Shakespeare in The Romanian Cultural Memory

Shakespeare
in the Romanian
Cultural Memory
Monica Matei-Chesnoiu
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Shakespeare
in the Romanian
Cultural Memory
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This page intentionally left blank
Shakespeare
in the Romanian
Cultural Memory
Monica Matei-Chesnoiu
With a Foreword by Arthur F. Kinney
Madison Teaneck
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
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2006 by Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp.
All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use,
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provided that a base fee of $10.00, plus eight cents per page, per copy is paid di-
rectly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massachu-
setts 01923. [0-8386-4081-8/06 $10.00 8 pp, pc.]
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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
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Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Matei-Chesnoiu, Monica, 1954
Shakespeare in the Romanian cultural memory / Monica Matei-Chesnoiu ; with
a foreword by Arthur F. Kinney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8386-4081-8 (alk. paper)
1. Shakespeare, William, 15641616Translations into RomanianHistory and
criticism. 2. Shakespeare, William, 15641616Stage historyRomania.
3. Shakespeare, William, 15641616AppreciationRomania. 4. English
languageTranslating into Romanian. 5. Translating and interpreting
Romania. 6. TheaterRomania. I. Title.
PR2881.5.R6M38 2006
822.33dc22 2005014324
printed in the united states of america
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To my daughter, Joanna
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Contents
List of Illustrations 9
Foreword 11
Arthur F. Kinney
Acknowledgements 15
1. Mapping Shakespeares Globe in a Global World 19
2. Early Translations of Shakespeare in Romania 27
3. Shakespeares Decalogue: English Histories in Romania 67
4. Romanian Metamorphoses: Comedies 96
5. Shakespeare, Communism, and After: Tragedies 158
6. Staging Revenge and Power: Masks of Romanian Hamlets 194
7. Romanian Mental and Theatrical Maps: Romances 220
Notes 237
Bibliography 254
Index 266
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Illustrations
Richard III dircted by Ion S ahighian at the Nottara Theater
(1964). 76
Richard III directed by Horea Popescu at the Bucharest
National Theater (1976). 77
Twelfth Night directed by Anca Ovanez-Dorosenco at the
Bucharest National Theater (1984). 121
Twelfth Night (The Kings Night or What You Will ) directed by
Andrei S erban at the Bucharest National Theater (1991). 140
Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur at the Cluj National Theater
(2001). 214
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Foreword
Arthur F. Kinney
A catwalk traversed the stage; and lots of ropes hung from the state can-
opy, like lianas in a tropical forest. Like in a simple sentence, this setting
made a visible statement: the world was a jungle. This homo homini lupus
motto became an ad litteram declaration when the audiences could see
kings, princes, cardinals, and attendants hanging from these ropes like
monkeys, and jumping into the political world of the stage. As a theater
critic noticed about this production, had we lived during King Johns
reign, we would have felt avenged. This was an exceptionally daring
statement, because the critic clearly transposed the political situation
from British history to the contemporary Romania, regardless of the
Communist censorship.
MONICA MATEI-CHESNOIU IS DESCRIBING A PRODUCTION OF SHAKE-
speares King John at the Comedy Theater in Bucharest in 1988; and
she notes that the reviewer escaped without harm because the Com-
munist regime in Romania was already at the verge of collapse. But
it was anyones call at the moment. For her, the moral rectitude
and verticality of the play and this staging of it exposed the in-
credible heights of worldly ambition and political power. At the
end of the performance, a memorable ending created by pure
directorial invention, four of King Johns followers were left in ob-
scurity, sequestered by the higher conspiracy of history, vanishing
into the darkness of the stage.
This is only one of the countless memorable performances which
Matei-Chesnoiu records that illuminate what she calls a liminal
space at the cultural margin of Europe, . . . a place somewhere near
the Black Sea and the Danube, where Shakespeare has been per-
formed, translated, and interpreted successfully for almost two cen-
turies. The three provinces that constitute this marginthe
Romanian provinces of Wallachia, Moldova, and Transylvaniaare
the focus of this rich, substantial, and transformative study of the
potential meanings of Shakespeare and the political uses and social
purposes to which his plays have been put in our time. In the cur-
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12 FOREWORD
rent critical climate, where cultural forces and performance theory
dominate our research and writing, this essentially groundbreaking
book expands our horizons, revealing to us in stark yet illuminating
detail just what Shakespeare has meant to Eastern Europe in the
dark days of World War II, its Communist aftermath, and, nally, its
liberationand how, throughout this time, it has managed to keep
a hold, however tenuous, on the Western world it has held up as
informant and paradigm.
For Matei-Chesnoiu, Romania remains an ineluctable site of cul-
tural memory which, like the ghost in Hamlet, seizes our attention
and will not let us go. She nds that Shakespearean performances
did vital and indestructible, if often indirect, cultural work because
Shakespearean performances were always interpretations negotiat-
ing the England of the 1500s and 1600s and the Romania of today
as well as the larger Eastern European network of countries. Geo-
graphically, she points out, many of the lands which we think of as
classical and which provided Shakespeare with substance, myth, and
metaphor were what we now know as East European soil, something
made clear in the maps of Ortelius circulating in the Tudor period.
Often exotic and eccentric facts and lands then were facts and lands
Romanians know all too well. Shakespeares utilization of them
indeed, his very interventiongives Romania a kind of just cause to
deploy his works metamorphosed through Fascist and Communist
regimes. Postwar Romanias view of Tudor England, she argues,
was seen as a passive form of resistance against the communist ide-
ology, and was one that, in time, the disintegrating regime was
propagating every more feebly.
The forces of history, dominated by the liberation of eastern Eu-
rope by the West, caused Communism to come to an end; but this
engrossing study suggests that Shakespeare too played a part. Early
on there was a need for a kind of escapism, an exorcism of what she
terms the spiritual demons of the totalitarian political pressure;
later, there was an investigation (through Shakespeare) of those very
demons. Initially, Shakespeares comedies were appropriated to
stress their abstraction, their theatrical self-referentiality, as subtle
means of critiquing the Romanian society and exposing its short-
comings. In 1964, for instance, Twelfth Night, renamed Noaptea Regi-
lor (The Kings Night) turned the world upside down into a kind of
carnival showing the ckleness of power in a disturbing and unpre-
dictable world. In 1978, As You Like It became politically parodic by
stressing uncertainty. The Taming of the Shrew, where complex per-
sonalities were buried in the incredible amount of cheap horseplay,
showed, underneath its surface, a process not unlike brainwashing,
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FOREWORD 13
which left the characters addicted only to the circus of farce. But by
1986, the banished Duke Senior began to look very much like the
Romanian dictator Ceausescu; as the political economy began to
fragment, the comedic attacks began to coarsen.
The incisive survey of Shakespearean comedy in the postwar years
nds its parallels in the deployment of the histories, tragedies, and
romances. It is no surprise that Shakespeares histories, especially
the Henriad, were at once the most decisive and the most dangerous,
often escaping punishment because they were constructed by show-
ing competing explanations of political events. Yet even here they
were forcing an audience to exercise choice. The tragedies at rst
seemed to support ideological and Socialist oppression, showing the
force of power and the need for clear rule; they were performed in
ways that seemed to signify the superiority of Communism over capi-
talism by applying idealized Marxist theories involving class struggle.
But they were also made to display consequent social decline, and
to take such weakening of the state and disintegration slowly. By as
early as the 1970s, imaginative directors were seizing on new ways to
present Shakespeares works: Macbeth, for instance, in a 1976 pro-
duction, had no weird sisters, but instead had the predictions and
prophecies as Macbeths own secret thoughts that haunted his con-
sciousness as they haunted his conscience. The king hereafter
prophecy became one of his multiple inner voices. In this way,
Macbeth both enacted and deconstructed the mind of the tyrant
and so educated playgoers in the forces of politics and its govern-
mental and social aftermaths. As the red curtain began to come
apart, Romanian actors increased their performances of the Roman
plays, showing the excesses in Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and, espe-
cially, Titus Andronicus. Nor are the romances exempt. Calibans
cries for liberty were staged against an autocratic Prospero and,
more tellingly, Gower became the autocrat of Pericles, no only telling
the story of Pericles but commanding the audience when to sit and
how to behave.
The extraordinary strength of this book rests, nally, in the life of
the author herself. She has seen many of these productions and she
speaks from rsthand experience and knowledge. But she also
shows a canny way of recording earlier productions by seeing
through the censorship that caused reviewers, even those most sym-
pathetic to the cause of freedom, to mask their commentary. With
painstaking care and admirable caution, Matei-Chesnoiu picks
through the recent past cries of her own beloved country to show
Shakespearean inections in another place, but in our time. The
observations can be unnerving; but they are also energizing. If we
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14 FOREWORD
are ever to plumb the depths of Shakespeare, the performances re-
corded in this book will have to be a part of how we do it. They tell
us possibilities about the plays, and about ourselves, which we ignore
at the cost of inexcusable ignorance. And the nal lesson implied in
this book is that the subject is not the political and social forces of
Romania, or of eastern Europe, alone. As Matei-Chesnoiu says ex-
plicitly at one point, they were just as true of an England personied
by a torturer like Topcliffe and an absolutist king like James I. A
study, then, which seems to travel so far from Tudor and Stuart En-
gland always has that period, too, in its sights.
Arthur F. Kinney
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Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK HAS BENEFITED FROM SUGGESTIONS AND COMMENTS ON EARLY
drafts of specic portions by Frances Barasch and Douglas Brooks.
My thanks go to each of them for their time and efforts. In addition,
the comments and reactions of colleagues to papers based on sec-
tions of this study were also helpful. I have included in this book, in
somewhat different and re-contextualized form, the papers pre-
sented at the World Shakespeare Congress (Valencia 2001), the Interna-
tional Shakespeare Conference in Stratford-upon-Avon (2000, 2002,
2004), and the Shakespeare in Europe conferences (Four Centuries of
Shakespeare in Europe, Murcia, 1999; Shakespeare in European
Culture, Basel, 2001; Shakespeare in European Politics, Utrecht,
2003). The nal version responds to the comments and criticism of
anonymous readers for Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, whom
I thank. I am also grateful to Harry Keyishian, Director of FDU Press,
for the benevolent guidance in the nal stages of abridgement of
the manuscript, and especially for the much-needed urging to trim
the book for its gratuitous bulk and its infelicities of style. Many of
these still remain, I am afraid, despite my efforts, and these things
of darkness I acknowledge as mine.
The early research and initial drafting of this study were greatly
facilitated by a Jubilee Education Grant for research at the Shake-
speare Centre Library and Shakespeare Institute Library in Stratford-upon-
Avon and by some research time at the Shakespeare Library in Munich.
I was especially aided by a Fulbright Scholar Grant for the World
Shakespeare Bibliography at Texas A&M University. My special thanks
go to Roger Pringle, Susan Brock, Ingeborg Bolz, and James L.
Harner, without whose help none of this would have been possible.
Arthur F. Kinney has a special place in my appreciation order, and
this is not only for having accepted to write the foreword to this pa-
limpsest-like book, which is the result of extensive collaborative ac-
tivity.
Most of all, I am grateful to my family, who have been proud and
supportive of my academic successes, though at times they found it
hard to accept the apparently stronger relationship with my com-
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16 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
puter. I thank all the people, Shakespeare colleagues and friends,
who have been beside me and have helped in the fashioning of ideas
and in sorting out the relevant matter. There is a signicant name
for my approach to Shakespeare in almost each country of Europe,
and I must mention Werner Bronnimann, Ton Hoenselaars, Jona-
than Bate, Mariangela Tempera, Angel Lu s Pujante, Andreas Hof-
fele, Manfred Pster, Krystyna Kujawinska, Holger Klein, and Ina
Schabert. My apologies to those I could not mention and to my Ro-
manian colleagues. The Bucharest National Theater, the Cluj Na-
tional Theater, and the Nottara Theater (Bucharest) provided me
with the copyright for the illustrations of Romanian Shakespeare
productions, for which I am very appreciative. For what I have stum-
bled upon and found, I am grateful to all.
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Shakespeare
in the Romanian
Cultural Memory
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1
Mapping Shakespeares Globe
in a Global World
THIS STUDY SEEKS TO EXTEND THE VIEW OF TRADITIONAL SCHOLARSHIP
regarding Eastern European space and the products of national cul-
tures by considering Shakespeare as a location of specic cultural
history, particularly in the Romanian conguration. As Stanley Wells
pointed out when writing about the integration of Shakespeare in
European culture, the study of Shakespeares impact in languages
other than those in which they originated can . . . be a two-way pro-
cess, blessing those who give as well as those who receive.
1
The ben-
et of studying Shakespeare, whose plays, for during at least the last
two centuries, have gradually permeated European culture in forms
and accents until recently yet unknown, can be equally rewarding to
Anglo-American scholars as it is to researchers whose native lan-
guage is not English. By partaking in the intellectual feast con-
structed around the Shakespearean paradigm, the diversied
European cultures and academics all over the world could experi-
ence a sense of unity while speaking the same language of the the-
ater and sharing a similar set of values. The result is, as Wells
observed in quoting Balz Engler, that Shakespeare takes on the
status of a maker, sometimes a transmitter of myths, in plays relating
no more directly to their ancestral texts than his own plays do to
Homer, Ovid, or Boccaccio.
2
In studying the representation of
Shakespeare elsewhere, we apply the same refurbishing and assimi-
lation method that he had used when constructing his dramatic rep-
resentations of the region of Eastern Europe under scrutiny. The
effect is a different structure, which would be as unrecognizable to
Shakespeare and his contemporaries as their understanding of these
regions must have been to their sixteenth-century inhabitants. How-
ever, this conceptual system of reconsidering cultural boundaries
using the Shakespeare criterion is a mental construction that grows
into something of great constancy.
Unable to resist the chiastic formulation of this chapters title, and
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20 SHAKESPEARE IN THE ROMANIAN CULTURAL MEMORY
aware of the inationary usage of this semiotic concept
3
in cur-
rent critical discourse, I consider mapping as a cognitive attempt at
describing the theatrical world of Shakespeare both physically,
through an account of productions, and mentally, by critical inter-
pretation. The abstraction and materiality inscribed in the carto-
graphic activity is aligned here to the theatrical action. With similar
permeable boundaries between the metaphorical and the material,
the theater has a special way of negotiating physical and intellectual
space, showing, if needed, that a disconcerting innity of angels can
be seen dancing on the point of a pin. In the introduction to the
collection of essays debating the politics of space and its negotiation
in early modern Britain, the editors document the signicant
changes in European spatial consciousness brought about by the ex-
ceptional development of cartography from the fteenth century
onwards. As Gordon and Klein observed, A spatial model that re-
quired a geographical centre, an omphalos, in order to describe, in
degrees of civilization, its difference from a diffuse periphery, was
slowly replaced by a framed geometric image fully available for Eu-
ropean inscription.
4
During the process of slowly replacing a
classical and medieval conceptual paradigm of concentric spatial re-
lationship with a more liberal mental organization of human space,
there appear certain cultural shortcuts. The theater is one of these
instructive bypasses because it helps audiences visualize distant
places instantly, with the help of some trick of imagination.
When trying to dene the area of Southeastern Europe where Ro-
mania lies, I have encountered a serious difculty. The author of a
comprehensive Web page about this region seems to share my con-
fusion, which he/she intends to alleviate by invoking the plurality of
readings. K. Feig wonders about the different English names given
to what I will call generically Eastern Europe when he/she writes,
Eastern Europe? Central Europe? East Central Europe? Southwestern
Europe? Southeastern Europe? The Balkans? What name shall we use?
The groupings are illusive and changingbased on myth, tradition,
dreams, treaties, geography, trade-offs, history, symbols, perceptions,
prejudice, power politics, arrogance, ignorance, and HOPE. The con-
cepts of Balkans and southern bring erroneous or incomplete
images of unique civil wars, hatred, barbarism, primitive, poor, irre-
deemable. The concept of central brings the same erroneous or in-
complete images of uniquely civilized, developed, western values. Is
it any wonder that the nations bordering the western and civilized
nations such as Germany and Austria exert enormous effort to link
themselves to them and distance themselves from the other? Is it a
region? What is it? The reader will need to make his/her own distinc-
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1: MAPPING SHAKESPEARES GLOBE IN A GLOBAL WORLD 21
tions. Whatever else, the civilized nations of the world in the 20th cen-
tury have treated this area with disdain, indifference, frustration, and
reacted with ignorance, hubris, cruelty, and discrimination.
5
Despite the radicalness of such a statement, this is how things stand
about denitions and global assertions at the beginning of this mil-
lennium. Therefore, Eastern Europe and Romania, in my accep-
tance, are not necessarily exact geographic places. Rather, they are
sites, or areas set aside for some precise purpose, and more speci-
cally sites of European cultural memory conserved for the study of
Shakespeare.
Whatever the early modern British playwrights and theatergoers
knew about the south-eastern European territory containing the
Carpathians, toward the lower end of the Danube where it ows into
the Black Sea, was initially conditioned by the ancients writings
about these places. How these classical discourses were transferred
into the domain of common knowledge for the Elizabethans and
Jacobeans is still a matter of debate. However, the general idea for
the early modern readers and theatergoers was that this area of East-
ern Europe, under Turkish domination at the time, was off-limits for
the civilized nations. John Gillies applies a phenomenological cri-
tique to the scene of cartography in King Lear, linking map-reading
in the early modern period to the creation of a new experience of
the bourgeois domestic interior.
6
This expansive interiority,
7
as
Gillies puts it, can explain the dominantly positive mood of recep-
tion and the popularity of cartography in this period, but I see it as
the inherent source of many misconceptions. Since the far-seeing
body is comfortably at home,
8
much of the information conveyed
through the maps cannot be veried. Therefore the facts are often
unreliable, and some data is generally derived from the classics. Ab-
sorbing indiscriminately the information proceeding from the abun-
dant translations of the classics and spicing it with some extravagant
reports from the travelers in those regions, the majority of the Brit-
ish developed a dogmatic and vague notion about much of the land
that lay beyond their immediate center of vision. Despite the abun-
dance of geographical information and the plethora of discourses di-
gesting the works of the classics, early modern readers and audiences
still considered the distant Eastern European spaces as marginal, a
land of elsewhere full of dangers and disagreeable surprises.
Travelers and geographers only apparently succeeded in dissipat-
ing this informational obscurity. In dening the spatial and cultural
coordinates of distant regions more or less accurately, the travelers,
cartographers, and historiographers implicitly circumscribed their
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concepts to a strict delimitation between home and foreign. In
addition, not many of those who provided cartographic or ethno-
graphic data ventured farther than Western Europe, except for
those who did business with these countries or were involved in
some sort of extraordinary adventure in the region. Most early mod-
ern instructive accounts about Eastern European places, including
the popular Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Ortelius, were inspired from
the writings of the classics and contained practical information
about this area of Eastern Europe adorned with splendid maps.
9
Lit-
tle attention was given to the fact that the references to these regions
were those used in classical Latin cartography, or that the names of
the peoples inhabiting them were extracted from ancient texts. It
seems that the visual component and the attraction of the interest-
ingly designed maps were more likely to determine the canon of
relevance for Shakespeares contemporaries than the accuracy of
authentic information. Similarly, the exotic and eccentric facts
about the foreign Eastern European territories, including the three
Romanian provinces, as derived from the classics, were more attrac-
tive to the early modern mind than the reality of those places and
the people who inhabited them. Thus, a myth-making process in-
stantly came into being, and the activity of mentally rewriting con-
ventional illusions about faraway places often replaced the accurate
report.
