Here in Johannesburg, young South Africans are performing the Bard in their second language, English, while the Globe plans to put all 38 plays on in 38 languages
I write this from Johannesburg's Market theatre, celebrated for its part in the struggle against apartheid, where my wife (American but fluent in RSC English) is co-directing young South African actors. Six chose to perform Shakespeare. Tshepo Motsoeneng is giving his Shylock, Yonda Thomas plays Cassius, Molefi Lebone is Macbeth, Thabiso Nodunyerwa is Othello and Talita Mathebe is Constance from King John. All in English.
"Two years ago, I was in the township and I was lost," Zack Selo, playing the chorus from Henry V, tells me. "A friend brought me to the Market theatre and I thought this is what I want. I started reading Shakespeare. The language was very difficult at first but I love it: the way it leads you from one thought to another."
Zack grew up speaking Afrikaans at home. His fellow performers regard the likes of Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho as their first languages. But for productions of Shakespeare, ancestral tongues will probably have to be suspended. South Africa has 11 official languages but when it comes to the Bard, English is first among equals.
Is this because his poetry is the sole preserve of The Oxford English Dictionary? Read the following and decide: "To be, or not to be: that is the question"; "Etre ou pas �tre, �a �'est la question"; "�Ser, o no ser, es la cuesti�n!"; "Byt' ili ne byt'? Vot v chem vopros"; "Att vara eller icke vara, det �r fr�gan"; "TaH pagh, taHbe" (the last of these is Klingon, in case you were wondering).
Polyglot theatregoers in London will be able to execute a sterner test next year when Shakespeare's Globe theatre presents all 38 plays in 38 different languages to celebrate the 2012 Olympics. Anyone for Titus Andronicus in Cantonese? Or The Tempest in Arabic?
No one aware of the impact of Hamlet in Bucharest during the Ceausescu years can doubt Shakespeare's cross-cultural power. But the Globe faces a stern test because, in my experience, foreign translations of Shakespeare work rather better on screen than stage. A Cuban version of The Tempest, Otra Tempestad, performed in Spanish at the Globe in 1998 and inexplicably stuffed with cameos from Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Shylock and exotic deities, had me yearning for something diverting like bastinado.
By contrast, the greatest King Lear I've seen in any language is Grigori Kozintsev's bleak and brooding 1971 Russian film Korol Lir. Then there are Akira Kurosawa's Japanese masterpieces Throne of Blood and Ran, free adaptations of Macbeth and Lear.
All this proves that if anyone can scale the Tower of Babel, Shakespeare can. In South Africa, the stand-out example is Umabatha, the Zulu Macbeth, in which the principals wear animal skins, fight with spears and fear invasion from Swaziland. It was a hit at the Globe.
To some black South Africans, Shakespeare is a symbol of imperialism. But championing Shakespeare should not be confused with asserting the supremacy of English. John Kani, seen in Britain opposite Antony Sher in The Tempest a couple of years ago, tells how he studied Julius Caesar at school in 1959 in a Xhosa translation by BB Mdledle. He recalls: "When I read the 'English version' of Julius Caesar, I felt that Shakespeare had failed to capture the beauty of Mdledle's writing!"
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