This complete, line-by-line translation of Julius Caesar makes the language of Shakespeare's play contemporary while preserving the metrical rhythm, complexity, and poetic qualities of the original.
The aim is to capture both sound and sense of Shakespeare's tragedy without the need for glosses or notes to use contemporary language without simplifying or modernizing the play in any other way.
Readers experience Shakespeare's tale of the brutal assassination of Rome's most famous leader with the comprehension and delight of audiences 400 years ago, the way Shakespeare intended.
Features
"Too often, unless we read a Shakespeare play beforehand, we process the language as if it were coming from a poorly tuned-in radio station. Shakespeare didn't write his plays to be experienced impressionistically as 'poetry;' he assumed his language was readily comprehensible. At what point does a stage of a language become so different from the modern one as to make translation necessary? Mr. Richmond is brave enough to assert that, for Shakespeare, that time has come. The French have Moliere, the Russians have Chekhov and now, we can truly say that we have our Shakespeare."
John McWhorter, Manhattan Institute
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- Line-by-line, not prose paraphrases.
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- Complete. No lines deleted. No dumbing down.
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- Accurate and authentic iambic pentameter.
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- True to the feel and look of Shakespeare's original.
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- Tone, complexity, and poetic devices preserved.
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- Subtlety and richness revealed without the need of notes and glosses.
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- Accessible introduction to classic drama.
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- Attractive, uncluttered, easy-to-read layout.
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- Stage-ready for an audience-pleasing theatrical.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), an English poet and dramatist, is the most famous writer in the English language and the most widely performed dramatist in the world. His plays have been translated into all major languages and are performed regularly in both English and translation. His many popular works include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, Midsummer Night's Dream, and King Lear........... For 33 years until his retirement in 2008, Kent Richmond (translator) taught composition, critical thinking, literature, and linguistics for the English Department and American Language Program at California State University, Long Beach. His primary academic interest is adult second language acquisition and the role that vocabulary learning plays in that process. His latest book Inside Reading 4 (Oxford University Press, 2009) is part of a reading/vocabulary series that won the 2008 David E. Eskey Award for Curricular Innovation from the California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. The magazine Inside CSULB featured Kent as the author of the month, in April 2008. He retired from CSULB in 2008 after 33 years of teaching. Drawing on his background in applied lingustics and literature, Mr. Richmond has taken on the task of writing verse translations of Shakespeare plays in contemporary English. By applying his detailed knowledge of Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, he can give his translations an authenticity that the available prose translation's lack. He has completed translations of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet Caesar, King Lear, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and Macbeth. He is now working on Hamlet.