Unlike his contemporaries, who wrote apparently informative es-
says about various parts of the world, Shakespeare had the ability of
making foreign spaces immediately tangible to his audiences
through the materiality of the theater. Moreover, his plays show how
all the cultural or racial preconceptions can only be deceptive,
obliquely warning everyone not to take too much stereotypical infor-
mation for granted. The study of Shakespeares integration into
modern Romanian culture shows that the people in this part of Eu-
rope, like the other European nations, were ready to welcome the
Shakespeare concept almost at the same time and mostly for the
same reasons. Essentially, three kinds of questions are raised here.
Does the presence of Shakespeare in the discourse of various cul-
tures cast a light on both the history of Shakespeare production and
the respective cultures? How, in certain cases, did the process of
cultural inuenceif anyoperate? Was there an action of inter-
vention, propagation, and transformation of the itemized and stan-
dardized icons provided by the perception of Shakespeare at the
level of a particular country? If the theater is a site for the accumula-
tion of traditional symbols and metaphors, were these particularly
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relevant for the Romanians understanding of ethnic, social, and po-
litical relations at a given time?
This informative theatrical tour documents the modern Roma-
nian perception of Shakespeare, seen as a prototype of British cul-
tural identity. A general account of Romanian cultural products and
stage history attempts to show how early translations from Shake-
speare or productions of plays belonging to each genre have con-
tributed to the shaping of a national theatrical selfhood that was
intimately related to the European reception of the English poet. In
analyzing the re-production of Shakespeare in Europe, Balz Engler
calls the early phase of Shakespeare reception Shakespeare beyond
the rules.
10
Linking the early history of European Shakespeares
with the increased signicance of what the English playwright stood
for, Engler comments, The national, even nationalistic, dimension
of Shakespeare re-production is certainly characteristic of Europe,
having to do with the association of language and nation and the
need to translate his works.
11
In surveying the nineteenth-century
translations of Shakespeare in Romania, it becomes visible how vari-
ous translators interpreted the allusions extant in the Shakespeare
text. The underlying inference is that the early Romanian transla-
tors addressed the complex philosophical issues in the tragedies in
a particularly orthodox mode. Despite the popularity of the Roman
plays with the theatrical audiences in the three provinces, and later
in the unied Romania, the four tragedies, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello,
and King Lear, provided material that could satisfy the publics need
for interiority. In addition, the cultural authority of the Shakespeare
gure was perceived as a means of facilitating the countrys exit
from the status of a marginalized Balkan elsewhere. By promoting
mostly the translations of Shakespeares plays that they perceived to
raise the universal issues of humanity, Romanian intellectuals dur-
ing the 1848 revolutionary period and later hoped to advance the
peoples cultural interests and integrate them in the European fam-
ily of nations.
Considering the association between theater and history, my dis-
cussion follows the Romanian productions of Shakespeares history
plays during the 1980s and 90s. Seeing the theater as an escape
from the adversities of life, as well as a cultural space where pent-up
frustrations and fears could be exorcised, the Romanian audiences
in the Communist period expected political theatrical readings of
Shakespeares histories. During the eighties in Romania, there was
a severe split between what people thought and what they were told
to think. An unstable and ofcially constructed illusion of reality col-
lided with the social and moral disaster obvious to everyone. The
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Communist ideologists could no longer control peoples minds by
providing their fabricated version of history, in conict with an in-
creasingly unstable reality. The public developed an illicit taste for
resistance and subversion, which could be materialized in the theat-
rical encounter between author, director, and audience. In this
period, producing Shakespeare, and especially the plays about En-
glands past, was seen as a passive form of resistance against the
Communist ideology, which the disintegrating regime was propagat-
ing ever more feebly. The ensuing democratic mutation of the nine-
ties in Romania brought an increased interest in the production of
Shakespeares English histories by the theatrical companies. Being
no longer encumbered by the need to avoid political censorship or
to provoke latent disruptive meanings, Romanian directors focused
on staging the histories as effective cultural conjunctions between
nations. Directors in the nineties saw the international language of
the theater and politics as a convenient form of emerging from the
status of former cultural isolation. Consequently, the plays drawing
on English history tended to represent a form of multinational the-
atrical export. They became apolitical and ahistorical aesthetic
means of communication rather than instruments of political sabo-
tage.
In examining how Shakespeare has been initially appropriated
and gradually localized in Romanian theater, we see that he shaped
the national dramatic arts while his plays were being internalized.
Shakespeare becomes a paradigm of cultural evolution and the
theatrical maturity of this nation. In the early hard Communist pe-
riod (194960), when the power wanted to legitimize its control
over Romanias past and present in every possible way, producing
Shakespeare extensively was a form of elevating accreditation. In
this period, the production of the comedies was a viable cultural
project from the perspective of the authorities, because these plays
were less concerned with political issues and could be dramatized
successfully in social modes. In the decades of Communist rule be-
tween 1970 and 1990, however, Shakespeare was transparently put
to ideological uses, and directors at local and central theaters be-
came more involved in undermining the collapsing Communist re-
gime by reshaping mentalities about the prerogatives of power. In
this period, the productions of Shakespeares comedies and trage-
dies disclosed specic political agendas and were used explicitly with
subversive purposes. I would like to think that the Romanian the-
aters dissident inuence over two decades of producing Shake-
speare had somehow induced the psychological mood that led to
the 1989 political displacement of autocracy in the real world. In
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the nineties, liberated from the straight jacket of political meanings,
theaters and directors concentrated on what the productions of
Shakespeares comedies and tragedies represented for the Roma-
nian theater. In an intensifying self-reexive enthusiasm, directors
paraphrased previous theatrical styles of producing Shakespeare
and devised their own translations and adaptations of the plays.
Thus, many productions have become sophisticated affairs that must
be decoded by specialists, armed with rened deciphering systems.
The history of producing Hamlet on the Romanian stage goes par-
allel with the reception of Shakespeare in Romania in different peri-
ods. However, a cogent discussion about this play needs a separate
chapter, not being included in the series of productions of trage-
dies, because of the exceptional popularity of this play with Roma-
nian audiences ever since the beginning of its translation and
production. The early twentieth-century productions replicated the
romantic-hero vogue derived from the French and German inter-
pretations, and the declamatory style of the actor interpreting the
main hero was directly proportional with the stars fame and posi-
tion in the national theater. Interpreting Hamlet at that time was
equivalent to an international passport to recognition and fame.
Producing Shakespeare in general, and Hamlet especially, came to
be regarded as a rapid way of emerging from the marginal status of
cultural provincialism. Entering through the grand gate of Hamlet
could secure a lasting place in the patrimony of world culture. Dur-
ing World War II, productions of Hamlet were scarcer than ever, be-
cause of the war crisis. However, the plays political cargo was
exploited in a barely recorded production of the play in a political
war prison, where anti-Nazi allusions were evident. The story of the
postwar Communist Hamlet in Romania, however, is a matter of cul-
tural sophistication, even audacity. The early Soviet-inuenced
Communist authorities thought that by producing Shakespeares
most admired play, they would gain the emblem of nobility in cul-
tural matters. In later years of totalitarian domination, however, di-
rectors used Hamlet to suit their personal political tentative of
undermining the Communist regime through the doublespeak of
Shakespeares tragedy. The Romanian Hamlet of the nineties, in a
period when political pressure and the need for subversion were no
longer valid, became once more a theatrical passport through which
a smaller culture intended to bring its tribute to the larger world
cultural heritage. Moreover, in a 2001 Romanian production of
Hamlet by Vlad Mugur, the director faced his own mortality in direct
relation to this play, thus introducing an element of intimately indi-
PAGE 25 ................. 11420$ $CH1 10-20-05 11:13:00 PS
vidual approach to Hamlet in the most eloquent, even aporetic,
presentist mood.
It is no wonder that a country belonging to a marginalized Eastern
European space has attempted to exit the peripheral status of a rela-
tively insignicant romance culture by adopting the literary values
of the Western world. Voting for Shakespeare in its Romanian ap-
propriations meant advancing toward the enriching caliber of a re-
ned Western culture, which had always regarded its Eastern relative
as alien and barely civilized, a thing of darkness that they could
hardly acknowledge as theirs. Ancient travelers noted that the lands
in the parts of the Black Sea were extremely unfriendly. Early mod-
ern writers highlighted the social, moral, and cultural decay of the
inhabitants of the three Romanian provinces because of the Otto-
man domination. The wars of the twentieth century and the calamity
of Communism did nothing to change this condition of a second-
rate place and culture among the nations of Europe. However, the
complex way in which this nation chose to adopt the cultural legacy
of Shakespeares dramatic formula has been an efcient manner of
exiting the marginal status and approaching the cultural and social
level of other countries of Europe. Dennis Kennedy calls Shake-
speare a cold warrior when he demonstrates that Shakespeare
was used in Western and Central Europe as a site for the recovery
and reconstruction of values that were perceived to be under threat,
or already lost
12
in the years from 1945 to 1965. Likewise, by adopt-
ing the banner of Shakespeare, Romania has intended and tended
to be no longer a liminal space at the cultural margin of Europe,
but a place somewhere near the Black Sea and the Danube, where
Shakespeare has been performed, translated, and interpreted suc-
cessfully for almost two centuries. Moreover, by evidencing close sim-
ilarities in the adoption of Shakespeare with the other countries of
Europe, Romanian culture received Shakespeare as a passport to
European integration long before the international visas were abol-
ished politically.
PAGE 26 ................. 11420$ $CH1 10-20-05 11:13:00 PS
2
Early Translations of Shakespeare in Romania
ENGLISH TRAVELERS AND GEOGRAPHERS IN THE RENAISSANCE PERCEIVED
the European zone around the Carpathians, the lower end of the
Danube, and the western side of the Black Sea as alien territory.
Here, dangers seemed to lurk from every corner of the rugged and
often inaccessible country, or monstrous and savage natives who
showed evil habits made any civil exchange impossible. Moreover,
this was the dominion of the Great Turke, and, therefore, most in-
auspicious for Westerners. All these cultural and racial preconcep-
tions were derived from or capitalized on the classical stories about
these places, available in a multitude of early modern translations.
The plethora of popular geographical texts and atlases, which
mostly took over the information about these regions from the clas-
sics, offered factual details and some basic data about a country that
signied next to nothing for the English traveler or theatergoer.
The merchants and adventurers, who had all sorts of experiences in
the eastern Mediterranean and went as far as the Black Sea or Rus-
sia, brought back and related especially the stories of wonder and
excess. They looked to the marketable value of their accounts in the
publishing business, which could only be increased if the title page
announced that the story was The true and most wonderful re-
port. In the meantime, the majority of the inhabitants of these
Eastern European regions had little knowledge of what happened
beyond the local area they lived in, and even less about the distant
British Isles. The local population in the three provinces of modern
RomaniaWalachia, Moldova, and Transylvaniawas busy farming
the land, extracting the gold from the mountains, or tending to
their sheep, and did not leave many written records of their activi-
ties.
In a post-Kleinian psychoanalytical study on Race as Projection
in Othello, Janet Adelman writes about a contaminated inner
world of envy in the play. According to Adelman, in Iago, Shake-
speare gives motiveless malignity a body
1
by incorporating the ele-
PAGE 27
27
................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:12:58 PS
ment of envy and frustration of the morality tradition. In the case of
the anomalous and most always negative reports about the geo-
graphic area under discussion appearing in early modern texts, we
could speak of a cultural and ideological contamination of the
discourses about these places. Writings in the period were largely
contaminated with information from the classics about the customs
and habits of peoples in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, generally
either inexact or taken for granted from hearsay. Geographers and
historians in ancient times had few means of verifying the veracity of
the reports about this area, and they recorded information ltered
through other peoples consciousness. When certain classical men
of letters, such as Ovid, for example, had rsthand knowledge of the
western side of the Black Sea and the inhabitants of these regions,
they did not report favorably on them at all. Moreover, the fact that
these provinces were in the Ottoman Turks extending power in
early modern times, at the margins of their empire, was an addi-
tional source of anxiety and negativity in the perception of these
places by Western Europeans. Daniel J. Vitkus documents that the
fear of the Islamic bogey was well established in the European con-
sciousness
2
in the period. In this paradoxical geography of exclu-
sion, Shakespeare had no choice but to perceive this area as
marginal, when he did at all. The Shakespearean plays unusual to-
pography incorporates a note of liminality, which he adapted from
the classical and early modern geographical texts.
Analyzing the impact of foreigners on the early modern commu-
nity and culture in a study on Elizabethans and foreigners, G. K.
Hunter notes the large amount of information on physical geogra-
phy accessible to the Elizabethans, almost similar to the modern
availability of such knowledge. However, in point of the framework
of social, psychological, and cultural assumptions concerning for-
eigners and distant regions, Hunter observes an overlap
3
in the
early modern periods perception of people from other countries.
The medieval conception of the zones of the earth, centered on a
spiritual Christian geography as well as a physical one, converges
with the modern worldview. Hunter considers the fact that geogra-
phy was a marginal subject in comparison to classical history and lit-
erature in grammar schools, and that throughout the period there
was a strong ambivalence in the attitude to travel.
4
This overlap of
radically different and almost incompatible modes of thought in the
domain of geographical knowledge allows Shakespeare to explore,
swiftly and coherently, the image of the foreigner, the stranger, the
outsider in a dimension which is at once terrestrial and spiritual.
5
Similarly, A. J. Hoenselaars focuses on Hamlet in his examples of
PAGE 28 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:12:58 PS
2: EARLY TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE IN ROMANIA 29
Shakespeares perception of foreignness,
6
asserting that Shake-
speare makes careful distinctions between nationality and national
character. Hoenselaars argues that Shakespeare relies on stereotypes
of national character for stage characterization only. In addition, I
notice that Shakespeare demonstrates a special potential for staging
the tangibility of the national attributes of peoples in the world
through the physicality of the individual places, whether central or
marginal to the English shores. The stereotypes of national charac-
ter are subtly dismantled and turned to mean differently, in signi-
cant contrastive modes, while the audiences are given a glimpse of
the foreign spaces from the interior, from their inhabitants per-
spective.
All the knowledge the early modern English audiences and artists
had about the farther Eastern European space where Romania lies
was through the accounts of travelers (rsthand or reported) and
historians (classical and contemporary), and through the maps
about these places. Arthur F. Kinney discusses the impact of the rap-
idly growing chorography on mid-sixteenth-century European imag-
ination of foreign places. Seeing that maps, like poems, work with
images functioning as symbols, Kinney notes, Beyond the self-
referentiality within the mapthe chiasmus of meanings in its sym-
bolic corners, for instancethere is referentiality to the culture that
produces it, and to the reader who reads it.
7
Like in the art of the
surveyor or map-maker, in referring to foreign spaces, Shakespeare
produces a spatial triangulation including the mention of a distant
location, some vague knowledge his audiences might have about it
(gathered from classical or early modern sources), and a possible
allusion to his contemporary England. This is proleptically ap-
pended to the plays social and historical context, giving the audi-
ences a real glimpse into distant places that many would never be
able to see.
It is perhaps attractive to speculate on the fact that all the roman-
tic comedies, with the exception of The Merry Wives of Windsor, are
set in extrinsic locations with an exotic avor of elsewhere. So are
the romances, even Cymbeline, since this plays ancient Britain is as
eerie and displaced as many other items of Shakespeares errant ge-
ography. This may be a way of attracting his audiences attention to
the existence of the marginal territories, by making them as real and
tangible for the people coming to the theater as the encircled space
of the Globe they occupied. Considering the island space as a po-
tently image-making factor induced by the atlases and chorograph-
ies of that period, Jonathan Bate sees the island as a special
enclosed space within the larger environment of geopolitics, per-
PAGE 29 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:12:59 PS
haps like the enclosed space of the theatre within the larger environ-
ment of the city.
8
Similarly, distant spaces from Eastern Europe,
Asia, or Africa function in Shakespeare as so many islands of geo-
graphic imagination, triggering connotations of alterity.
Unlike the hypothetical and highly conceptualized locations of
the otherwise very popular maps, chorographies, and atlases, or the
repetitive and often obscure geographical descriptive discourses,
Shakespeares theater shows the audiences that there are other par-
ticular, concrete, though distant, places to think or imagine about.
This process of theatrical geographic projection and visualization,
more efcient than any Mercator scientic system, will always work
on increasingly numerous and multinational audiences in the centu-
ries to follow. Each individual production of a Shakespeare play
brings on stage an often-exotic space of Europe or the Mediterra-
nean basin, but it also projects the audiences cultural assumptions
about that space. The larger the sphere of the spectators geographi-
cal and historical knowledge extends, the more efcient the theatri-
cal projection is. According to this imaginative spatial expansion,
like in Blaise Pascals
9
graphic image representing the extent of
human knowledge, we have a circle whose center is everywhere and
the circumference nowhere.
Such diffuse and multiple visualizations of foreign spaces in the
productions of Shakespeares plays can be paralleled with a no less
complex appropriation of Shakespeare in Eastern European cul-
tures. Before analyzing how the Shakespeare myth is implicated in
the fashioning of Romanian national culture, a survey of various per-
formance paradigms and their inection in the production history
of national cultures in the eastern area of Europe is required. Susan
Bassnett spoke about the new transformation and enculturation of
Shakespeare when she wrote, Shakespeare, that great national
icon, has been made and remade as often as ideas of Englishness
and Britishness have been refashioned.
10
Similarly, shedding light
on the category of quotation with relevance to Shakespeare, John
Drakakis noted that Shakespeare now is primarily a collage of fa-
miliar quotations, fragments whose relation to any coherent aes-
thetic principle is both problematical and irremediably ironical.
11
In the current context of Shakespearean appropriations in Europe
and the world, a large number of publications demonstrate that
each cultural milieu has attempted to redene and interpret Shake-
speare within their existing terms by injecting historical and local
aspirations, anxieties, and distancing motivations into the produc-
tion of plays. Joseph G. Price
12
treats Shakespeare as the cultural
phenomenon of the post-Renaissance world, which now extends be-
PAGE 30 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:00 PS
yond Western boundaries to comprise every culture, including pop-
ular culture. Only in the last decade, more than twenty book-length
studies, collections, and monographs have appeared to testify to the
interesting issue of various national appropriations of Shakespeare.
Dennis Kennedys collection of essays entitled Foreign Shakespeare
13
and the collection of articles edited by Michael Hattaway, Boika So-
kolova, and Derek Roper
14
opened the way for many creative critical
responses to Shakespeare in different cultures.
Shakespeare and National Culture edited by John J. Joughin
15
contin-
ues the project begun by cultural materialists of uncovering the po-
litical and social uses according to which the Shakespeare text has
been appropriated, adapted, and reinvented. Part I of the collection
of essays refers to colonial and anti-colonial appropriations of
Shakespeare, with focus on the Indian and South-African cultures,
and Part III (Shakespeare at the heart of Europe) is an extension
and sharpening of the debate concerning the question of nation-
hood and its associate fantasies. The meaningful contributions by
Thomas Healy
16
and Francis Barker
17
focus on nding the fault lines
and continuities between past and present in the representations of
the protean Shakespeare in Europe. Robert Weimann
18
gives an ac-
count of the contradictory uses to which Shakespeare was put in
postwar Germany, establishing the vexed relations of intellectual au-
thority and political power of Shakespeares appropriation in the
German Democratic Republic. Weimann argues that the Enlighten-
ment roots of a classicized version of Shakespeare resulted in a
literary intellectualized presentation rather than a popular interpre-
tation of the plays. The conservative approach became a national
icon that was employed by the Marxist-Leninist authorities of the
GDR to promote the idea of Shakespeares works as splendid pre-
gurations of their own Socialist-humanist ideals. This conscation
practice is largely similar, I would add, to the postwar reconsidera-
tion of Shakespeare in the other Communist countries of Central
and Eastern Europe, including Romania.
