Ebook: Shakespeare and the Translation of Identity in Early Modern England

By pretending that we know what translation is, i.e. an operation that involves textual transfer across a binary divide, we tie ourselves up with problems of originality and authenticity, of power and ownership, of dominance and subservience. But can we always be certain that we know what a translation is? Shakespeare has long been associated with the topic of translation. Ben Jonson’s famous comment about his contemporary’s linguistic skills in the encomium ‘To the memory of my beloued, The avthor mr. william shakespeare: and what he hath left vs’, for example, has stimulated much discussion of the playwright’s knowledge and use of classical material.