 17. 2022 ·
Arcádia Lusitana
Arcádia Lusitana: literary academy whose purpose was to trim off the verbal excesses of the baroque poetry of the previous decades.
Teatro de Cordel: the plays were usually sold by blindmen who used to hang the booklets on a cordel (string).
The import of foreign plays
The Portuguese Theatre
The first Portuguese Version of Shakespeare’s Othello
Shakespeare in Portugal: the First References
02
ID: 569203641
· May, 4. 2022 ·
The first written reference to Shakespeare ever made in Portugal
1762’s first Portuguese literary periodical Gazeta Litteraria, by Frei Bernardo de Lima, a priest of the Lóios congregation and a man of great culture.
Shakespeare mentioned in two articles:
one in which Frei Bernardo de Lima analyses Camões’ work and the reception it was given by the Portuguese, and admonishes his readers to treasure their poet the same way the English cherish Shakespeare
a second, that shows a certain knowledge of the original text as, in it, Frei Bernardo de Lima examines a study on the use of rhetoric from the pulpit in which lines from Julius and Caesar are quoted, and comments that the author should have quoted another part of the play and must have used Voltaire’s version, which evidences his familiarity with both texts
The first Portuguese Version of Shakespeare’s Othello
03
The Authorship of “Othello, or O Mouro de Veneza”
ID: 569203641
· November, 17. 2022 ·
English impact in Oporto
Simão de Melo Brandão
The first Portuguese Version of Shakespeare’s Othello
The Source Text and Other Preliminary Matters
04
ID: 569203641
· November, 17. 2022 ·
‘Le Théâtre Anglois de Shakespeare’ (1746) is listed as so in the Portuguese National Library and is actually La Place’s French Version of the plays.
It’s very likely that Simão de Melo Brandão has used this version as a source text, since, at the time, French was definitely more familiar to Portuguese scholars and men of culture.
The first Portuguese Version of Shakespeare’s Othello
05
Brandão’s Approach as a Translator
ID: 569203641
· November, 17. 2022 ·
La Place’s Approach as a Translator
“Those which seemed to him unnecessary and foreign to the action; those to indecent or coarse for the French reader; and those which too familiar or trivial”
Brandão’s Approach as a Translator
The first Portuguese Version of Shakespeare’s Othello
Conclusion
06
ID: 569203641
· November, 17. 2022 ·
The translation by Simão de Melo Brandão “appears to embody some of the typical literary and theatrical preferences of his time: strong emotions, a tight plot, a well-considered design of characters and action, a dramatic language free of rhetorical excess but powerful enough to arouse pity and fear.”
Due to the many transformations through which it is distinguished from its French source, Brandão’s ‘Othello’ “gained obvious scenic qualities. Unlike La Place’s version, it would probably have become a success if it had reached the stage.”
“(...) a domestic tragedy (...) and as such reflects one of the elements of the bourgeois realism which characterised the drama of the Arcádia group.”