Speaking of the resistant and subversive signicance of a mimed
production of Romeo and Juliet in Bulgaria, in the same collection of
essays edited by John Joughin, Thomas Healy makes the analogy
with the hole in the Romanian ag during the 1989 revolution. As a
symbol of their rejection of the old Communist order, the Romani-
ans had cut the Communist coat of arms out of the center of the
ag. However, as the old order appeared in new guises only months
later, the signal of change was beginning to look increasingly sus-
pect. In asking about the signicance of a hole in the ag, a declara-
tion of change, a denial of the past, the answer Healy suggests is an
PAGE 31 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:00 PS
acknowledgment of absence
19
and an uncertainty of meaning. I
would extend the analogy of absence by suggesting a Shakespearean
model of the cipher, which stands in a high place, but only ap-
pears to be nothing in itself, because its presence raises the value of
the unity neighboring it. Similarly, in the histories of incorporation
or, rather, dislocation and displacement of the Shakespeare text by
various national cultures, the vacuity, partial irrelevance, or even
total absence of the literary side of the plays texts only adds to the
dramatic eminence of performativity inherited from and inherent
in this theater. As Healy puts it, the multiple Shakespeares have de-
veloped their own hegemonic practices which silently assume Shake-
speare as a civilizing force, whose continuing presence, whether
drawn from English Renaissance, French Enlightenment, or Ger-
man romantic traditions, illustrates cultural advancement.
20
In
moving forward on this practice-paved theatrical way toward Roma-
nia, one of the inglorious areas of Eastern Europe once referred to
as elsewhere, it is increasingly evident that the way this country
appropriated Shakespeare, in both the theater and literature, quali-
es Romania as a landmark for European Shakespeare theater.
Russian Shakespeare scholarship and theater designates another
area of Eastern Europe that inherited and transformed the associa-
tions and inections of the Shakespearean tradition. The collection
of essays edited by Alexander Parfenov and Joseph G. Price
21
ex-
plains the origins of Shakespeares signicance to Russian theater in
the nineteenth century and his pervasive inuence through decades
of Communism. Alexei Bartoshevitchs essay on Soviet Shakespear-
ean productions in the 1960s and 70s charts how vigorously during
that period the Russian theater re-read Shakespeare in terms of
present-day Soviet life. Bartoshevitch states that, after the 1970s, Rus-
sian theater de-romanticized Shakespeare and instead offered politi-
cally charged productions of his plays.
22
The study interprets
Waldemar Pqnsos Richard III (1975) as depicting an anarchic world,
stripped of all signs of lofty tragedy, in which the stage is com-
pletely dominated by ruthless grotesques.
23
This theatrical de-
romanticization of Shakespeare grew out of the traditions of Brecht
and Beckett and out of Jan Kotts Grand Mechanism of history, seen
as a cynical sequence in which the end is the beginning and one
villain replaces another. In this implacable machinery, Richmond
follows in the footsteps of Richard, Macbeth is reincarnated in Mal-
com, Fortinbras takes over after Claudius.
24
The study is energized
by its vivid descriptions of sets, costumes, characters, and actions in
the Russian productions of Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King
Lear by Pqnso and Robert Sturua. This collection of essays provides
PAGE 32 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:01 PS
a commendable summary of evolving Russian interests in Shake-
speare in the twentieth century, and points to the fascinating range
of the ideological collisions between the post-Revolutionary Soviet
establishment and the popular resistance, as each has co-opted
Shakespeare for its own purposes.
In a study tracing the reception of Shakespeare in Eastern Eu-
rope, Zdenek Str brny
25
explains how writers, translators, critics, mu-
sicians, and theater personnel have contributed to the knowledge
and appreciation of Shakespeare and how his plays have been ap-
propriated for political purposes. The author pays extensive atten-
tion to Czech, Russian, and Hungarian productions, but this
meritorious study deals with the Romanian substantial contribution
to Eastern European Shakespeare in only three or four pages. More-
over, in an article published earlier, Str brny argues for a cultural
denition of Eastern European spaces mentioned in Shakespeare,
which points toward their perception as alien territory. Examining
Shakespeares allusions to Eastern Europe, the author makes the
case that this area appears mostly as a cold and mysterious wilder-
ness or otherness.
26
This peculiar land of indeterminate location,
however, has adopted Shakespeare in a most uncompromising way,
whatever nation acted as a foster parent. Whether Czech, Russian,
Polish, Hungarian, Serb, or Bulgarian, all Eastern European nations
have encoded Shakespeare in their national performative and liter-
ary presence.
An admirable study by Alexander Shrubanov and Boika Soko-
lova
27
examines the appropriation of Shakespeare in Bulgaria be-
tween 1944 and 1989. Attention is given to the impact of Soviet
aesthetics on productions, the creation in textbooks of a stereotyped
Shakespeare and its relation to the suppression of literary criticism,
the ideological use of productions of the tragedies and comedies,
and the debate about modernizing Shakespeare in the theater. The
authors present Bulgarian productions of Romeo and Juliet and Ham-
let as a Shakespearean mirror held to the fortunes of new Bulgaria,
and the early reception of a childrens version of The Merchant of Ven-
ice as illuminating the perception of the Jew in this country. After a
presentation of the teaching of Shakespeare in Bulgarian schools,
the authors focus intensely on East European uses of the great trage-
dies and the comedies in the Bulgarian context.
The recent collection of essays entitled The Globalization of Shake-
speare in the Nineteenth Century
28
explores the way in which Shake-
speares international reputation was constructed through the
appropriation and subversion of the plays in the canon to suit na-
tional demands and a variety of political and cultural agendas. In
PAGE 33 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:01 PS
the foreword to this edition, Peter Holland gives an overview of the
nineteenth-century Shakespeare in England and abroad, noting that
the senses in which Shakespeare existed worldwide continually
changed as each country reinvestigated its own relationship with
Shakespeare.
29
We could detect, therefore, a continual process of
readjustment in the reception of Shakespeare in the nineteenth
century. While in Britain the bard was gradually growing into the
most precious of all British cultural objects and a symbol of national
achievement, in Europe and elsewhere in the world, each national
culture was redening itself by adopting the English national factor
as a criterion of cultural accomplishment. As the editors put it
briey and eloquently, Everyone, in short, wanted a piece of Shake-
speare, and these appropriations, in turn, created a tradition of
bardolatry that continues in many quarters until our own day.
30
The various essays in this collection show how in Romania, as in
Flanders and also in Argentina and Brazil in the early nineteenth
century, the neoclassical French adaptations were used to introduce
Shakespeares plays to the respective national cultures.
The history of Shakespeares adoption by Romanian culture is as
rich as any countrys in the Eastern European area. The domains of
Shakespeare scholarship/criticism, translations, literary adapta-
tions, and especially the theater have yielded impressive cultural
products. An early twentieth-century study by Marcu Berza
31
exam-
ines the causes of the attraction of the Romanian public for Shake-
speares plays. Undoubtedly, the elements of folklore contained in
the plays, some of which are taken over even from Balkan oral litera-
ture, constituted, as the author points out, one of the factors ex-
plaining the success of Shakespeare among the mass of the play-
going public in Romania. Alexandru Dutu
32
gives a comprehensive
study of Shakespeares reception in Romania and delineates stages
in this process of appropriation, namely, penetration through inter-
mediaries, contact with original texts, and original interpretation of
producers and critics. Dutu concludes that throughout these stages
Shakespeare contributed toward the development of a taste for
drama and of cultural progress in Romania. Aurel Curtui,
33
in a
book monograph, examines the reception of Hamlet in Romania
with emphasis on translations, criticism, and inuence on Roma-
nian literature and intellectual life. The Romanian critic and transla-
tor Dan Grigorescu
34
studies Shakespeare in the context of modern
Romanian culture and traces Romanian responses to Shakespeares
plays and their signicance, pointing to the specicity of Romanian
culture within the framework of European art. Leon Levitchis name
has long been connected with Shakespearean criticism
35
and transla-
PAGE 34 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:02 PS
tion,
36
and he edited the rst scholarly edition of the Complete Works
37
in Romanian.
A little while before Shakespeare had come to be perceived as
the epitome of Western culture and civility in modern Romania, in
early nineteenth century, the three provinces that formed this coun-
try had learned about the plays via the German and Viennese
troupes touring their capitals. The cultured elite in these cities, es-
pecially in Walachia and Moldova, were still inuenced by the Turk-
ish customs, but a fresh inux of Western values, especially the
French and German cultures, was a special way of afrming a na-
tional identity in the making. This nation has always aspired to the
values of Western cultures, while the vicissitudes of geography and
politics kept its legs of clay rmly glued to the viscous soil of Levant.
However, along the more than a century and a half since the theatri-
cal and literary dissemination of Shakespeare in the land around the
Carpathians and the Danube, the name has come to signify diverse
but always important issues related to a Western European aspira-
tion. Through the early translations and productions, the national
Romanian literature and the theater partially came to dene them-
selves and emerge as pillars of national culture adhering to Western
European values. In the cultural momentum between the two world
wars, when Romania steadied her cultural pace, the positive and
abundant reception of Shakespeare was always there to witness and
ascertain the authorized notion of high cultural achievement. In the
half-century interval of dire Communist oppression, the plays were
used as sophisticated tools of subversion. In times of democracy,
however, the Shakespeare emblem has become an epitome for the
theater in its excellent abstraction and international neutrality. Inso-
far as modern Romania can be seen as a special place somewhere,
in which Shakespeare is being played meaningfully and actively, the
following pages will try to point out only a few milestones in this het-
erogeneous theatrical atlas.
Early History of Romanian
Translations: Appropriation
In sketching the process by which their Shakespeare became
our Shakespeare in Romania, a non-English-speaking and Latin-
origin culture, the focus is on the appropriation, assimilation, and
transformation of Shakespeares language through translations in
the nineteenth century. When dealing with early translations, a
number of essential questions can be raised. How does Shakespeare
PAGE 35 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:02 PS
translated into other cultures reveal dimensions of the plays not
apparent in their early modern origins? Is Shakespeare outside En-
glish still Shakespeare? How have the early translations of the plays
served as a vehicle for cultural domination and the dissemination of
ideas? In these terms, translation means both verbal literary treat-
ment, which is the object of this chapter, and more broadly, transla-
tion and interpretation in the theater. Early nineteenth-century
Romanian poets saw in Shakespeare a good vehicle for promoting
their revolutionary ideals, one of the insertion points of cultural
strategies within the political setting of the 1848 revolution. More-
over, the multiple questionings and the ethical issues raised in the
plays, explored mainly in the tragedies, were good ways of raising
the peoples awareness and developing a sense of national identity.
In a period when the three Romanian provinces were still under the
waning inuence of Ottoman rule, a strong moral discernment, de-
rived from the reading and dramatic encounter with Shakespeare,
could only help develop a sense of national identity. The Romanian
peoples sentiment of belonging to the Christian religion was a form
of defending their national identity against the centuries-old offen-
sive of Islam. So was the appreciation of this peoples Latin origin as
an asset against the inuences of both the Islamic south and the
Slavic East.
Examining the current situation of Shakespeare studies and trans-
lation, Dirk Delabastita makes the already famous comment that
translation was the Cinderella of Shakespeare studies,
38
which
had remained the almost exclusive property of the Anglo-American
academic establishment. While subscribing to the idea of the mar-
ginalization of translation studies in general, it seems important to
mention Delabastitas comment inscribing the interest in transla-
tion within a larger romantic concept in the nineteenth century,
which posited the text as a transparent self-representation of the au-
thors intention. From this perspective, the nineteenth century in
Europe was the period when Shakespeare gradually became inter-
national property,
39
playing a major role in the development of na-
tional identities. Translations in this interval were essential for the
dissemination of Shakespeare all over the world, and by translating
the plays, many European nations learned the lesson of intercultural
communication and civil tolerance. Delabastita explains the undis-
puted and indisputable canonized status of Shakespeare as the ulti-
mate icon of literary art,
40
arguing that many nations bestowed on
this literary gure a kind of wisdom and authority of almost meta-
physical depth, thus attributing his plays a transcendental quality. I
have identied a similar situation when surveying the state of nine-
PAGE 36 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:03 PS
teenth-century translations in Romania, since the translators, proba-
bly involuntarily, identied the moral issues dramatized in
Shakespeares tragedies with a universal ethical paradigm. This led
them to prefer mostly the four tragedies in their rst translation ap-
proaches, probably considering that these plays addressed general
human issues that were essential in the nations cultural advance-
ment during the crucial period of the mid and late nineteenth cen-
tury.
The European context of nineteenth-century translations is im-
mensely rich and has been the subject of extensive scholarship.
41
In
the circumstances of the Shakespearean translations in Western Eu-
rope, the French and German versions have played an important
role in the documentation of early Romanian translations, because
most nineteenth-century translators drew on these interpretations.
The early and popular Ducis versions of Hamlet (1769), Romeo et Julie-
tte (1772), Le Roi Lear (1783), Macbeth (1784), Jean sans Terre (1791),
and Othello (1792) did not inuence early Romanian translators as
much as Le Tourneur or Alexandre Dumas. Just as Ducis drew on
Le Tourneur and Antoine de La Place, Romanian translators did the
same. However, since the Ducis versions were adapted for the the-
ater, notable nineteenth-century Romanian directors drew on these
French versions to forge their own translation of the Shakespeare
text in performance. These Romanian directors translations are not
recorded in print, but there is evidence in the theatrical journals of
the time referring to their creation of personal texts for the theater,
or sometimes only for recitation in literary circles. Le Tourneurs
Shakespeare traduit de lAnglois (177683) in prose is not of very high
quality, but compared with that of La Place (1645) and other con-
temporary efforts, it marks a considerable advance. Voltaires Brutus
and La Mort de Cesar (1731) is inscribed in the French vogue of adap-
tations from Shakespeare, while his translation of Jules Cesar (1769)
was at the basis of a few Romanian translations of fragmentary texts
from this play.
Franc ois Guizot republished Le Tourneurs translation in a re-
vised form (Oeuvres comple`tes de Shakespeare 1821), enabling the
younger generation of poets and critics to investigate further those
enthusiastic eulogies of Shakespeare they found in German roman-
tic writers. Seduced by English romanticism, Alfred de Vigny greatly
contributed to the discovery of Shakespeare in France. In an admira-
ble translation, he transported the English success of Othello to the
stage of the Theatre Francais (1829). During his exile in England,
Benjamin Laroche studied Shakespeare with great enthusiasm, and
spent many years devising a translation into French. His Oeuvres com-
PAGE 37 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:03 PS
ple`tes (1839) was a success, and he received a prize for the best ver-
sion of Shakespeare. The result of a similar exile to Guernesey,
Francois-Victor Hugos translation of Shakespeares Oeuvres comple`tes
(185772), written with an introduction by his father, Victor Hugo,
and especially his Hamlet, were important source texts for Romanian
translators. The French literary critic Emile Montegut produced the
Oeuvres comple`tes in ten volumes between the years 186873. His opus
is another landmark of inspiration for Romanian translators of
Shakespeare. The version of Hamlet by Euge`ne Morand and Marcel
Schwob (1899), despite being in prose, was considered to have a re-
markable delity to the original. It inuenced Romanian early twen-
tieth-century theater directors in forging their translations for
performance, when they did not use the already published literary
versions.
Like the French, the domain of nineteenth-century German criti-
cism and translation of Shakespeare is an extensive source for schol-
arship in the history of the appropriation of Shakespeare in Europe,
though it is manifested in less decorative forms. I cannot hope to
comprehend the entire province of German translations of Shake-
speare, but I will try to point out those translators that are likely to
have played a role in the selection of the inspiration source texts
for the Romanian Shakespeare translations. Most of these German
translators are not acknowledged on the front pages of the Roma-
nian versions. Extensive research is still needed to identify the exact
text on which each Romanian version is based. However, it is reason-
able to assume that some German translations were at the basis of
early Romanian productions of Shakespeare in the three provinces,
especially in Transylvania, where the German and Austrian inu-
ences were preeminent. Wieland (176266) and the Austrian Franz
Heufeld (1772) rst translated Hamlet into German. In 1776, Germa-
nys greatest actor, Friedrich Ludwig Schroder, produced Hamlet in
Hamburg, he himself playing the ghost. In the same year followed a
production of Othello, in 1777 The Merchant of Venice and Measure for
Measure, and in 1778 King Lear, Richard II, and Henry IV. Macbeth was
produced in 1779 and Much Ado about Nothing in 1792. The chief
impression we obtain from Schroders Shakespearean versions now-
adays is their inadequacy to reproduce the poetry of the originals.
However, compared with the travesties of Ducis a little later, they
may be seen as examples of scrupulous translation.
Schroder adapted the Wieland and Heufeld translations of Ham-
let, but he gave way to public pressure in adding a sixth act. This
contains, among other things, the gravediggers scene, which had
formerly been suppressed, presumably because it was felt to be out
PAGE 38 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:04 PS
of keeping with the tone of high tragedy. Schroder was obviously still
not fully comfortable with the additional scenes, because they are
dropped from the second edition (1778). Comparison shows that
Heufelds version is heavily indebted to Wieland, just as Schroders
is to Heufeld. However, Wielands text is more urbane than the
other translations, which are redolent of the incipient Sturm und
Drang movement. This literary trend, in its turn, owed much to the
inuence of Shakespeare. These early German translations of
Shakespeare were the models for the Romanian early nineteenth-
century versions, especially of the tragedies. August Wilhelm
Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Wolf Graf von Baudissin, and Friedrich
Schillers Macbeth (1801) and Goethes Romeo und Julia (1812) are
only two products of some of the renowned German scholars who
translated Shakespeare in the nineteenth century. Their books must
have existed in the private libraries of those Romanian intellectuals
who had been educated in the universities of Germany and Austria.
Other German translators are J. H. Voss, Jr. (1806), Bauernfeld
(1825), Otto Benda (1826), Joseph Fick (1827), Joseph Meyer
(1829), Lachmann (1829), Kaufmann (1830), Dorothea Tieck
(1832), Ludwig Hilsenberg (1835), Heinrich Doring (1836), Julius
Korner (1836), Ernst Ortlepp (1839), Leopold Petz (1839), Carl
Heinichen (1861), and Herman Ulrici (1871). Although, the inter-
pretations of these translators are not likely to have inuenced the
Romanian versions of Shakespeare, they testify to the exceptionally
inuential German contribution to this domain.
In a collection of essays on Hamlet in European culture, Maria Del
Sapio Garbero writes on the naturalization of Shakespeare by Euro-
pean countries. Garbero notes that the extensive marginal annota-
tions, adaptations, and improvements administered on the
Shakespeare text by various cultures are the result of a problem of
foreignness (estraneita`) and a never-complete translatability
(traductibilita`) of Shakespeare.
42
On the note of multiculturalism
opened by this exceptional collection centered on the European
faces of Hamlet, we could say that the nineteenth-century Italian
translations of Shakespeare go parallel with the great opera adapta-
tions of some plays. These translations, used mainly for the opera
librettos, show how literary and theatrical meanings are encoded
and circulated in various national cultures for diverse purposes. Ital-
ian Shakespeare nineteenth-century translations are marked by
names such as Alessandro Verri, with Hamlet and Othello (1769
1816), Michele Leoni, with versions of the tragedies in verse (1814
15), and Carlo Rusconi, with the complete works in prose (1831).
Francesco Maria Piave translated Macbeth for Verdi in 1847, and Ar-
PAGE 39 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:04 PS
rigo Boito wrote the libretto of Amleto for Franco Faccio in 1865, of
Otello for Verdi in 1887, and of Falstaff for Verdi in 1893. Boito also
translated the parts in Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, and Romeo and
Juliet for the actress Eleonora Duse. Giulio Carcani translated an im-
portant complete edition of Shakespeare in the period 187482.
These Italian versions had an impact on the early productions of
Shakespeare in Romania, because the itinerant Italian theatrical
companies performed Othello or Hamlet, for example, in Italian for
the Romanian public. Most spectators could understand Italian with-
out a formal education in this language, because of the similarity
between Romanian and Italian. The Romanian translations, how-
ever, were not much inuenced by the Italian versions of Shake-
speares plays.
