more No-Fear Shakespeare lunacy

[a_t_rain]

'Cos sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying, here are some choice excerpts from Twelfth Night 2.3.

Real Shakespeare: "The Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses."

No-Fear Shakespeare: "Great warriors aren’t mom-and-pop diners, you know."

Real Shakespeare: "A contagious breath."

No-Fear Shakespeare: "His breath stinks." (N.B. No, this is NOT what it means at all.)

Real Shakespeare: "Let our catch be 'Thou Knave'."

No-Fear Shakespeare: "Let's dance to 'You Jerk'."

Real Shakespeare: "Malvolio's a Peg-a-Ramsey."

No-Fear Shakespeare: "Malvolio's Little Bo-Peep."

If anybody else feels like playing, their home page is here.

Comments

[fuunsaiki.livejournal.com]

You could almost play "name that play". I've a certain train-wrecky fondness for "But I'm not made to be a seducer, or to make faces at myself in the mirror".

[winding_path]

I looked, but it was just . . . painful. Especially when I realized they thought that even things like "Enter Hamlet" had to be changed to "Hamlet enters."

[ignipes.livejournal.com]

It's ironic that those modernized quotations actually make me fear Shakespeare quite a lot when I never had that reaction to the original texts.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

I know. They totally need to change their name.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Real Shakespeare: I say unto you again, you are a shallow, cowardly hind, and you lie.

No-Fear Shakespeare: I’ll say it once again: you are a stupid, cowardly dog, and a liar. (Uh, NO. Shallow is not the same thing as stupid, and a hind is a deer, not a misspelled "hound.")

Real Shakespeare: Revoke thy gift, or whilst I can vent clamor from my throat, I’ll tell thee thou dost evil.

No-Fear Shakespeare: If you don’t, then as long as I’m able to speak I’ll keep telling you you’ve done a bad, bad thing. (Doing something that is evil is not the same thing as doing a bad bad thing. Parents who give kids bad names are doing a bad, bad thing. Evil is not so trivial as that.)

Real Shakespeare: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Toward Phoebus' lodging. Such a wagoner
As Phaeton would whip you to the west
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties, or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match
Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
Hood my unmanned blood bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle, till strange love, grow bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night. Come, Romeo. Come, thou day in night,
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-browed night,
Give me my Romeo.

No-Fear Shakespeare: I wish the sun would hurry up and set and night would come immediately. When the night comes and everyone goes to sleep, Romeo will leap into my arms, and no one will know. Beauty makes it possible for lovers to see how to make love in the dark. Or else love is blind, and its best time is the night. I wish night would come, like a widow dressed in black, so I can learn how to submit to my husband and lose my virginity. Let the blood rushing to my cheeks be calmed. In the darkness, let me, a shy virgin, learn the strange act of sex so that it seems innocent, modest, and true. Come, night. Come, Romeo. You’re like a day that comes during the night. You’re whiter than snow on the black wings of a raven. Come, gentle night. Come, loving, dark night. Give me my Romeo.

There are no words for the last one. Except ARRRGH.

[fuunsaiki.livejournal.com]

Aaaaaaaaand we're back to weeping. D: That's AWFUL! D:

Lady Macbeth says, "Out, Damned No-Fear Shakespeare! Out, I say!"

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Also, I looked up Peg a Ramsey. Apparently she had a nursery rhyme and an indecent ballad named after her. I found part of the song:

Little Peg a Ramsey,
With the yellow hair,
Double ruff around her neck
And ne'er a shirt to wear.

I never heard of Bo-Peep wandering around nekkid from the waist up. At least not in MY Mother Goose.

Also, "ruff" had multiple meanings. In addition to being a fashion statement, a "ruff" was a court card (so "to ruff" meant "to trump") and "the wooden ruff" was the pillory. And a Double Ruff was a hand of cards in a game called Gleek.

I don't know if that's relevant--but I can picture Peg the gambler with cards hidden in the ruff around her neck as she uses her breasts to distract the other players. Granted, I can also see her stripped half-naked in the pillory.

Re: Lady Macbeth says, "Out, Damned No-Fear Shakespeare! Out, I say!"

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Ha! Oh, that's priceless, especially if you try to imagine Malvolio dressed up as her.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Oh, Lord. Let's do 2 Henry IV 4.4-5, because I'm in a masochistic mood today.

Real Shakespeare: "Will fortune never come with both hands full, / But write her fair words still in foulest letters?"

No-Fear Shakespeare: "Why can't life ever bring you things with their appropriate complements? Why is good news so often conveyed in ugly terms?"

Real Shakespeare: "O majesty..."

No-Fear Shakespeare: "Oh, you crown!"

Real Shakespeare: "How quickly nature falls into revolt / When gold becomes her object!"

No-Fear Shakespeare: "See how quickly blood bonds are broken, once money's involved."

Real Shakespeare: "Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought."

No-Fear Shakespeare: "You thought that because you wished it to be true."

Real Shakespeare: "Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold."

No-Fear Shakespeare: "So you, the best piece of gold, are actually the worst piece of gold."

Real Shakespeare: "Upon thy sight / My worldly business makes a period."

No-Fear Shakespeare: "Now that I've seen you, I have nothing more to do in this world."

I can't bear to look at the Falstaff scenes. I may cry.

[danel4d.livejournal.com]

From what I can see, this is a kind of a translation job, and by my understanding of it the classic translator's dilemma lies in the balance between preserving accuracy or poetry - is the literal meaning of the phrase more important, or making the translated phrase attractive in its own right more important? It's a puzzle.


Making the product neither accurate nor attractive is an intriguing solution to the dilemma that I'd never considered until now.

[danel4d.livejournal.com]

"Life is a story told by an idiot, full of noise and emotional disturbance but devoid of meaning."

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Is it just me, or is that much HARDER to understand than the original?

[keestone.livejournal.com]

Definitely not just you.

[katyhasclogs.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Way to suck all the poetry and wit (and therefore the fun) out of Shakespeare.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

....
Wow... That's beyond dummying down.
What sucks is there are good annotatiosn that actually explain what all the antiquated phrases and such mean!

Heh, in my 8th grade english class we had a day of "free insults" so long as you gould insult him using Shakespearian Insults.
It gave us a reason to learn the phrasing in the book LOL

[phantomcranefly.livejournal.com]

We had a worksheet with two columns of adjectives and one column of nouns. Then we formed two lines and got to insult whoever we ended up facing. I like your way better.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

I'm suddenly feeling the need for a *headdesk* icon.

"But I’m not made to be a seducer, or to make faces at myself in the mirror. I was badly made and don’t have the looks to strut my stuff in front of pretty sluts."


Kill me now.

[bewarethespork.livejournal.com]

Goodness. You know, I used to use SparkNotes all the time in high school (never as a substitute for reading the plays themselves, mind), but now I'm glad I never used No Fear Shakespeare except to get extracts of the original text whenever I needed them.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm fine with real guides that are actually meant to help students understand, but I just read from No Fear Romeo & Juliet -as with the above, their translations are either obvious or make even less sense than if you read the actual text. Plus the obvious pandering to an audience they assume will want things to be made "cool", which actually is a little insulting towards teenagers. I would've been a little offended by it myself in high school.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Yet again I find the original text far more comprehensible. Just sayin'.