Mrs. Jerrold is
not well, and Edith and Albert are off for Frascati."
"Poor child; how much alone she is," he thought to himself.
"I understand we all go to the play tonight?" queried Mae.
"The thought of Shakspeare dressed in Italian is not pleasant to me,"
said Mr. Mann, after a silence of a few minutes.
"I am quite longing to see him in his new clothes. There is so much
softness and beauty in Italian that I expect to gain new ideas from
hearing the play robed in more flowing phrases. Shakspeare certainly is
for all the world."
"But Shakspeare's words are so strongly chosen that they are a great
element in his great plays. And a translation at best is something of a
parody, especially a translation from a northern tongue, with its
force and backbone, so to speak, into a southern, serpentine, gliding
language. You have heard the absurd rendering of that passage from
Macbeth where the witches salute him with 'Hail to thee, Macbeth! Hail
to thee, Thane of Cawdor!' into such French as 'Comment vous portez
vous, Monsieur Macbeth; comment vous portez vous, Monsieur Thane de
Cawdor!' A translation must pass through the medium of another mind, and
other minds like Shakspeare's are hard to find.
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