The rst published translation into Spanish of Shakespeares
Hamlet was by Ramon de la Cruz in 1772. It was a secondhand verse
translation based on the Ducis French version, comprising only
some scenes. The rst translation directly from English in Spain was
the prose version of Leandro Fernandez de Morat n, published after
his stay in London as ambassador of Ferdinand VII, in 1798. Since
then, it has been reedited thirty-three times throughout the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries. In the nineteenth century, Antonio
Alcala Galiano, Manuel Garc a (1818), Jose Mar a Blanco-White,
Juan Nicolas Bohl de Faber, Teodoro La Calle (1802), Mat as de Vel-
asco Rojas (1872), Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, and Manuel Matoses
(189597) increased the Spaniards interest in Shakespeares plays
and made him more accessible to them. Two Englishmen living in
Spain, Jaime Clark and William Macpherson, tried to make Shake-
speare better known to Spanish readers and theater audiences. Be-
fore he died, Clark translated ten plays which where published as a
ve-volume edition in Madrid between 1872 and 1876. Macpher-
sons eight volumes published in Madrid in 1873 contained the
twenty-three plays he translated into Spanish, observing the polarity
between verse and prose, as did Clarks version. Clarks use of the
hendecasyllabic verse forced him to break the rhythm and some-
times to alter the original. Rich as the history of nineteenth-century
Spanish Shakespeare translations is, however, these texts had little
or no inuence on Romanian translations. Nor were the western-
most Spanish troupes of actors too eager to visit this marginal terri-
tory of Eastern Europe, so we cannot speak of much effect from this
direction.
Northern Europe encountered Shakespeare in the early nine-
teenth century, and like in the case of other European countries,
the translations abounded in this period. Shakespeare rst entered
PAGE 40 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:05 PS
the Danish stage with Hamlet (Copenhagen in 1813). The translator
was the actor Peter Foersom, who was inuenced strongly by
Schroder. By his death in 1817, he had published four volumes of
what was intended to be a complete translation of Shakespeare,
which was completed later by Peter Wulff and Edvard Lembcke
(186173). Georg Brandes,
43
Valdemar sterberg, and Holst Reitzel
were important nineteenth-century gures who transcribed Shake-
speares text into the Danish culture. Holland and Scandinavia
learned the skill of translating Shakespeare from Wieland and Sch-
legel and the art of playing him from Schroder. Like other Euro-
pean countries, Holland possessed satisfactory and complete
translations late in the nineteenth century, namely, those by Abra-
ham Kok (187380) and Leendert Alexander Johannes Burgersdijk
(187788). Earlier translations were by P. Boddaert, Macbeth: treurs-
pel (1800), P. J. Uylenbroek, Othello, of De moor van Venetie n (1802),
both translated from the Ducis French version, and Jacop van Len-
nep, Romeo en Julia (1852) and Otello (1854). Finnish nineteenth-
century translators were Paavo Cajander, Macbeth (1885) and Pietari
Hannikainen (181399). Swedish translations in the nineteenth
century published names such as Olof Bjurback (Hamlet, 1820), Fre-
drik Dahlgren (Romeo och Julia, 1845), and Eric Gustaf Geijer (1812),
a Swedish poet, writer, historian, and composer who translated Mac-
beth from Schillers German version. Bishop Sven Lundblad trans-
lated Lear (1818) and Georg Scheutz, a Swedish publicist, writer, and
engineer translated Julius Caesar (1816). Johan Henrik Thomander
(1825) was an important translator, but the chief Swedish transla-
tion of Shakespeare was that by Carl August Hagberg in twelve vol-
umes (184751). Just like the Spanish western side of Europe, the
Scandinavian and Dutch translations and productions of Shake-
speare did not have a direct impact on Romanian culture.
The situation regarding cultural imports changes when we refer
to Eastern Europe and its countries appropriations of Shakespeare
in translation, but mainly in production. Though the Slavic linguis-
tic foundation in all the former Communist countries can be seen as
having little relevance to the romance-oriented Romania, still these
countries were interconnected in a commonly shared partnership of
territorial, political, and cultural extraction. With Hungary, Roma-
nia shared borders, and many local Transylvanians who were of
Hungarian origin. In the main cities of this region, the late nine-
teenth century, but especially the early twentieth century, saw the
establishment of Hungarian theaters producing plays by Hungarian
translators. With Bulgaria, Romania shares not only the Danube bor-
der but also a common past of former Turkish domination, reected
PAGE 41 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:06 PS
in the spirituality of the two nations and in their cultural products.
The Russian inuence in Eastern Romania existed even before
Communism, and it was manifested in the cultural life of the city of
Iasi, where many of the rst translations from Shakespeare origi-
nated. In addition, most of the early nineteenth-century translations
of Shakespeare, though in Romanian, were printed in the Cyrillic
alphabet. Romanias relations with the Polish culture were strong in
the past centuries, and so were the contacts with the Czech, Slovak,
Serb, and Croatian regions. The social and political conditions these
countries shared, even before the advent of the Communist domina-
tion, have inscribed Romanian translations in the cultural brother-
hood of the formerly marginalized Eastern European nations.
During Communism and after, the ofcial cultural policies, the the-
aters resistance to the dominant ideology, and the subversive prac-
tices in these countries look like cloned bodies of the same
structural design, where only the language of expression varies.
In Russia and Poland, the interest in Shakespeare is no less great
than in the western countries of Europe. Here, the inuence of
France seems to have predominated in the earlier period, Ducis in-
troducing Shakespeare to the Russian and the Polish stages. Several
plays were translated into Russian in the eighteenth century, and the
empress Catherine II had a share in adaptations of The Merry Wives
of Windsor. The standard Russian translation of the complete works
in the nineteenth century was that of Nikolai Gerbel and Nikolaj Ne-
krasov (186568), but there was an earlier King Lear by Nikolai Iva-
novich Gnedich (1807) and one translated by Alexander Druzhinin
(1862). The Russian poet Alexander Ostrovsky showed his hand in
the translation of The Taming of the Shrew (1865) and was working on
a translation of Antony and Cleopatra when he died. In Poland,
44
where Shakespeare was a favorite dramatist both with actors and
public, the Adam Mickiewicz translated Hamlet. Stanislaus Kozmian,
who lived for a time in England, set to translating Shakespeare into
Polish, a work that occupied him for thirty years and was not com-
plete at his death in 1885. Krystyna Ostrowskiego translated Antoni-
usz i Kleopatra (1872), while it is known that Jo zef Paszkowskis
translations widely introduced Shakespeare onto Polish stages
(181761). Like in Romania, Russian and Polish translators endeav-
ored to give their cultures the sanction of the Shakespearean stamp,
and they acted out of a social command requiring more Shake-
speare to be performed on their stages. Just like Romanian culture,
these nations also dened their cultural boundaries in relation to
Shakespeare.
Like most Central and East European countries, Czech
45
and Slo-
PAGE 42 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:07 PS
vak Shakespeares have a history of translation starting in the nine-
teenth century, with timid and imperfect beginnings in the latter
part of the eighteenth. The rst anonymous translation of Hamlet
into Slovak is from about 17901800 and it derived from the popular
German adaptation of F. L. Schroder and F. Heufeld with an alterna-
tive and happy end. This version emerged from the modications of
the German translations of Wieland and Eschenburg, Heufeld, and
Schroder, and the Hungarian translation of F. Kazinczy. The rst
Czech translation was of Macbeth by Karel Hynek Tham (1786), and
it was equally inuenced by German sources. In the nineteenth cen-
tury, there were two translations of Hamlet in Slovak, by Michal Bosy
(181030) and by P. Dobsinsky (1850). Michal Bosy, a student of
A.W. Schlegel at the University of Jena, made a translation of Hamlet
into archaic Czech, seasoned with current Slovak words. Pavol Dob-
sinski became famous as a writer and collector of fairy tales and his
work inscribes him in the group of the rst two authors who
achieved complete translations of Shakespeare in the Czech and Slo-
vak cultures. The Czech poet Josef Vaclav Sladek spent two years in
the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and
he produced versions of thirty-two of Shakespeares plays, beside
translations from other English and American poets. Josef Kajetan
Tyl was a playwright, actor, director, and organizer of the Czech the-
ater, and he translated Shakespeare for the theater.
In his survey of Shakespeares reception in Eastern European cul-
tures, Zdenek Str brny advances an interesting hypothesis regarding
the nineteenth-century reception of Shakespeare in these countries.
He writes of the emergence of the so-called national revivals in the
course of the nineteenth century. In these movements, many Cen-
tral, Southern, and Eastern European nations claimed a cultural
and political independence from old feudal empires, such as Austria
and Turkey, or from domineering early modern cultural inuences
like French classicism, or, later, German-language culture. In the
new nations need for cultural afrmation, Shakespeare had a very
high status. His work was invested with universal value, whose posses-
sion in the form of translations, productions, and inuences was
considered to justify the right of nascent or revived cultures for the
conrmation and esteem of European cultural and political pow-
ers.
46
Str brny gives the example of the 1790 Hungarian adaptation
of Hamlet by Ferenc Kazinczy, who transformed the play into a trans-
parent allegory of liberation from the Austrian domination. Simi-
larly, the Austrian authorities suppressed the 1786 Czech rendering
of Macbeth by Karel Hynek Tham for fear of disseminating dissen-
sion among the subjected Czech nation. Str brnys argument points
PAGE 43 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:07 PS
to a situation of social and political marginalization of Eastern Euro-
pean countries in the nineteenth century, which they hoped to exit
by adopting Shakespeare as an epitome of Western cultural value.
Among the Hungarian nineteenth-century translators, Janos
Aranys name is linked to the translations of King John, The Merry
Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Nights Dream, and Hamlet (186478).
Gabriel Dobrentei produced the rst Hungarian translation in verse
of Macbeth (1830) and Michael Vorosmarty translated Julius Caesar
(1840), King Lear (185253), and Romeo and Juliet (1855). In 1845,
Emilia Lemouton translated, among others, The Tempest and Measure
for Measure in prose, relying on Le Tourneur. The Hungarian roman-
tic poet and 1848 revolutionary Sandor Peto translated Coriolanus
(1848), probably as part of his insurgent political agenda. In the pe-
riod 186478 Athanazius Tomori organized the rst complete edi-
tion of Shakespeares plays, translated by Arany, Peto, and
Vorosmarty. In the history of Hungarian nineteenth-century transla-
tions of Shakespeare, the cultural historian can discern an element
of dissension and rebellious spirit in relation to the period before
and around the 1848 revolution. Like in the provinces of Romania,
the revolutionary poets and writers inscribed Shakespeare transla-
tions in their political agenda. By adopting the British bard into
their respective national cultures, the Hungarians, like the Romani-
ans, asserted that they were an independent nation, free to choose
their cultural main road, independent of the political domination
of the Turkish or Austrian empires. Shakespeare was not only the
epitome of theatricality and popular success, but also an acknowl-
edged Western cultural voice. In speaking with his voice to the
emerging Hungarian or Romanian nations in the early nineteenth
century, the translators of Shakespeare indirectly conveyed the mes-
sage that they wanted to be independent and a part of the Western
community of values.
A Serbian romantic poet, Laza Kostic, displayed a similar interest
in translations of Shakespeare as part of his program of inscribing
his nation in the common European circuit of values and preparing
the educational conditions that would enable his people to emerge
from the Turkish domination. Kostic was the most educated Serbian
poet of the time, because he knew classical and modern languages,
translated Shakespeare, was a writer of aesthetic and philosophical
treatises, and was the most signicant thinker of Serbian romanti-
cism. Among the Croatian translators of Shakespeare, Milan Bogda-
novic and Vladimir Geric are important names. The Balkans in the
nineteenth century appropriated Shakespeare for cultural emanci-
pation reasons, as well as for the popularity of his plays. Greek cul-
PAGE 44 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:08 PS
ture also adopted Shakespeare, and the rst Hamlet in Greek
appeared in 1856. Dimitrios Bikelas translated the most important
Shakespeare plays in Modern Greek verse. In addition, the Austrian
Empress Sissi translated Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest into Mod-
ern Greek in 1897. Like with the other Balkan nations, Shakespeare
appeared on the Turkish stage in the nineteenth century. Although
a number of European, Greek, and Armenian troupes had per-
formed some of his works earlier, the rst Turkish-language produc-
tion of a play by Shakespeare took place in 1860 with Othello. The
earliest Turkish translations to come out in book form were The Mer-
chant of Venice (1885) and The Comedy of Errors (1886). In 188788
Mehmed Nadir published forty-two of the Sonnets in prose versions.
Writers and scholars in modern Turkey, like those in all the coun-
tries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, felt that by attaching their
cultures colors to the shared symbols of the Shakespeare ag, their
advancement toward the high cultural values would be furthered
even more.
Approaching early Romanian translations of Shakespeare, we
need to explore a related question, namely, how has Shakespeare
become so much a part of a certain non-Anglophone culture that it
has almost come to consider this author as its own? In the case of
Romania, one reason is the early penetration of Shakespeare
through the over-crowded and bardolatrous French and German
channels. By adopting a British author so much appreciated by the
Western cultures that made the literary fashions in that century, the
cultivated Romanians felt they belonged more consistently to the
Western community of nations, from whence all the civilizing factors
emerged. As Michael Mullin points out, different cultures rst per-
ceived Shakespeare as foreign. In these cases, it was the poets who
rst discovered Shakespeare.
47
Intellectuals in the three Romanian
provinces perceived instinctively that moral illumination and cul-
ture came from the west of Europe, because the Slavic east and the
Ottoman south had caused them only troubles, poverty, and politi-
cal conicts in the past centuries. Translations from Shakespeare
and other Western writers became a means of helping this particular
Eastern European country, which was still fragmented into three
provinces until mid-nineteenth century, to depart from the status of
an external and placeless elsewhere and become integrated in the
family of European nations.
Shakespeare reached Romania at the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury and the beginning of the nineteenth with the German theater
groups that toured Transylvania and arrived as far as Bucharest. The
theaters set up in Transylvania in this period housed companies led
PAGE 45 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:08 PS
by well-known actors who performed plays from the world classic
dramatic repertory of the Viennese stage. When Shakespeare was
rst discovered in Romania, through French and German transla-
tions, he found a receptive audience there. His plays used language
that was familiar to Romanians, since they spoke of fairy tales, Alex-
ander the Great, the story of Troy, ancient Roman history, and the
Biblical allegories. Speaking about Shakespeares relation to folk-
lore, the early twentieth-century Romanian Shakespeare scholar
Marcu Berza argues that Shakespeare handled matter already
known to the Romanian public. This partly accounts for their under-
standing and appreciation of Shakespeare. Berza nds Romanian
folk-tales that are similar to some Shakespearean plots because they
are part of the European heritage. Among these ancient texts with
deep roots in Romanian oral culture, Berza mentions The Lives of the
Saints and the Hellenistic romance as channels of penetration for
European stories into Romania.
For a long time The Lives of the Saints enjoyed such favour amongst the
people of Romania that to this day some of them are told as regular folk-
tales with no relation whatever to the printed work which rst put them
into circulation. But, besides The Lives of the Saints, there were once other
books of wide popularity both in England and Romania: as, for instance,
Alexander the Great and the Story of Troy. The latter came into Romanian
literature through a Byzantine medium and also through the versied
romance of Beno t de Saint-Maure.
48
As a Marcu Berza points out, Shakespeare tales in Romania were
long spread either by word of mouth or through popular books in-
troduced from the Levant. They could not have been seen on the
stage. Up to a very late date, these parts of the world were altogether
cut off from the West. Nor had any of the English touring companies
ever ventured farther than Poland and Austria.
49
This Shakespeare
scholar acknowledges the marginalized situation of the three Roma-
nian provinces, Walachia, Moldova, and Transylvania, with regard to
the penetration of itinerant theatrical troupes in these regions. As
far as the theater was concerned, this was still considered a distant
land of elsewhere, probably thought to be peopled with many Cali-
bans incapable of being civilized by the theater. Moreover, the na-
tional language was not considered polished enough to sustain the
force of the Shakespearean verse, and therefore most of these early
productions were in German or Italian. The province of Transylva-
nia enjoyed a privileged status in this respect because it was in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and had a large number of German-
PAGE 46 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:09 PS
speaking inhabitants, so the inuences from the West were easier to
penetrate. The Shakespeare plays performed here by the German
and Austrian troupes found an audience that could understand the
language and could enjoy the text of these plays.
In Walachia and Moldova, the Italian opera companies intro-
duced Shakespeare later. They presented Cordelia, Montechi and Ca-
puletti and Othello on the Bucharest and Iasi stages in 184243. The
Italian theatrical companies brought Shakespeares plays on the Ro-
manian stage and exerted an inuence upon the style of acting of
the Romanian players. These actors passed their rst test before
the public in 1834 in Bucharest and in 1837 in Iasi.
50
In the public
and private libraries of the period, Shakespeares works, and those
of other English writers, were only available in French and German
versions. Besides the translations, the writings of French and Ger-
man literary historians and critics were instrumental in introducing
Shakespeares plays into Romanian culture. In Austria, Franz Grill-
parzer and in Switzerland, Gottfried Keller wrote Shakespeare criti-
cism. In France, Germaine de Stael, Stendhal, Chateaubriand,
Alfred de Vigny, Alfred Mezie`res, Victor Hugo, H. Taine, and Jules
Lema tre approached Shakespeare in translations, critical writings,
and lectures. In Germany, Lessing, Cristoph Martin Wieland, Jo-
hann Gottfried Herder, Schiller, A.W. Schlegel, and Friedrich
Schlegel, or Goethe, Heine, G. G. Gervinus, Friedrich Hebbel, and
Otto Ludwig published extensive Shakespeare studies. In the three
Romanian provinces, and after the union of 1859 in the country
called Romania, the nineteenth century was a period of transforma-
tion, when scholars, animated by the spirit of the French revolution,
combined the principles of Enlightenment and romanticism, at-
tempting to open new ways to their native culture.
Among the twentieth-century Romanian scholars who contrib-
uted to the construction of a valid history of the Shakespeare transla-
tions in Romania, I must mention Petre Grimm, Professor at the
Cluj University,
51
Ion Horia Radulescu,
52
C.S. Checkley,
53
and espe-
cially Leon Levitchi and Alexandru Dutu, professors at Bucharest
University. Dutu gives a well-documented and almost exhaustive ac-
count of translations and early productions of Shakespeare in Roma-
nia. The motto of Alexandru Dutus study is his English translation
from the introduction of one of the rst translations of Shakespeare
into Romanian by Gheorghe Barit in 1840 and it sounds as follows:
Are we, I wonder, really ripe enough to read Shakespeare?
54
Many
men of letters raised the question of the nations maturity in the
reception of Shakespeares plays at that early stage in the nineteenth
century. The Romanian national romantic poet Mihai Eminescu
PAGE 47 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:09 PS
wrote a critical pamphlet in a popular literary journal published in
Transylvania, which was entitled Familia. With an acute critical spirit,
the poet remarks that, when Romanian playwrights draw on Shake-
spearean models in their historical plays, the result is desultory, be-
cause the approach is negligent and supercial. According to
Eminescu, Shakespeare must not only be read, but studied, so that
one may understand what lies in their power to imitate from him.
55
He recommends authors to pay attention to the capacity of abso-
lute abstraction in Shakespeare, considering that the dramatist has
the talent to raise the public to his height and still to be under-
stood completely by them.
56
When such a playwright addresses any
public, the question of whether a certain national audience is or is
not prepared to understand him becomes irrelevant. The essence of
Eminescus argument is that Romanian playwrights must study at-
tentively the dramatic structure and profound symbolism of Shake-
speares plays before being able to draw on him effectively.
