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Translating and Adapting the Classics: Staging La dama boba in English

The experience of seeing Lope’s La dama boba performed in Bath, UK, as part of the Ustinov Studio’s Spanish Golden Age Season informs this examination of the translation and adaptation of the classics, both in print and for the stage. Translation with performance in mind takes into account the future interpretive contributions of numerous theater practitioners; audience response, including that of theater critics, has transformed critical discussion. Moreover, dramatic changes in the related fields of translation and adaptation studies have reoriented theoretical approaches to the ways in which we consider the goals and processes of preparing a classical text for the stage, especially with respect to the once central question of fidelity to the source text. This study focuses attention on six translations/adaptations of Lope’s comedy, including the translators’ interpretive notes and commentary regarding their guiding philosophies. Willis Knapp Jones (The Stupid Lady), Max Oppenheimer (The Lady Simpleton), William Oliver (Lady Nitwit), John Farndon (Mad for Love), Edward Friedman (Wit’s End), and David Johnston (A Lady of Little Sense) offer a variety of responses to the act of translation, thereby illuminating the key issues involved in taking early modern plays to English-speaking audiences.