If this be magic the unlikely art of Shakespeare in translation

"Shakespeare may have breathed the air of sixteenth-century England, but today, all the world is his stage. Every year, millions of people, from Bogotá to Borneo, read Hamlet for the first time, thanks to the tireless efforts of translators. Drawing on the work of the very best of them, Hahn dives...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hahn, Daniel (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2026.
Edition:First U.S. hardcover edition.
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Table of Contents:
  • Prologue : [If thou couldst please me with speaking to me...]
  • 1. [this story / The world may read in me] (on translation)
  • 2. [What verse for it?] (on verse)
  • 3. [You kiss by th' book] (on Juliet and Romeo's sonnet)
  • 4. [these two so like...] (on rhyming)
  • 5. [To change true rules for odd inventions] (on irregularity)
  • 6. [I will make him tell the tale anew] (on archaism)
  • 7. [Let me entreat you speak the former language] (on translating into English)
  • 8. [These numbers I will tear and write in prose] (on prose)
  • 9. [Pause, and take thy breath] (on commas, and other things)
  • 10. [Thou marvell'st at my words : but hold thee still] (on ambiguity and wordplay)
  • 11. [Danger shall seem sport] (on extreme wordplay)
  • 12. [Love is not love] (on meaning/s)
  • 13. [Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee] (on uncles, and boldness)
  • 14. [let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me] (on pronouns)
  • 15. [that is the question] (on 'To be...')
  • 16. [I am amazed at your words] (on words and their effects)
  • 17. [The art of our necessities is strange] (on gender and other opportunities)
  • 18. [What needs more words?] (Antony and Cleopatra)
  • 19. [in his simple show he harbours treason] (on deceptive simplicity)
  • 20. [All his words are worthy] (on Latinate vocabulary)
  • 21. [You have an exchequer of words] (on influences, kinships and etymologies)
  • 22. [the cause that wit is in other men] (on humour)
  • 23. [Speak scholarly and wisely] (on research)
  • 24. [How order should be quelled...] (on word order)
  • 25. [In sweet music is such art] (on languages of other kinds)
  • 26. [by fair sequence and succession] (on bridges)
  • 27. [these fellows of infinite tongue] (on Shakespeare's languages)
  • 28. [accents yet unknown] (on accents, dialects and representation)
  • 29. [I prithee, give no limits to my tongue] (on reasons to translate)
  • 30. [a commodity of good names] (on names)
  • 31. [O brave new world] (on cultural adjustment)
  • 32. [Though you understand it not yourselves, no matter...] (on understanding, and multilingualism)
  • 33. [To use one language in each several clime] (on multipolar languages)
  • 34. [Why, now thou speak'st as I would have thee speak] (on actors)
  • 35. [O, that delightful engine of her thoughts] (on thoughts)
  • 36. [...a magician, most profound in his art] (on all of it at once)
  • 37. [We know his handiwork] (on literary canon)
  • 38. [Thy deeds, inhuman and unnatural] (on translations without translators)
  • 39. [our own voices with our own tongues] (on the translators)
  • Epilogue : If this be magic...