In emphasizing the need for careful consideration of Shake-
speares plays by Romanian writers, Eminescu adduces, in an indi-
rect manner, the problem of translation of the Shakespeare opus.
For an author to be understood at such profound level by the writers
of a nation there would be a high demand of good translations.
Nineteenth-century Romanian writers were educated at French and
German schools, and their English prociency was almost nonexis-
tent. Only good translations could give them the opportunity of
studying Shakespeare intensely, paying special attention to symbols,
dramatic structure, motifs, and style. Eminescus manuscripts, now
in the Romanian Academy Library, show that he was an assiduous
reader of Shakespeare (probably in German translations), and that
he even intended to translate Timon of Athens. Moreover, Leon Levit-
chi argues that in Eminescus translation, 132 lines in Timon of Ath-
ens are translated from English, not from German or French.
57
Certainly, the Romanian romantic poet internalized the essence of
Shakespeares impact on his century. In a poem entitled Cartile
[The Books], Eminescu acknowledges Shakespeare as his literary
model, but deplores the poor reception of the plays intense mes-
sage in the didactic nineteenth century:
Shakespeare! I often think of you with woe,
You, gentle friend of my tormented soul;
The brimming fountains of your verses show
Food to my mind, repeating them is my goal.
So cruel you are, and yet so soft you glow
Your voice is tempest, and yet gentle toll;
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Like God, you show yourself in thousand frames,
And teach an age that cannot learn your names.
Had I but lived when you did, would I still
Have loved you soas much as I do now?
All that I feel, be it all good or ill,
Enough to feelI have but you to bow.
You opened my eyes to the light, you will
Teach me to read this world as you allow.
To err with you, Id love my oversight:
To be like you is all my pride and might.
58
Shakespeares plays entered Romania in the epoch when the re-
vival of his canon had roused interest in all European literary circles.
The rising tide of romanticism had claimed the English dramatist
as its illustrious forerunner, and Shakespeares drama imposed itself
both on the stage and the great literatures. It became ever since the
object of divergent opinions, of eulogy and criticism, lasting over the
centuries. The Romanian critic and writer Cezar Bolliac published
in 1836 an article entitled S akspear, in a literary journal entitled
Curiosul [The Inquirer]. Bolliac names S akspear the greatest ge-
nius of English theater
59
and the poet of all peoples, because of
the energetic and truthful depiction of passions.
60
This article reit-
erates many conrmed facts and the ulterior confabulations regard-
ing Shakespeares life, including the marriage to Ana Hatvai. The
reason of the poets going to London to write plays is stated to be
the need to escape the revenge of a small local baron, and the report
was that he played the role of the Ghost in Hamlet. What is important
about this eclectic early nineteenth-century presentation of Shake-
speares life and his plays is that it gave the readers of the journal a
general view of the Stratford playwright, including the situation of
the Shakespeare properties and the monument in the Holy Trinity
Church in Stratford at that time. This informative text was meant to
familiarize the readers with Shakespeares life and plays, attracting
their attention to this author and the translations that were to
follow.
In mapping out a representation of the rst Romanian transla-
tions of Shakespeares plays in the nineteenth century, an important
question can be raised, namely, was there a specic pattern accord-
ing to which the plays to be translated were selected? If this was not
the case, did the literate audience of the time favor, even unwit-
tingly, certain Shakespeare plays to others? Some translators pre-
ferred the classical plays, especially Julius Caesar and Antony and
Cleopatra, because they alluded to a period in Roman history that was
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most familiar to the educated Romanian public. There was an early
fragmentary version of Julius Caesar in 1840, followed by three subse-
quent translations, one in 1879 by Adolf Stern, in 1892 by Barbu La-
zureanu, and in 1896 by Scarlat Ion Ghica, who had translated
Antony and Cleopatra for the rst time in 1893. However, translators
did not seem to favor these classical plays to others, despite the his-
torical material that was more familiar to Romanian audiences. It is
more likely to believe that the four tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, Mac-
beth, and King Lear, probably The Merchant of Venice, and even Richard
III and King John were very popular with the Romanian readers and
theatergoers. The strongly religious resonance of the message in-
cluded in the four tragedies, the biblical connotations of some pas-
sages, and the general ethical exercise involved in their reception at
a certain level of interpretation could have caused a special prefer-
ence for these plays. Moreover, it must be noticed that the educated
Romanian audiences taste for Shakespearean tragedy in this period
replicated the Elizabethans interest in the problems of conscience
advanced by the theater in their age of religious and social transition.
Unlike the Elizabethans and Jacobeans, the Romanian nine-
teenth-century audience and readers were more homogeneous in
point of religious beliefs. Regarding the Elizabethan audience, Ken-
neth Muir nds that although Shakespeare was writing for a secular
audience with diverse religious beliefs, he remained intensely inter-
ested in the metaphysical conict between good and evil, but was
unfettered by having to conform to a dogmatic position.
61
As for Ro-
manian readers and audiences, their loyalty to the Christian Ortho-
dox religion was indisputable. It was a marker of their national
identity, especially in a period of extensive social and political up-
heavals in the Europe of their time. The majority of Romanians are
Eastern Orthodox. The Romanian Orthodox Church is not depen-
dent hierarchically on the Russian Church or the Orthodox Church
in Constantinople. The Romanians have no exact date of becoming
Christians. Since the southern part of Romania was a Roman colony
in the rst century AD, and then it was part of the Byzantine Empire,
there are Christian traces dating as early as the fourth century AD.
The three Romanian provinces, Walachia, Moldova, and Transylva-
nia, were still separated at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Walachia and regions of Moldova were under Ottoman rule, while
Transylvania was still in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, the
common Eastern Orthodox religion was an important issue that
counted in the movement for national sovereignty and subsequent
political unity. Eventually, Walachia and Moldova were united in
1859, but Transylvania joined only later, after World War I, in 1918.
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The absence of religious conicts in the three Romanian prov-
inces and the apparent unity of faith do not automatically imply that
there was no ideological division. Like the Elizabethans in Shake-
speares time, the Romanians of the early nineteenth century were
experiencing a social and mental transition from a Christian feudal
to a secular, capitalist culture and economy. The studious young
people were educated at universities in Paris, England, and Vienna,
and they brought back an interest in the cultural values of Europe.
They combined the practical spirit acquired in the West with the nat-
ural inclination toward metaphysics and spirituality characteristic of
the Eastern Orthodox religion. There is no rigorous method to de-
scribe the protean social phenomenon of the development of Chris-
tian beliefs in Eastern and Western Europe. However, I incline to say
that the Orthodox Church in the eastern part of Europe is mostly
concerned with salvation, mystical devotion, and the protection of
tradition rather than with reform and the active participation of the
individual in the spiritual community. Because of this inward-bound
spirituality centered on individual salvation at the expense of social
integration, the adepts of Christian Orthodox faith have developed
an imperfect sense of community values and are more inclined to
direct their spiritual activity toward the interior. Additionally, centu-
ries of political domination, including, at that stage in the nine-
teenth century, the Ottoman power, have articulated a stronger
inner convergence of social energies toward the inner self.
There is a prevalentand no doubt healthytendency in current
criticism to avoid discussing religious issues in literary matters, un-
less they are explicitly raised by a particular literary text. However,
the impact of Shakespeares tragedies in his age depended in large
measure on the condence of his contemporaries that the eternal
salvation of the individual soul was a matter of utmost concern for
everyone. The playwrights personal conviction is still a matter of de-
bate,
62
but it is irrelevant in this discussion. I am not among those
who posit Shakespeares covert Catholicism, but we must admit that
both Protestant and Catholic variants of Christianity generated a
strong sense of community values, and a preoccupation with individ-
ual salvation correlated with observance of social ethics in the West-
ern European populations embracing these faiths. The intensity of
the Christian Orthodox believers in salvation was no less effective
with nineteenth-century Romanians, especially since they had been
in and out of the Turkish rule for centuries. The only way of afrm-
ing their Christian identity against the spiritual assault of Islam was
to persist in their common religious convictions. Thus, the early Ro-
manian reception of Shakespeare can be viewed as the record of a
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secular afliation whose intimate psychological framework may re-
veal a latent religious mode connected with issues of resistance. The
translators preference for the four major tragedies could be linked
to the fact that these plays responded to the educated readers need
for transcendent metaphysics and interiority, probably to a larger
extent than, for instance, the classical tragedies. The spiritually in-
clined audience tended to be more sympathetic with the inwardly
self-reexive heroes of these tragedies than with the more familiar
gures of ancient classical Rome.
Early Nineteenth Century: Assimilation
G. Barit produced the rst fragmentary translation of Shake-
speare into the Romanian language in 1840. It is a passage from The
Merchant of Venice, act IV, scene 1
63
and one from Julius Caesar, act I,
scene 2.
64
It is relevant that the rst Romanian version of a segment
from a Shakespeare play contains Portias commendation of mercy,
with its allusions to scriptural ethics. The attentive readers of the lit-
erary journal in which this translation was published may well have
been aware of the biblical framework. The text concludes with a
brief comment; the translator asks the often quoted question,
whether the time was ripe for approaching Shakespeare. He replies
that Romanian culture could only gain from the encounter with
Shakespeare.
65
A similar desire to expand the knowledge of Shake-
speares dramas prompted the poet Ion Barac to translate Hamlet
after a text adapted by Schroder. Barac was a learned burger of Bra-
sov, a town in Transylvania where the German inuences were prom-
inent because of the predominant population of German origin.
The translation cannot be dated exactly because scholarly opinion
varies. Some earlier Romanian researchers date it as late as 1840,
while Vladimir Streinu
66
maintains that Baracs version was written
in the rst decade of the nineteenth century. Barac follows exactly
the structure of Schroders adaptation. The dramatis personae feature
Germanized names, such as Polonius, appearing as Odenholm. Al-
though the Schroder version is entirely in prose, Barac translates
some passages, especially the soliloquies, in verse form. The style of
this translation is archaic and slow, studded with many regional
phrases and alliterations. When read aloud, the translation seems an
ancient chronicle text come to life. Despite the poor quality of the
early nineteenth-century translations of Shakespeare in Romania,
the interest for the English author is evident and it points to the
Romanians need of justifying their cultural projects by contrast to
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and in comparison with the works of the accredited Western Euro-
pean artists.
A prominent romantic poet, Ion Heliade Radulescu, demon-
strated his intention of spreading the knowledge of Shakespeare in
ever-wider literary and academic circles. Under the inuence of his
friend, the painter and revolutionary Ion Negulici, he decided to
translate most of Shakespeares plays as part of a wide-ranging proj-
ect of creating a universal library. An entire group of Romanian rev-
olutionaries embraced this project. On the eve of the historic year
1848 appeared a complete version of one of Shakespeares plays, the
rst full-text translation to be brought out in print, Julius Caesar, A
tragedy in Five Acts, translated by Captain S. Stoica. This translation
further demonstrates that the adoption of Shakespearean interpre-
tations played an important part in the cultural movement prepar-
ing the revolution of 1848. A subsequent translation of two plays,
printed in 1848 by Toma Alexandru Bagdat, entitled The Biography
of Viliam G. Sekspir after Le Tourneur; Followed by Romeo and Juliet and
Othello; Tragedies in Five Acts Each, Composed by Viliam Ghiuilom Sekspir
67
appears not to have served the same ends. The comments accompa-
nying the plays draw a number of moralizing conclusions that dis-
close an obviously religious problem manifested in the relationship
between the self and the other. The translator advised his readers to
look into Shakespeare for a good lesson as to the dangers of unre-
strained love, ambition, and trust in women. The translation is of
consequence, however, as it offered the readers a general outline on
the dramatists life and some of his plays. The text of this Romanian
translation is in Cyrillic alphabet, characteristic of most religious
publications at the time.
The political conditions prevailing in the early nineteenth century
did not favor the publication of the whole range of translations from
Shakespeare, even in a mediated foreign version. The revolutionar-
ies were unable to carry out their extensive and superb plans, de-
spite their aspirations for a culturally united Romania. Political and
especially material constraints were drastically prohibitive. However,
the fact that a group of progressive writers, all enthusiastic pioneers
of Romanian culture, admired and promoted Shakespeare deter-
mined those who were associated with the theatrical life to come for-
ward and encourage the production of Shakespeares plays by
Romanian actors, for the benet of the public at large. In the next
three decades following the 1848 revolution, translators focused
only on Shakespeares great tragedies, probably responding to the
audiences need for the transcendental signicance these plays may
assume. The rhetorical texture of these tragedies suggests a meta-
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physical logic that would have appealed to the sophisticated readers
of the time. They were already familiar with the scriptural symbolic
language not only from customary church attendance, but also be-
cause of the various translations of the Bible and other religious
texts. Ever since the rst printing press was brought in to Walachia
(1635) and Moldova (1643), a large number of religious books in
Romanian were published in these provinces; in Transylvania, Gene-
sis and Exodus were printed even earlier, in 1582. The rst full-text
Bible in Romanian was printed at Bucuresti in 1688.
68
Late Nineteenth Century: Transformation
Macbeth appeared in 1850 in a translation from French by St. Bag-
escu in Bucharest. In 1858, there was a collaborative translation by
M. A. Canini and I. G. Valentineanu, and in 1864, P.P. Carp trans-
lated the tragedy from English in blank verse. This translation was
published in Iasi, followed by a second edition in 1886. During the
sixties and seventies, a group of young men newly returned from
abroad, where they had completed their studies, founded at Iasi, in
the province of Moldova, a literary society called Junimea, which had
subsequently a great and direct bearing on Romanian literature. Its
members used to meet at each others houses and discuss, or read
from, various authors. At the very rst meeting, members were in-
vited to hear the reading of a translation of Macbeth by Peter Carp,
who was to become leader of the Conservative Party and prime min-
ister. He published it afterwards (1864), together with another one
of Othello (1868). Both translations had the merit of being written
in rather good, clear Romanian and of having closely followed the
original.
It is interesting to consider how the banquet scene in Macbeth
might have conjured up reversed intimations of the Last Supper in
the minds of the religiously educated Romanian theatergoers or
readers. A smaller and more exclusive group of the erudite audience
could have been aware of the ethical problems of conscience related
to Macbeths reaction of guilt after murdering Duncan; Lady Mac-
beths sleepwalking and the scriptural ramications of her feminin-
ity; or the implicit analogy of Macbeth to the traitor Judas. However,
it is only a very select party of erudite readers of the translations who
could discern Macbeths references to dusty death (Psalm 22:15),
to life as a walking shadow (Psalm 39:6), and to a tale told by an
idiot (Psalm 90:9). Such analogies are clear to the introspective
mind, though everyone is aware that, like the Bible, Shakespeare
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cannot be forced to mean anything; he can only be the cause of wit
in others.
Hamlets early history in Romania is primarily linked with the ro-
mantic perception of its hero in Europe. The translation of Hamlet
in Europe is an important touchstone by which various European
cultures have tested their alighting into modernity. Along with the
larger area of the translations from Shakespeare, the transition of
Hamlet into other European languages was made by stages, and it
signied every particular nations aspiration towards a modern cul-
tural status. Just like in the Elizabethan period, when the transla-
tions and borrowings from various literatures contributed to the
fashioning of a national modern culture, in the nineteenth century
the translations from Shakespeare, and particularly Hamlet, were the
markers of a modern languages consistency and maturity. This was
an important step toward the shaping of modern national identity.
A signicant study edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, La traduzione
di Amleto nella cultura europea, traces the history of the translations
and productions of Hamlet in Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Ger-
many, and Hungary. Jacqueline Risset
69
documents the presence of
Hamlets gure in the letters of the French romantic poet Mallarme,
who sees the Shakespearean hero as an emblem of the modern the-
ater of the mind, an archetype of the universal creative myth.
According to Cesare G. De Michelis,
70
Hamlet, or at least his name,
arrived in Russia in the rst half of the eighteenth century through
the intermediary of a reference in an English publication taken over
via a German and then a French translation, and the play was men-
tioned as a comedy. The rst Russian translation appeared fteen
years later, with a theatrical text written by Alexander Sumarokov,
an important gure of Russian theater, and it was derived from the
French version of La Place. This play has a happy end, which fea-
tures Polonius committing suicide in prison and Hamlet getting
married to Ophelia and living happily ever after. Sergej Viskovatov
translated a second nineteenth-century Russian Hamlet (Gamlet
1811) after the Ducis version. Michail Vroncenko, who was the trans-
lator of the 1828 Russian Hamlet, was the rst to point out the neces-
sity of translating strictly from the Shakespeare text, following the
verse and the prose passages accordingly and not interfering with
the signicance or the succession of scenes.
71
Another Russian trans-
lation of Hamlet for the theater appeared in 1837 by Nikolaj Polevoj,
which established the Hamlet gure on the Russian stage. In 1844,
the translation by Andrej Kroneberg initiated in the Russian cultural
life not only the establishment of Shakespeare as one of the greatest
writers of world literature, but of Hamlet in particular as the authors
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most signicant play. As is the case with other European nations,
Russian modern culture dened itself through the unmediated con-
tact with Shakespeare, and especially with the translations of Hamlet.
The nineteenth-century Russian versions of Hamlet did not inuence
the Romanian translations, but the Russian cultural inuence is evi-
dent in the fact that most early nineteenth-century translations of
Shakespeare into Romanian were printed in the Cyrillic alphabet, as
was the custom with all early writings.
In a period when the revolutionary spirit was dominant in Roma-
nia and the nations hopes were directed toward union and inde-
pendence from Turkish rule, a hero who would debate the question
of raising arms against a sea of troubles was denitely very popular.
D. P. Economu translated Hamlet, Prince of Denmark in 1855, and this
translation was the rst published version of this play in Romania. It
is a translation in verse after Alexandre Dumas and Paul Meurice,
whose stage version was considered the best of Hamlet in French.
The Dumas-Meurice version was intended exclusively for the stage,
and the text shows remarkable performance potential, though it de-
viates largely from the original. Like the French version, the Eco-
nomu translation is divided into ve acts and eight parts, some
scenes are cut or displaced, the Fortinbras episode is omitted, and
Hamlet is not sent to England but hides after killing Polonius. In
1881, the actor Grigore Manolescu translated Hamlet after Le Tour-
neur as a tragedy in ve acts and thirteen tableaux. The manuscript
of this unpublished translation for performance exists at the Library
of the Romanian National Theater. Manolescus version, though in
prose, displays an efcient dialogue and suggestive phrasing, and
the uency of speech recommends it for performance. The transla-
tor shows a preoccupation with disentangling the text from the con-
fusing inadvertence of the French model, so he transposes ideas and
images into Romanian, rather than isolated words and phrases
taken from French. Manolescus language in this translation shows
higher uidity than the Economu version in all the areas of imagery,
rhythm, and syntax.
The eighth decade of the nineteenth century represented a
breakthrough in point of the Romanian translations of Shakespeare.
This was the period when the theatrical conception suffered a radi-
cal shift toward modernity. Romanian theater assimilates the new
ideas of European extraction because the productions addressed an
enlightened and motivated audience, eager to assert their authority
and have a say in the critical assessment of the theater. The art of
performance became increasingly an object of assiduous theatrical
research and intense artistic meditation. The Romanian versions of
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Shakespeare derived from intermediaries no longer responded to
the new generation of theater producers and audiences, so that the
translations directly from English became a necessity. The rst Ro-
manian translation of Hamlet from English was by Adolph Stern
(1877). Stern studied Shakespeare in the German Tieck and
Schlegel version, and later in English. He was an adept of literal
translation, acknowledging the preponderance of form over con-
tent. Sterns Hamlet is in blank verse, with rhymed passages when
they exist in the English original. Such high delity is difcult to
achieve, considering the fact that Romanian words are longer by
one or two syllables, which makes the use of iambic pentameter ex-
tremely difcult. However, Stern employed a rigid but correct metri-
cal formula, following a mechanic and undifferentiated application
of the English metrical system to the Romanian language. Because
of this standardized transliteration of Anglo-Saxon verse structure
into the romance frame of the Romanian language, Sterns transla-
tion gives the uncanny impression of a foreign body of text en-
grafted on the target language.
