Translation as a Means of Dramatic Exchange: St Dorothy's Play in the 17th Century

Authors

MIKYŠKOVÁ Anna

Year of publication 2017
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Czech and Slovak Linguistic Review
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Web https://tifo.upol.cz/TIFO2017_book.pdf
Keywords drama translation, St Dorothy, English comedians, German, intercultural exchange
Description The topic of the paper is the phenomenon of English itinerant players who travelled across the European continent at the end of the 16th and during the 17th centuries. Especially in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, the Englishmen enjoyed an enthusiastic reception at court as well as in public. Even though the Englishmen’s merit consisted mainly in the enrichment of German theatrical practice, the medium of dramatic translation also contributed to the dissemination of new motifs and ideas from London as German translations of English plays were soon produced. This paper discusses one such instance of early modern drama translation, namely Johann Georg Gettner’s play Die Heylige Martyrin Dorothea (1691?), which is a remarkably faithful, if shortened German translation of Phillip Massinger and Thomas Dekker’s Jacobean play The Virgin Martyr (1620). Gettner’s translation represents an interesting link between English Renaissance drama and its later German Baroque counterpart.
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