Acknowledging the importance of translating Shakespeare for the
Romanian culture, Adolph Stern writes in the introduction, The
man who wrote these plays belongs not only to the country in which
he was born, but his genius became the treasured property of the
entire world. Thus, we will see other nations ready to lay a stone at
the foundation of this mighty monument, worthy of the spirit to
whom it is dedicated. Romania will not be able to take direct part in
this great enterprise. She can pay her tribute in a mediated way, by
translating the works of the great poet into the Romanian lan-
guage.
72
The author then argues that although Shakespeare has
been translated into German successfully, probably because of the
similarities between the two Germanic languages, the plays have not
been properly translated and interpreted into Romanian yet. Ac-
cording to the translator, the differences between English and Ro-
manian, a neo-Latin language, determined in a large measure this
difculty of interpretation.
73
The translator notes that he could not
imagine a Shakespeare version that would better render the
manly and harmonious verse of the original. Despite the dif-
culties, Stern notes in this introduction that he tried to interpret
Hamlet in blank verse, using the best editions (which he does not
mention) and critical commentary.
74
This version of Hamlet is accu-
rate, produced with an eye for the internal rhythm of the soliloquies.
For instance, in the soliloquy O that this too too solid esh would
melt (1.2.129)
75
the translator uses the same term, solid, in Roma-
nian, with the meaning of earthy, heavy: O! de s-ar topi,/Aceasta
PAGE 57 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:14 PS
carne prea, prea solida. However, the text is much abridged, and
the act and scene divisions are erratic.
Hamlet seems to be divided not only between thought and action,
but also between Old and New Testament
76
teachings on justice and
revenge. The Ghost expects life for life, eye for eye (Exodus 21:23
25). However, Christian teaching starts with Saint Lukes exhorta-
tion to reply with good to those who hate you (Luke 6:27), and with
Saint Pauls idea that humans were to be patient and it was for God
to exact vengeance (Romans 12:1920).
77
The average Romanian
theatergoer would denitely see the Cain and Abel motif woven in
the Hamlet plot, and maybe could recognize the biblical association
when the hero speaks about the special providence in the ight of a
sparrow (5.2.16566). However, only the attentive reader of a good
translation can observe the allusions to the book of Job in Hamlets
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Job 6:4, 41:28), a con-
summation devoutly to be wishd (Job 6:910), to die, to sleep
(Job 14:10,12), the oppressors wrong (Job 3:18), and the undis-
coverd country from whose bourn no traveller returns (Job 7:9
10, 10:21, 16:22).
78
There was only one translation of King Lear in nineteenth-century
Romania, produced in 1881 by Adolph Stern, but the plays history
of production is more notable. This particular edition is a transla-
tion directly from English, in blank verse, and it contains remark-
able illustrations of almost every important scene. As is the case with
all the other Romanian Shakespeare versions, the author does not
mention exactly what English edition of this controversial plays text
he used. What is certain, however, is that the play is announced as
A Tragedy in Five Acts, so it cannot have been the Tate version.
The educated Romanian reader of King Lear could notice the Cain
and Abel division of brothers in its feminine and masculine
79
vari-
ant, through the Shakespearean gures of Goneril and Regan/Cor-
delia and Edmund/Edgar. The interesting, if veiled, allusion to the
parable of the prodigal son in Cordelias words of pity for her father
at 4.6.1316, which echo Luke 15.1619, or the more general bibli-
cal references that connect Cordelia with Christ, may have not
passed unobserved. The unequivocal sense of waste and nothing
that pervades the tragedy inevitably conveys the obscure feeling
prevalent in the book of Job.
80
These scholarly details were clearer
only to the observant reader of this exquisitely illustrated Shake-
speare translation.
When Romania came to be recognized as an independent state in
1877, her representative at the English court was for a long time Ion
Ghica, an able statesman and a writer of repute. His sons, Scarlat
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and Dumitru Ghica, were educated in England and translated Romeo
and Juliet, Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, King John, Antony and
Cleopatra, and Julius Caesar. They used accurate English editions and
forged the original blank verse in pentameter, unlike other transla-
tors who, though they translated Shakespeare in verse, used the hex-
ameter, a verse form common to the Romanian language. P.
Grimm
81
sees these early versions as cornerstones in Romanian
Shakespeare appropriation, considering them far superior to all
previous translations through intermediaries. Though Grimm pays
more attention to the other plays in the volume, he notes that the
translation of King John by Scarlat Ion Ghica is marked by a high
delity to the source text, remarking some minor defects.
The introductory note to King John by Scarlat Ion Ghica (1892)
explains the historical context of the play, mentioning that this is
the third Shakespeare play that the translator offers to the Roma-
nian public. The author admits it would be less popular with the
readers than Richard III or The Merchant of Venice because of its inferi-
ority in conception and organization, and confesses that he cannot
be deterred from his project by this detail. While admitting that the
majority of the English public does not understand Shakespeare, de-
spite reading the plays in their own language, the author confesses
that it is even more difcult for a Romanian translator to render
the rich sixteenth-century English language into a less harmonious
idiom.
82
In the introduction, Ghica says that he chose this trag-
edy particularly because it is less known and it dramatizes a period
of English history that is totally unknown to the Romanian readers.
This play belongs, as Ghica writes, to the English history plays, refer-
ring to periods ulterior to those represented in King Lear and Mac-
beth (which, in his opinion, rely heavily on legend), and it describes
a remote epoch of English history.
The Romanian translations from Shakespeare in the late nine-
teenth century were part of a larger cultural project of integrating
the newly independent Romania in the system of values belonging
to Western Europe, distancing it visibly from the Ottoman heritage.
Therefore, the translator mentions that the time when the plays ac-
tion is set, the 1200s, represents an obscure and uninteresting pe-
riod in English history, except for the most important event that
shaped the system of English liberty, the Magna Carta.
83
As known,
Shakespeares play is chiey concerned with the features of King
Johns reign related to his treatment of Arthur and his quarrel with
the Pope, making no mention of the Magna Carta. However, the Ro-
manian translator feels the need to point out the medieval symbol
of British democracy as a consistent mark of this play. In addition,
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Ghica explains the frequency of historical inadvertence existing in
the play as justiable and excusable; because of the temporal dis-
tance of the period described, it was probably even intentional.
84
Ac-
cording to the translator, Shakespeare may have intended to soften
the asperity of Johns character, avoiding a description in dark col-
ours, in order to elude the difculty of presenting to the English
public a disreputable period of their history.
Despite the ingenuity of Ghicas interpretation of what might
have been Shakespeares intention, the translation is more accurate
and stylistically valid than it is reasonable to expect from such early
versions. For instance, Ghica is splendidly faithful when referring to
the temporal accuracy regarding the Bastards birth. In act I, scene
I, Robert Falconbridge requests the inheritance before King John,
claiming that the Bastard is not his fathers son. In his argumenta-
tion, Robert (as the Romanian text introduces Falconbridge) nar-
rates how his father was sent to Germany on a diplomatic mission
for King Richard, who had an affair with Lady Falconbridge during
her husbands absence. Falconbridge quotes his fathers words on
his deathbed, when he said that the Bastard was born Full fourteen
weeks before the course of time (1.1.113). Scrupulous to the En-
glish but also to the Romanian meter, Ghica transforms the weeks
into months, rendering the period as exactly three and a half
months before the normal time of gestation: Caci a venit pe lume
trei luni si jumatate / Nainte de sorocul resc al gestatiunii.
85
The
translators delity to the text is all the more remarkable at this early
stage, considering that a more praised and modern translation of
King John by the poet Dan Botta (1955)
86
blunders unforgivably by
transforming the full fourteen weeks into ten months before the
time, a total impossibility. This mistake by Dan Botta may lead the
uninstructed Romanian reader (or audience) into attributing the
anachronism to Shakespeare, when it is only the translators misin-
terpretation. Ghicas translation, though more na ve in many re-
spects, dating almost a century before Bottas, resolves this temporal
difculty successfully.
Another interesting innovation in Ghicas version is the problem
of capitalization. Throughout the Romanian text, the syntagma to
the English King is translated as Regelui Engles.
87
Although in Roma-
nian the nouns are not capitalized, be it the noun king or the
nationality, the translator may have intended to be more faithful to
the English original by capitalizing the nations name. In addition,
whenever the noun king appears in the text, whether the English
original capitalizes it or not, the Romanian translator does it solici-
tously, probably to emphasize the issue of kingship traversing Shake-
PAGE 60 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:16 PS
speares histories. Another explanation might be that in writing, this
capitalization signies potently, because in Romanian capitalization
means emphasis. Therefore, since the translation addresses the liter-
ate public, the readers are able to decipher the special importance
attached to the issue of kingship in the play. Moreover, when a direc-
tor produces King John following this translation, the capital letters
might conduce to the actors laying special emphasis on this word.
In the same line of thought, Blanches name appears as Blanca, a
common female name, and she is referred to as print esa Spaniei (the
Spanish princess) and fata a Hispaniei (daughter of Hispania). How-
ever, in this case, the title of princess is not capitalized as is the title
of king throughout the translation. This shows the (interpretably)
subsidiary role attributed to women in the process of manipulation
of power in the play, transmitted through the translation to the simi-
larly male-centred nineteenth-century Romanian society.
Ghicas negotiation of the English word cousin in the Roma-
nian translation is also remarkable. Several times, King John ad-
dresses his nephews, the Bastard and Arthur, as cousin.
88
It is
known that in Shakespeares time the word had a larger domain,
meaning almost any kind of kinship, except that of father, son,
brother, or sister. Ghica moderates the status of family relationships
diversely and cogently. Most importantly, the translator uses the
term cousin generically, like in the English text. In act III, scene
III, King John parts with the Bastard calling him vere (cousin) and
Elinor calls him nepotele (darling grandson). In the same manner,
when King John sends Arthur to England accompanied by Hubert,
he uses the term vere (cousin). In addition, in the Romanian text,
King Philip refers to Constance as vara noastra (our cousin) while in
Shakespeare he merely calls her lady, a more formal and distant
term. Similarly, after he is announced he is to marry Blanche, the
Dauphin calls King John affectionately iubite frate (beloved brother)
while the English text glosses the more formal my lord (2.1.497).
In act II, scene I, when King John refers to Blanche, he calls her
nepotico (little niece), while in the original we have the more ceremo-
nial niece to England (2.1.425). The Romanian version renders
the relationship between King John and Blanche as too familiar,
while Shakespeare points to the importance of Blanches marriage
as a political bond between two countries. The diminutive in Roma-
nian is a term of endearment and the translation alludes to the ap-
parent affection between relatives. In the same manner, the Bastard
calls his mother mamitico (mummy), but, in Shakespeare, he is more
distant toward her, with formalized language ranging from
Madam (1.1.233) through mother (1.1.246), to the moderately
PAGE 61 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:16 PS
affectionate good mother (1.1.238) or good my mother
(1.1.249). It seems that Ghica emphasizes the issue of legitimate or
illegitimate family relationships functioning in the play by having
the characters use more tender terms toward their relations than in
the original, while at the same time preserving the generic reference
of certain words denoting family connection.
The Romanian translator, however, found a less appropriate ver-
sion for a stage direction. In act II, scene II, after showing her fury
provoked by King Philips betrayal, Constance sits upon the
ground (stage direction 70). According to what she says, the cor-
rect action is that of sitting, because Constance expresses her deter-
mination to sit there unmoved, on what she considers her throne,
demanding that kings assemble and bow before her. The stage direc-
tion in the translation, however, is the equivalent of she throws her-
self on the ground, which is not consistent with Constances
emotion at this stage of the plot. Although she feels betrayed, Con-
stance is not yet desperate or begging mercy, as the movement of
throwing herself on the ground might indicate. Rather, hers is a de-
monstrative act of determination and resilience, the sign of a com-
bative spirit that still characterizes Arthurs mother. Ghicas version
drastically changes the meaning here and sends wrong signals about
this character. Similarly, the moving scene of Constances grief at
the news of her sons imprisonment is emotional, yet again the stage
direction according to which Constance is tearing at her hair in an-
guish is translated si rupe coifura (she tears her coiffure). The use of
the neologism of French origin (coiffure) in a context of dramatic
strength diminishes the tension, and Constances gesture of grief
seems trivial. The use of the Romanian equivalent for hair (par)
would have been more appropriate. In this respect, Ghicas version
pays tribute to the host of French inuences invading Romanian vo-
cabulary at that particular time in the nineteenth century.
In the same scene, when she hears of her sons loss, Constance
calls death to alleviate her pain. In the Shakespeare text, Constance
invokes amiable, lovely Death! (3.4.25), and Ghica conveys it cor-
rectly as prieteneasca moarte. The entire passage is based on the idea
that death seems appealing to Constance now that her son is lost,
while for the other mortals death is frightening. Constance wants
death to ll her mouth with fulsome dust (3.4.32), while the
translator uses the term neagra cenusa (black ashes), thus emphasis-
ing the destruction, but also the purication Constance seeks in
death. Probably inadvertently, the translator bases his choice on the
biblical association dust to dust, ashes to ashes,
89
and thus the Roma-
nian and English culture meet in this translation through their com-
PAGE 62 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:17 PS
mon Judeo-Christian heritage. Further on, Constance compares
Arthur to all mothers rst sons, from Cain to the last one who died
the other day. Constance implies that a mother loves her rstborn
son dearly, and the translation refers to Cain as ante `iul baiet el (the
rst little boy), as compared to the more objective English phrase
the rst male child (3.4.79). Like in the previous examples, the
diminutive is a form of affection and suggests a mothers love for
her son, despite his being a murderer, as Cain reputedly was. It
seems that, deliberately or not, Ghica uses humanely tender termi-
nology, exploiting efciently the properties of the archaic and popu-
lar Romanian language and the biblical allusions.
These remarks with respect to the nineteenth-century Romanian
translation of King John by Scarlat Ion Ghica should not be interpre-
ted as too laudatory. Like many of his contemporaries, Ghica turned
to Shakespeare as a paradigm of Western civility and as providing
valid cultural ratication. Thus, translating Shakespeares plays was
supposed to raise the literate Romanians awareness to the issues of
their time, when the country expected to be received in the Euro-
pean community of modern nations. Shakespeare was an ideal of
English drama and, next to the adoption of the French models in
the Romanian language, constituted the gate opened for the Roma-
nian culture toward the much-aspired-for integration in the circuit
of world cultural values. Ghicas version has the merit of being the
rst translation of this play and is highly accurate in both form and
substance. Understanding this version, the Romanian reader could
create a clear image of King John, the atmosphere, events, charac-
ters, and metaphors. The original blank verse is rigorously re-
spected, with occasional rhyming patterns. In point of style,
sometimes Ghicas version gives a more sentimental view of English
history, deriving from the use of archaic language and some lexical
choices. However, though faithful to the original text, which the
translator assimilates excellently, the liberties he sometimes takes
are not always the most opportune.
The Merchant of Venice had a more direct impact on the literate
Romanian audience of the time. The stereotyped image of the Jew
had immediate Old Testament
90
connotations. The antithetical
angles of visionfrom Shylocks and Antonios perspectives
referring to the Old Testament mention of the multiplication of the
sheep by Jacob when he was serving at the home of his uncle Laban
(1.3.75101) could not have escaped any alert Romanian reader. A
more veiled allusion, which Bassanio prompts in the casket scene
with reference to heretics in religion (3.2.1001), may not have had
such obvious religious connotations for the reader of the transla-
PAGE 63 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:17 PS
tion. It is certain, however, that the ethical inference concerning the
relativity of truth and its purposeful manipulation for obscure rea-
sons was very familiar to the members of a nation who had so long
lived under the dominance of a foreign Ottoman power. Portias
plea for mercy (4.1.181202) might have been recognized by some
readers as a tissue of texts from the Old and New Testaments. How-
ever, only the scholar could discern that the comparison of divine
mercy to rain derives from Deuteronomy 32:2 and the warning that
no man is justied in Gods sight from Psalm 143:2. The attentive
Romanian reader with some biblical education may trace the phrase
about seeking salvation from Isaiah 52:10, and certainly many would
recognize the prayer for mercy as derived from the Lords Prayer
(Matthew 6:12). In general, the Romanian theatrical audiences and
the readers of this translation of The Merchant of Venice positively ad-
hered to the Christian values of charity and tolerance apparently
promoted in this particular Shakespearean passage.
It is important to note that the revolutions in the religious, social,
political, and moral traditions have an echo in the early reception
of Shakespeare in the three Romanian provinces in the nineteenth
century. According to this publics perception, the tragedies drama-
tized a mode of melancholy skepticism, at times in the extreme
forms of pessimism and nihilism. Shakespeare debated such ethical
themes as revenge, justice, sin, the law, spirituality, and retribution.
He showed how excess and the failure to adhere to religious princi-
ples could cause havoc and disorder on the personal and national
level. The tragic rhythm of these plays is saturated with religious sig-
nicance that mirrors extensive upheavals in the ethical, economic,
and political sectors. The audiences and readers were certainly
aware of these issues. The common people have managed to main-
tain the light of Christianity during centuries of Turkish occupation
through the strict observance of these rules. When they could see
that another nations poet showed these values almost the same way
they knew them to exist, Romanians could only recognize their ide-
als in the plays they attended or read. The readers of the plays were
the Romanian intellectuals, and many of them were country priests
or teachers, who probably went to their respective villages and
showed the congregation that many of the values taught by religion
existed in the plays by Shakespeare. This could not have meant
much for the hard-working agrarian populations of the Romanian
countryside, but at least they had the feeling that they were not quite
at the margins of the world. The local intellectuals tried to use trans-
lations from Shakespeare, particularly of the four great tragedies, as
a means of stimulating a sense of national identity among the inhab-
PAGE 64 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:18 PS
itants of the three Romanian provinces, before and immediately
after the union achieved in mid-nineteenth century, the formation
of modern Romania. This reaction could exist only if people were
reminded that they were part of the spiritual values of a Judeo-Chris-
tian Europe, at an increasing distance from the waning inuence of
Islam in this troubled late nineteenth century.
If an analogy is permitted, I will refer to the much-discussed mar-
ginalia of the Geneva Bible, where the translators mention the slight
differences but essential similarity of the four Gospels as conveyed
by the Evangelists:
In this historie written by Matthewe, Marke, Luke, and Iohn, the Spirit
of God so governed their eares that although they were foure in nomber,
yet in effect and purpose they so consent, as though the whole had bene
composed by any one of them. And albeit in stile and manner of writing
they be divers, and sometime one writeth more largely that which the
other doeth abridge: neuertheless in matter and argument they all tende
to one end: which is, to publish to the worlde the favour of God towarde
mankinde through Christ Jesus, whome the Father hath given as a
pledge of his mercie & love.
91
It is a matter of no comment that the four tragedies can hold the
same place in the Shakespeare canon as the four Gospels in the New
Testament. To extend the analogy even further, just as the commen-
tators of the Geneva Bible consider that the Gospel according to
John is the keye which openeth the dore to the understanding of
the others,
92
so is Hamlet in the constellation of the four Shake-
spearean tragedies. Audiences and translators all over the world no-
ticed this attribute and acted accordingly. The translators in the
three provinces, and later in the unied Romania, responded to
their publics metaphysical need for a spiritualized vision of this dra-
matic universe by preferringthough unintentionallyin their
translations the Shakespeare plays that were richer in biblical allu-
sions. It was an opportune, though fortuitous, manner of spreading
the Word in a new conguration, through so many Shakespearean
words of wisdom.
The conclusions deriving from the situation of nineteenth-
century translations in Romania, and their readers possible decod-
ing of them in the religious orthodox mode, are by no means
absolute. My argument does not start from the unproven assump-
tion that the people and the period referred to were entirely predict-
able entities. Denitely, there were major cracks in the overall world
picture of nineteenth-century Romania, which my argument in-
PAGE 65 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:19 PS
cludes and makes provisions for. Though there can be no evidence
regarding the actual translation strategies and the possible individ-
ual reaction to the Shakespeare texts in translation, it is still possible
to see them from a hermeneutic perspective as inuential to a cer-
tain, though limited, group of readers and/or audiences of Shake-
speares plays. This group of intellectuals constitutes itself as the
target of cultural evaluations about nineteenth-century Romania,
and all signicant advancements in the domain of Shakespeares ap-
propriation in this country are due to their constant efforts. There-
fore, all the other unaccountable deviations, subversive responses,
or possibilities of resistance fall into the domain of unrecorded his-
tory, and all uninformed assumptions about them must give us
pause. A certain fact is that the Shakespeare translations, imperfect
and inadequate as they were in nineteenth-century Romania, have
made possible, along with other works of classical and domestic liter-
ature, the nations transition into a convulsive and perplexed mo-
dernity.
PAGE 66 ................. 11420$ $CH2 10-20-05 11:13:20 PS
3
Shakespeares Decalogue:
English Histories in Romania
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN HISTORY AND THEATER PRODUCED SURPRISING
effects in the theatrically dened Elizabethan culture and it gives
rise to conicting critical readings and radical adaptations now,
when politics becomes increasingly affected by a ludic dimension,
besides ephemerality and irrationality. Since absolute knowledge of
historicity is impossible, the conicts of interpretation and diversity
of opinions are inescapable. The absurd version of reality suggested
by the hostility in the world invites us to an awareness of their theat-
rical proportions and re-actualizes the issue of how the potential
renderings of Shakespeares English history plays shift erratically
over time and space. Just as the Elizabethan audiences in the early
1590s observed segments of English medieval history performed on
stage, we now watch the media releasing moving scenes that illus-
trate the horrors of war and listen to emotional recitals of atrocities
and refugees. The awareness that this is reality, not theatrical illu-
sion, cannot prevent a certain aesthetic perception of history as
drama, pointing to the political actuality of the productions of En-
glish historical plays. While current antagonistic ethnic, religious,
and territorial re-evaluations raise serious questions about the falsi-
cation of history and the validity of ideologies ruled by economics
and power, the multifaceted perspectives on truth dramatized in
Shakespeares ten history plays might outline a relevant set of theat-
rical illustrations. Now as before, history and culture could be ad-
dressed to ameliorate unfair political practices. The present cannot
be aligned to the past, but the representation of critical episodes in
Englands history through various productions of Shakespeares his-
tories may elucidate the inconsistencies of an unstable present.
In exploring the dialectical relationship between historiography
and theatricality, William M. Hawley writes, Theatre is a historio-
graphical art, just as history seems occasionally theatricalwitness
the recent events in East Europe, including the spectacular collapse
PAGE 67
67
................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:00 PS
of the Iron Curtain and the reunication of Germany.
1
Proclaim-
ing the theater as the historiographical medium par excellance,
2
Hawley acknowledges the role of the imagination in the audience-
mediated process interposed between text and performance. When
considering the interface of the recent Romanian reception of
Shakespeares chronicle plays with modern history, my analysis de-
parts from a number of questions. Initially, to what extent is English
history relevant for Romanian audiences whose cultural background
is placed so far from the British account of historical events? The
action of these plays seems to be less relevant to Romanian audi-
ences, who are more interested in what directors can make of these
plots by exploiting the current topical relationships of power and
the theater. Furthermore, two basic questions arise: What theater?
In addition, what power? What kind of theater is admitted into the
politically conditioned republic? What is the inuence of power
over theater and, inclusively, what power for what theater? Is the
choice of certain plays stipulated by political request? Conversely,
what inuence can the theater have over power and what theater for
what power? This discussion might entail the problems of political
censorship and theatrical self-censorship demanded by nancial
constraints.
As regards the kind of theater under discussion, Donald G. Wat-
son suggests an answer to the fundamental question concerning the
Shakespearean dramatic version of English history: Based as it is
upon illusion and pretense, the drama represents the truth through
ctions whose formalizations obscure but cannot hide the duplicity
of its metaphors. The permanent theater created a new kind of cul-
tural space in which the very act of playing confused the everyday
certainties of the social order.
3
Like the carnivalesque popular festi-
vals, the public theaters enacted a release from the everyday restric-
tions of business as usual. The same can be said about the situation
in the Communist Romania of the seventies and eighties. The the-
ater was expected to provide the desired relief from oppressive ideo-
logical pressure. Speaking of the choice of theatrical repertory by
Romanian theaters, in 1975, the critic and playwright Aurel Baranga
advised for the selection of major plays.
4
Giving the example of
Hamlet and Molie`res Le Misanthrope, Baranga denes a major play
as one capable to produce grave and profound emotions and to
communicate them to the audience, who are obliged to meditate
even after the curtain falls.
5
The critic does not state explicitly the
idea of catharsis derived from the plays questioning of political
structures of the time, but the message is implicit in the context.
Baranga raises the audience, seen as a sociological concept, to the
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3: SHAKESPEARES DECALOGUE: ENGLISH HISTORIES IN ROMANIA 69
omnipotent level of absolute judge, because the publics partner-
ship implies the participation of life in its own ceremony. Like Ro-
manian directors, critics attached much importance to the decoding
of meaning located in the audience.
This situation can be explained by an analogy with the theater in
Shakespeares time. The nature of dramatic experience is anoma-
lous, for the performance requires the audience to believe and dis-
believe simultaneously what they are seeing on stage. Shakespeare
and his contemporaries employed a wide range of techniques to en-
hance the nature of theatrical illusion, including prologues and
other framing devices, asides, soliloquies, and plays-within-plays.
These dramatic tricks were designed to draw attention to the theatri-
cal nature of the action, enabling dramatists to move condently
and skillfully within an old and well-established tradition of coopera-
tion with the audience. As Julia Briggs writes about the stage-play
world in Shakespeares time, By offering a complex experience
and demanding a complex response, the drama could express a new
consciousness of simulation and dissimulation, both within the self
and the others.
6
In modern theater, the audience is no less sophisti-
cated in demonstrating high expectations. In addition, the most im-
portant of the alienating devices that the modern Romanian
audiences are confronted with, in order to deliberately undermine
the theatrical illusion, is Shakespeares name. Since the icon has be-
come synonymous with theater itself in the public perception, any
Shakespeare play is expected to convey a special message, and audi-
ences come with specic expectations to see such a production. We
could say, without fear of overstatement, that the name of Shake-
speare has become a theatrical convention like the ones men-
tioned above, through which modern audiences are exposed to a
comfortable acceptance of the articial nature of the medium.
Moreover, they expect special developments in narrative and psy-
chological complexity or even political innuendo.
In the Communist period, the theater was a place of exorcising
the spiritual demons of the totalitarian political pressure, a generic
space of escapist illusion. Things have not changed much after the
institution of democracy in 1989. In the hectic ten years of post-
Communist novel democracy, however, the theater has become a
sanctied cultural location where people can escape nancial aus-
terity through immersion in the never-never land of imagination on
stage. There was a distinct ssure in the theater of the sixties and
seventies in Romania relating to the marriage between critical prac-
tice and the reality of the performance. For instance, Brechts non-
Aristotelian epic theater exercised a remarkable inuence on Roma-
PAGE 69 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:01 PS
nian Shakespeare productions, in the sense that directors observed
the potential of illustrating Brechts concepts of distancing
7
and
historicizing events in the actual representation of the Shakespear-
ean histories. To the degree in which foreign productions of Shake-
speares histories can yield Brechtian readings, some directors tried
to incorporate the German dramatists social and political theories
into their theatrical practice. Certain audiences could discern visible
political approaches to these plays, and their relevance to current
public issues was transparent in almost every production. Theater
critics, however, tended to overemphasize the Marxist side of
Brechts theory, in an attempt to cope with the ideological require-
ments of the period.
8
The Socialist-oriented verbose rhetoric that theater criticism used
at that time was eventually coined as wooden language. This in-
exible and iterative critical and political discourse offered an ideo-
logically adjusted interpretation of all authors to suit the conceptual
requirements of the Communist rulers of the time. Gertrudes de-
mand for more matter with less art could have been an appropriate
description of the socializing commentaries that theater critics used
in early Communist Romania in order to conform to the dictates of
power at the time. Occasionally, certain reviewers cloaked their own
resentment of the political regime under the guise of oversized
Marxist critical assumptions. This dramatic split between thought
and practice, at both the institutional and individual level, created
an inherentthough not admittedrejection of ideologizing criti-
cal interpretations. While professing to promote social-materialist
criticism in an allegedly Marxist-oriented society, a permanent atti-
tude of subversive resistance toward such ideas could be discerned
in the critics statements with regard to personal options. A subse-
quent effect of this division, as experienced in current criticism, may
explain the relative unpopularity of cultural materialism in formerly
Communist Eastern European countries now, when critical inquiry
is free of all ideological constraints.
A direct example of such a disruptive intellectual impediment in
the late sixties and seventies is the Romanian reception of the other-
wise popular Shakespeare scholar Ian Kott. While his Shakespeare
Our Contemporary was translated into Romanian with utmost promp-
titude,
9
the book did not appear to have such an overwhelming
inuence on directors and theater critics. Scholarly criticism ac-
knowledged the Polish authors importance in the eld of Shake-
speare studies,
10
but the effect of his ideas on theater directors was
less perceptible. However, Kotts remarks on the political relevance
of Shakespeares histories, as appearing in a 1969 Romanian transla-
PAGE 70 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:02 PS
tion, are as tangible as ever. Despite recent questionings regarding
the playwrights contemporaneity,
11
Kotts generalized statements
about the actual application of Shakespeares productions to cur-
rent political issues are still operational: Shakespeare is humanity
or life itself. Each epoch nds in him what it is searching for, what it
wants to see. . . . Todays spectators, on discovering their own con-
temporaneity in Shakespeare, come closer to Shakespeares world
almost unwittingly. In any case, they understand it betterespecially
in what concerns the history plays.
12
Kotts statement concerning
Shakespeares universality and the applicability of certain omnipres-
ent criteria to any nation any time must be taken with a grain of salt,
taking into account the period in which he wrote, abounding with
Tylliardian speculations. However, the idea that the histories open
the way to a theatrical negotiation between various cultures and the
English past has been adopted by theaters in Romania for their rep-
ertoire policy.
The power in Romania, before and now, seems to think too much
of itself to get directly involved in the cultural life of the city. The
ofcials former and actual self-centeredness precludes any real par-
ticipation in the spiritual life of the nation. The Communists
thought they could control the national theater through censorship
and thought-oppressive practices. In their self-delusional grandilo-
quence, the rulers believed that it was enough to install an atmo-
sphere of psychological terror and constraint in order to control the
minds of individuals. However, thought is free, as the servants and
slaves in The Tempest declare in their nonsense drunken song, and
the long-disregarded individual consciousness exploded in an un-
precedented way through the 1989 historic events resulting in the
displacing of the Communist regime. It is reasonable to believe that
Shakespeares theater, though not necessarily the productions of
the histories, must have had an impact on the public consciousness,
especially in Bucharest and the large cities, where all the popular
movements took place and succeeded in overthrowing the political
system. At present, the current power has totally released its grip
over cultural life, preoccupied as it is with mundane matters, such
as the Gross National Product and loans from the World Bank. Con-
sequently, every theatrical production becomes a nancial affair,
and prot governs us all. The political censorship, which could have
been opposed with subversive means, has been replaced by nancial
constraints. Romanian theaters can rarely nd a solution to the
latter.
Performances are relative affairs, and the comparative neglect of
foreign productions of the history plays points to the perceived oth-
PAGE 71 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:03 PS
erness of dramatizations of Englands past, by both English and for-
eign modern audiences. By hindsight, asperities are erased, the
focal points of reference are less acute, and the current perceptions
of the dramatic representations of history become blurred and de-
ective. Moreover, memories of the productions themselves are elu-
sive and selective, and the general impression becomes the deja vu
of what the dramatic illustrations make of historys chronicled
events. It is reasonable, therefore, to accept that the popularity of
Shakespeares histories on the Romanian postwar stage cannot by
far be compared with the frequent representations of other plays.
This chapter surveys a variety of Romanian productions of Shake-
speares English histories over the past four decades: a period that
witnessed radical changes in the geopolitical concerns and the con-
fusing interplay of ideologies. The sixties, seventies, and eighties in
Romania represented a period when there existed a severe split be-
tween what people thought and what they were told to think. The
last and most extreme attempts of Communist ideologists at control-
ling their own fabricated history, in conict with an increasingly
unstable reality, were confronted with a cumulative but passive resis-
tance at the level of public perception.
The Shakespeare jubilee year 1964 was marked by a series of cul-
tural events related to Shakespeare in Romania. From new transla-
tions or new editions of earlier ones to abundant critical studies and
theatrical productions, the Romanian cultural territory was brim-
ming with Shakespearean references. A special edition of the main
theatrical journal in the country, entitled Teatrul, was dedicated en-
tirely to articles on Shakespeares life and theater, reviews of produc-
tions in Romania and Britain, production histories, and dramatic
critical approaches to Shakespeare. Among these, Alexandru Dutu
provided a complete abstract of all productions of Shakespeare on
the Romanian stage from the nineteenth century to the present,
13
and Ana Maria Narti made an excursion into the most remarkable
postwar productions.
14
Writing about the meaning and importance
of social criticism in Shakespeares histories, a favorite subject with
Socialist critics, Narti argued for an understanding of the histories
in the context of the age, while considering the uidity of historical
events and the general humanistic message of the plays.
With the unavoidable reference to Karl Marxs philosophy of art,
Narti commended Shakespeares histories for their complex dia-
lectic realism
15
and noted the plays political implications as only
one reading out of their multiple possibilities of interpretation. As
the Romanian theater critic points out,
PAGE 72 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:03 PS
If we distinguish in Richard III nothing else but vehement politics, or
bloody murders for the crown, what other value, except for the docu-
mentary one, can we give this play today, when the Wars of the Roses
belong to a very distant past? If Marx had judged the ancient sculptures
according to such criteria, he could have never enjoyed their beauty.
Certainly, Shakespeares canon includes much history, many strong ac-
cents of social criticism, with immediate address to his world . . . How-
ever, he cannot be reduced to one or other range of meanings, but can
be dened through the complex interplay of all ideas.
16
Romanian critics in the sixties and early seventies were certainly
aware of the multiple readings and political interpretations that vari-
ous Shakespeare productions could ascribe to the histories, but they
chose to discuss them only in the predominant Marxist key.
While in the sixties the theater criticism was unmistakably en-
gaged in dening the social and political coordinates of the histories
in realistic Socialist terms, some critics of the seventies dared to
express discordant political views in the disguise of perfectly ortho-
dox Marxist theatrical criticism. For instance, Nicolae Manolescu
wrote an article entitled Shakespeares Modern Realism in 1970.
This title corresponded to the Communist ideological necessity of
identifying social and realistic concepts in almost anything, from
Shakespeare to moon landing. Referring to the histories, Manolescu
made the expected reference to Ian Kotts interpretation of Shake-
speares histories, but then inserted some allusions of his own. He
compared the icon of the hierarchical conguration of a series of
English kings and their ght for power to the images of voievods
painted on the Romanian monasteries. The critics reference to reli-
gious art was totally unexpected in the context, and the readers
could not fail to notice the evasion. Moreover, in Manolescus analy-
sis of the Shakespearean approach to history, many readers could
identify parallels with the totalitarian Communist regime, seen as an
implacable mechanism which disregarded individual values in the
circuit of totalitarian authority and absolute power.
Discussing Shakespeares histories, Manolescu used Ian Kotts
metaphor of the inexorable mechanism of power when he wrote,
With Shakespeare, history is not rational, like, for example, with
Hegel, who considers that only individuals in history have the tragic
aw; history is tragic and absurd because it represents a senseless
Mechanism, a reiteration of the same fatal circle of events. Order in
history is as indifferent to people as universal order is; there is no
freedom, only monstrous necessity, there are no causes and pur-
poses, only an endless sequence of power cycles.
17
The generalized
PAGE 73 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:04 PS
form of expression and the impersonal tone, however, might lead
to a subversive interpretation of Manolescus commentary, which is
inscribed in the academic spirit of resistance to the Communist ide-
ology. This critical consideration of the productions of Shake-
speares histories could be deciphered as an accurate, though
clandestine, description of the dictatorial regime in Romania. The
Socialist political system tried to impose an alien Marxist-Leninist
materialistic ideology and practice to a nation whose history had
shown very few moments of freedom from different world powers.
Under the guise of historical materialist criticism, Manolescus
message about Shakespeares histories tells readers covertly that
Communism is inhuman, acting like a senseless mechanism on
individual consciousness. It has no regard for the human being, and
all the political rulers of the day cared for was to obtain power at
all costs and enjoy its benets as long as possible. Irrationality and
insensitive cyclical movement and the sense of waste and impossibil-
ity of signicant action were only a few of the peoples general emo-
tions in Romania during the sixties and later. In these historical
circumstances, it is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that audiences
would take these feelings with them to the theater, to watch how the
productions of Shakespeares histories would match their expecta-
tions.
A memorable production of Richard III in 1964 was directed by
Ion S ahighian and focused on the actors interpretation. George
Vraca, an important name of the Romanian stage, had the aspira-
tion of creating this role, after having successfully faced the Hamlet
challenge. For every actor at that time, interpreting a Shakespearean
hero was equivalent to an accreditation of high artistic mastery. Ac-
cording to Florin Tornea, the version is focused on how the hero
behaves, ascends, and falls, while the actor constructs signicant
autonomous imagery, precisely designed and colored.
18
Another
reviewer observes that George Vraca avoids the simplistic view of
the fascinating Richard III and strives to resituate his character in
the context of the ages specic psychology. His hero invites us to
study Machiavelli. We no longer see a diabolic monster who takes
revenge on everyone around him because of his deformity, but one
of those bloody and conicting Renaissance warriors who have con-
tributed, at times with extreme cruelty, to the formation of new
states and a new order.
19
It is visible how one reviewer focuses on
the actors excellent interpretation, while the other suggests the
image of the Renaissance titan, a being of exceptional energy and
creative force, so much admired by the Socialist makers of beliefs
because it was in accordance with their ideal of accomplished
PAGE 74 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:04 PS
human being, actively involved in the communal life, though lack-
ing in moral scruples. A decade later, in 1976, Richard III was inter-
preted by the reputed actor Radu Beligan in a production directed
by Horea Popescu at the Bucharest National Theater. Like Hamlet,
this role has been embraced by Romanian actors at the height of
their careers.
The rst production of Richard II on the Romanian stage was in
1966 at Teatrul Mic, directed by Radu Penciulescu.
20
A theater critic
of the time, Mira Iosif, notes various stages of this directors gradual
understanding of Shakespeares histories. In brief, Penciulescus ap-
proximation, in stages, to history as shown by Shakespeare, could be
interpreted on a more general scale as the way Romanian audiences
perceived the political game of power in the history plays. Iosif
writes that at rst, Richard II seemed to Penciulescu a historical play
admirably depicting a certain epoch, with multifaceted present-day
resonance. The characters fell into distinct categories, white was dif-
ferent from black, good and evil people confronted each other from
two opposing parties. Later, the director realized that the play was
situated at the intersection of two worlds: the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, or the legitimate monarchy in contradiction with the
brute force of individual interest in ascension. History remained
thus only the background of an intensely political play with no clear
demarcations between good and evil. There were no verdicts and
solutions valid for only one party, and chronicles of the past were
hazy affairs. In these conditions, Penciulescu discovered the multi-
ple and tragic social signicance in Richard II, which he read as a
philosophical drama debating the relationship between individual
values and public power.
21
The director of this rst Romanian pro-
duction of Richard II saw the play as the tragedy of individual experi-
ence vanquished by the implacable mechanism of history. Both
Richard and Bolingbroke were caught in this power-generated ma-
chinery, but each of them discovered gradually each link of the co-
lossal concatenation of historical events, to which they were helpless
prisoners.
Immovable facts of chronicle constituted the play, while the he-
roes could only meditate on their individual destinies, as they were
moved by the gigantic mechanical action of history. According to
the theater critic reviewing this production, Penciulescu saw Richard
II as the work of a moralizing artisan who studies the mechanism
of history.
22
The directors main commandments, therefore,
were as follows: Do not enact meaning or signicance. Do not draw
conclusions. Interpret characters, situations, and the true life of the
text.
23
With such directives in mind, and explained to his actors,
PAGE 75 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:05 PS
Richard III directed by Ion S ahighian at the Nottara Theater (1964). With George
Vraca as Richard III. Courtesy of the Nottara Theater Bucharest.
PAGE 76 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:13:54 PS
Richard III directed by Horea Popescu at the Bucharest National Theater (1976).
With Radu Beligan (Richard III) and Mircea Albulescu (Norfolk). Courtesy of the
Bucharest National Theater.
PAGE 77 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:35 PS
Penciulescu diversied the situations in the play in an appropriately
Shakespearean mode. He showed deadly and implacable historical
confrontations and graceful court rituals. Hieratic and lofty poetry
blended with medieval morality scenes, such as the conjugal dispute
at the Duke of Yorks residence, which seemed inspired from a mo-
rality play. Epic scenes, battles, arraignments, and coronations alter-
nated with philosophical meditations about individual destiny and
power, about the multiple avatars of the human condition, about
time and universe. The spectacle did not particularly emphasize a
certain scene. Considering that Shakespeare concentrated the
course of life in the ve acts, condensing huge historical periods in
one scene and dilating essential seconds in another, the director left
to the audience the choice of selecting the order of importance.
Like in life, the stage showed both essential and unimportant events.
It was for the viewers to interpret them and draw their conclusions.
The sets in this spectacle suggested very little to the eye. The
wooden stage was composed of two trapezes superimposed horizon-
tally. This was the terrain where conicting action took place. Rich-
ards murderers could jump out of a dark trapdoor on this double
stage. A few boards erected on this stage signied the battlements of
the castle, while the garden lay in another corner of this stage-world.
This theatrum mundi metaphor was meant to suggest the bare stage
at the Globe, and the fact that the sets were constructed in front of
the audience gave the impression of dynamic participation in the
events of the play. The props were suggestive of power through her-
aldry. A throne, a knights armor, ags, and engraved shields sug-
gested a specic medieval iconography. According to Elizabethan
theatrical tradition, the stylized decor contrasted with the sumptu-
ousness of costumes. Richards court was elegant, luxurious, sophis-
ticated, and decadent, since he was seen as a waning representative
of a legitimate but obsolete monarchy based on the divine right.
Here, colors were extravagant in multiple chromatic nuances, and
the fabrics were rich velvet, silk, and taffeta. Richards costumes had
solar reections, as he frequently compared himself to the sun, but
they also accentuated his pallor, as a metaphor of devitalized royalty.
By contrast, Bolingbroke and his men conveyed the sensation of live
brutal force. His costume suggested wind, dust, and an active life.
The fabrics were rough and elemental, mainly metal, leather, and
wool, in red-brown and ery tones.
The costumes in this production of Richard II outlined a visible
antagonism between Richard and Bolingbroke, and the medieval ac-
curacy was supposed to exclude any existing association. However,
the atmosphere created in the play said otherwise. The rapid scene
PAGE 78 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:35 PS
sequences or the hasty crossings of the stage at certain high psycho-
logical moments conveyed innite nuances to the specic ambiance
and suggested up-to-date political implications. Permanent tension
and mistrust hovered around those who conspired against King
Richard. Furtive glances, subdued gestures, sharp replies, the ad-
vance of some, the hesitation of others, reciprocal mistrust, more or
less dissimulated fear all these theatrical elements created a suffocat-
ing atmosphere of suspicion and terror. This ambivalent feeling of
mistrust and fear was common to the real-life atmosphere in Com-
munist Romania in those years. Barely emerging from the Stalinist
period of suspicion and repression, the nations psychological hori-
zon could hardly be expected to range within the sane and positive
conguration. By forcing people to confront their hidden fears and
expectations, Penciulescus version of Richard II helped audiences
better realize the exact relationships of power and subjection within
the large inhuman mechanism of history, of which they were also a
part.
On reviewing this production of Richard II at Teatrul Mic, a the-
ater critic makes explicit the present-day relevance of the oppressive
atmosphere omnipresent in the play. Narti points out that Richards
deposition marked the end of a symbolic period of sacred, inviola-
ble, and solid stability. The critic remarks, This clearly dened
theme is lively resonant for the modern-day audience, who has been
attending, for more than half a century, the demise of beliefs that
had seemed impossible to fracture, the dissipation of so many con-
victions that had seemed founded on sacred truths, and the failure
of so many orders and systems that had seemed to be everlasting.
24
The generalized reference is very vague and unaccountable, as many
critics and historians statements used to be in that blurred period
of Communist autocracy, but the historical resonance is very clear
to the attentive readers. They all remembered having witnessed a
deposition of the Romanian king only two decades before. What
seemed to be a stable and infallible monarchic system had been
shattered to pieces under the leveling Russian-driven Communist
sledgehammer. This was accompanied by the no-less-deadly scythe
of ideological domination.
In Romania, 1976 was a year for the Henry plays. The National
Theater of Timisoara produced 3 Henry VI. The Nottara Theater in
Bucharest presented Henry IV, Part 1 and 2. The rst Romanian pro-
duction of Henry VI, Part 3, directed by Ioan Ieremia,
25
offered a
compressed version of English history in Shakespeares dramatic re-
statement. The synopsis published in the program gave a detailed
description of the events in English history dramatized in the Shake-
PAGE 79 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:36 PS
spearean play, making the necessary connections with European
and Romanian history. King Henry VI of England was contempora-
neous with King Louis XI in France, S tefan cel Mare in Moldova,
and Vlad Tepes, surnamed Dracula, in Walachia. The director
took the liberty of intervening in the text and in the order of the
scenes. The production started with King Henrys soliloquy sitting
on a molehill on the Towton elds (3 Henry VI, 2.5.154). This alter-
ation was meant to put the entire action into perspective. By moving
this scene from its central place in 3 Henry VI to the beginning of
this abridged version, the director pointed to the heroic, though fu-
tile, one-man battle against a contradicting and divided world.
Henry VI may have been a weak king, as the chroniclers suggested,
but this non-active, ineffective, and devout monarch imposed a
model of superior moral order, in opposition with the disturbed po-
litical situation of his time. Though he seemed to be a poor leaf
blown in the wind of the civil wars, Henry VI was aware of his insuf-
ciency. He knew that he could not use the drastic methods of the
sword and gallows to attain his political ends, as Warwick, Edward,
Richard, or Margaret did.
The production of the Henry VI, Part 3 directed by Ioan Ieremia
suggested that war was wasteful and useless, and that hatred, enmity,
treason, perjury, and murder could destroy kings, nobles, women,
and children alike. King Henrys initial soliloquy was meant to pro-
vide a lucid and superior position toward such adversities. History,
in this directors vision, was a giant piece of machinery that de-
stroyed humans implacably and haphazardly. Murderers and inno-
cents were all victims of this merciless and monstrous mechanism of
history, as the audiences could see for themselves in their present-
day Romania. The director used Henrys soliloquy on the molehill
as a kind of prologue to frame the production and to point to the
theatrical illusion. At the same time, however, this framing device
attached to a Shakespeare play pointed aggressively toward a current
political interpretation, which the audiences expected when they
went to see a Shakespeare production. Therefore, they perceived
the directors vision of history in terms of a repulsive mechanism of
oppression relating to the political situation under Communism.
After the political persecutions of the fties and sixties, the Com-
munist leaders found subtler ways of manipulating people, through
mind control and psychological dominance. It is interesting that
most directors staging the histories during the Communist period
saw historical development as an implacable destructive mechanism
that consumed individuals. This vision may have been induced by
the current situation during the Communist regime, when there was
PAGE 80 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:37 PS
a total disregard for individual needs. In those circumstances, sensi-
tive people felt inescapably caught in a grinding wheel of power and
destruction, from which there could be no evasion. However, Iere-
mias production of 3 Henry VI suggested nal redemption through
the peaceful image of an innocent child who walked serenely on the
bloodstained battleeld. The future did not belong to any political
party, as the directors message seemed to say. On the bare stage,
indicating a circular road against the background of medieval forti-
cations, were two heavy chariots representing the two contending
houses that turned in never-ending circles. Each chariot came into
the foreground, as factions gained precedence one over the other.
In the middle was the throne, the ultimate symbol of power. The two
stout chariots carried, in turn, the soldiers and their kings and
queens, who attained power and defeat alternatively. The inclusion
of much of the present-day social and political predicament in this
play on English history made the laughter evoked in some scenes
turn ambivalent, cruel, sardonic, and grotesque on most occasions.
Henry IV, Part 1 and 2, produced at the Nottara Theatre in Bucha-
rest (1976) and directed by Lucian Ghiurcescu,
26
was an abridged
two-hour version of the two plays. Critics censured this dramatized
abstract for being arbitrary and needing focus. The three authors of
this version, Dorin Moga, Sorin Arghir, and Lucian Ghiurcescu,
were actors. They may have lacked a playwrights discernment re-
garding plot structure, the arrangement of themes and motifs, or
the distribution of foreshadowing and climactic scenes. This Shake-
spearean digest conated the two Henry IV plays. As the playbill an-
nounced, part one contained the famous history of the life and
death of Henry IV and the life and death of Henry called Hot-
spur. Part two consisted of the death of Henry IV, and the corona-
tion of Henry V. The rudimentary construction simply collated
capriciously various scenes and characters, operating massive text re-
ductions. For instance, Falstaff s catechism on honor at 1 Henry IV
(5.1.12740) was transported at the end of the abstracted version,
displacing the meaning substantially. Prince Hals soliloquy about
his tavern mates, in which he compared himself to the sun (1 Henry
IV, 1.2.122214) was dropped out altogether. Consequently, the au-
dience was deprived of an important part of the characters self-
representation. Hal compared himself to the royal symbol, the sun,
and looked disdainfully at his companions, but he considered them
functional in setting off his own glory. A major drawback of this
abridged text, however, was the insistence on the historical develop-
ment of the conict, leaving out the aspect of chorography,
27
the
dramatic illustration of specic places, customs, and social groups as
PAGE 81 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:37 PS
they are presented mostly in the Eastcheap scenes. The epilogue of
2 Henry IV was also excluded, thus depriving this production of the
playful note provided by the comic actors last dance and curtsy. The
actors-authors of this version focused on the sober historical narra-
tive, in accordance to which the rule of law ofcially triumphed over
the forces of disorder. They neglected to remind their audience that
this was a play after all, a dance of history, and not a chronicle of life
itself.
Critics saluted warmly the 1981 production of Richard II at the Na-
tional Theater of Craiova.
28
They admitted, however, that this partic-
ular play had not been performed on the Romanian stage for ten
years. This production was a reaction against modern innovation in
the theater, which had accustomed audiences with Shakespeares
plays performed in the most eccentric settings, on scaffolds or in city
bars, with great soliloquies being spoken by actors chewing on gum
or dressed in sporting outts. Mircea Cornisteanus interpretation
of Richard II was in the traditional key. Richards royal court was a
medieval place with denite gurative elements: decorative frescoes,
knights in armor, and heraldry. Perspective imaging gave profundity
to the stage space, and mobile massive walls transformed the court-
room into the castle battlements, or the prison. Costumes were de-
signed in strict agreement with the late fourteenth-century period.
A critic reviewing this play explained this observance of historical
accuracy through the intention to make the audiences think. As
Paul Tutungiu remarks, It is more interesting for the director to try
to revive a lost world exactly and let the audience discover the
present-day correspondences than to force the Duke of York, for in-
stance, to run breathlessly on a highway in order to show that the
director wanted to address current issues.
29
However, immediate
problems were in order at this theatrical court. The question of pub-
lic and private responsibility, the personal and national conse-
quences of power, or the legitimacy of authority were only a few
matters raised by this production addressed to Romanian audiences
of the early eighties.
The director made a number of drastic interventions in the text.
Some scenes were missing, such as, for example, that when the ap-
pearance of the Duke of Norfolk was announced, which created con-
fusion regarding the nature of the confrontation between Thomas
Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke. However, the most effectual and
suggestive directorial change came as an intrusion into the plays
grand nale. In order to emphasize the individual drama of Rich-
ard, whose personality developed from insensitive king to sympa-
thetic human being, from the capricious and temptation-driven
PAGE 82 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:38 PS
master to the philosopher who found individual freedom in the
prison of his thoughts, Cornisteanus Richard was not killed in
prison. He committed suicide. The murderer was not a match for
Richard, who disarmed him easily. However, after a few moments of
hesitation, the wiser Richard discarded his sword and let himself fall
into the assassins dagger. Thus, this production showed the individ-
uals tragedy, when consciousness was caught in the implacable sys-
tem of power and was not ready to accept its responsibilities. These
signicant alterations make us think that Cornisteanu subtly dis-
guised his directorial techniques and messages in the form of a his-
torical play acted in the traditional mode. Thus, the king became a
person whom audiences were inclined to sympathize with, an au-
thentic human being who understood his role in history. This view
was drastically opposed to the conformist Communist ideological
dictate, according to which any representation of a king, Shake-
spearean or not, should necessarily demonstrate the corruption in-
herent in the monarchic system and reveal the superiority of the
Socialist order by comparison.
As history, ideology, and identity became one in this historical
tragedy, the audiences could witness social injustice, arbitrary mea-
sures, political crimes imposed without trial (or, at least, after a brief
one), and overt or covert contentions for power. The play debated
issues of kingship, and it opened up a major distinction between
the reality of power, the actual possession of it, and true royalty.
30
According to the Communist rulers political fantasy, the Romani-
ans were supposed to have forgotten that their country had been a
constitutional monarchy, following the English model. However,
most peopleeven the younger generationstill remembered the
deposed king Michael of Hohenzollern forced to resign after the
Communist coup detat in 1947. Clio, the muse of History, is the
daughter of Mnemosyne, our collective memory, and people are
entitled to remember whatever they like, despite ideological con-
straints that professed to forge history according to a certain hypo-
thetical model. The spiritual gure of the deposed king Richard II
and his thoughts in prison reminded everybody that what made us
human could resist many adversities and incredible turpitude. Al-
though Romanians in the early 1980s were not very familiar with the
actual events in English medieval history represented on stage, the
current relevance of the plays message was denitely there. The
Communist authorities could claim all they wanted, but they were
unable to dispute the tangible reality of this particular production.
Thus, over the centuries, the cumulative theatrical effect stressed
the uncontrollable in history, and some Romanian viewers may have
PAGE 83 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:38 PS
become more aware of who they were by seeing a play about the
British medieval past.
In 1983, Richard III was performed at Teatrul Mic Bucharest, di-
rected by Silviu Purcarete.
31
The music and sets were suggestive of
self-alienation and desolation. In a period of political hegemony,
when ideology could seriously undermine the subtext, the director
explored mainly the political connotations in this play. In trying to
decipher the motive and the object of power, which had been
turned away from its ideal purpose, the director focused on decod-
ing the historical process as it appeared in individual biographies
and events. He suggested a possible general signicance through in-
dividual actions. Thus, the production clearly connected English
history and Romanian political issues. According to a review of the
time, The production suggests a discernible conjunction between
the age indicated by Shakespeare and the anteroom of the third mil-
lennium.
32
The set represented a blank space, where white was the
dominant tone. In this case, white was not a color; it was the absence
of coloration, of denite margins, suggesting the void before and
beyond the convention named history. Like a blank page in a his-
tory book, or the white ag of capitulation in war, the dominating
tone was suggestive of the annihilation of political borders or the
acrid taste of defeat.
The setting visualized an imaginary dissection room, where the
bodies were crowned kings, subjected to vivisection by one of them.
This space was a parable of history, a place where the mechanism of
power was deprived of its constructive function and turned toward a
self-destructive end. The glass cabinets on the two sides marked a
signicant component of the stage space. They contained masks,
hats, theatrical costumes, and other props. An important item on
display was a skull, which people expected to nd in a medical dis-
section room, but which was a cultural ramication connected to
the romantic interpretations of Hamlet. Here, Yoricks skull had
come to represent the mutability of human existence and the men-
tal image was necessarily connected to conventional versions of
Shakespeare. This framing device suggesting theatricality repre-
sented by the sets indicated a ludic production exemplifying the
comedy of power. The characters created masks for themselves and
the others, in a perpetual game of deceit. Purcarete focused on the
subversive property of the ght for power by investigating pro-
foundly the characters involved in its pursuit. Edward IV, Richard,
and Richmond were all various hypostases of the same essence,
namely, the immoderate quest for the illusion of omnipotence.
The director suggested two essential components of power: the
PAGE 84 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:39 PS
Machiavellian political action and the histrionic social behavior. In
this particular production, Richard of Gloucester was not seen as a
malformed monster craving for power in order to compensate for
his physical deformity. He was a skillful politician who followed his
purpose with premeditated lucidity and who saw his need for king-
ship as a political necessity. However, his obsessive pursuit of domi-
nation became anomalous and even pathological, suggested by
Richards passionately embracing his throne, the ultimate symbol of
power. Presented initially as an amoral personality, Richard
searched for an ethical justication for the crimes that would elevate
him to the throne. Once king, he was seized with the inconsistent
delirium of power, which he transformed from a means to an end
in itself. His will became absolute narcissistic passion, and Richard
regressed from the sphere of political necessity to abnormal psychol-
ogy. As the critic reviewing this production notes, Purcarete makes
the case for the institution of a viable ethics of power, greatly needed
in a period when humanity has been seriously traumatized by simi-
larly monstrous manifestations.
33
The critics vague reference
might be to the Nazi rise to power and Hitlers megalomania, but
the implication ran deeper, enclosing the Ceausescu regime in the
circle of signication.
Both the sets containing theater props and Richards histrionic
disposition suggested the familiar theater-world motif to be per-
formed on the larger stage of history. Dilating and emphasizing the
Shakespeare text, Purcarete constructed Richard of Gloucester ac-
cording to a double personality frame. In his relationship with Lady
Anne, he mimed delity but enjoyed the success of hypocrisy. Lady
Anne played the part of the traumatized woman who asked for jus-
tice. Buckingham dissimulated his duplicity by using histrionic
means. Richmond studied his gestures attentively, composed a seri-
ous physiognomy, and rehearsed conscientiously, like any come-
dian, the discourse he was about to deliver in front of his soldiers.
The main political scenes, such as the mediation contrived by Ed-
ward IV, the council meetings, or the election of Gloucester as king,
were obvious spectacle scenes, drawing on the ceremony and equiv-
ocal manipulation of court practices. By insisting on the versatility
shown by those implied in the mechanism of power, and on their
duplicitous presence, Purcarete reconsidered and re-evaluated the
relationship between tragic and comic in his production. His vision
was critically oriented against tyranny, which destroyed the spirit
and consumed social energies in a concatenation of terror. How-
ever, Richards ascension to power took place in the rhythm of some
kind of ruthless comedy, just as Henry Richmond played the comedy
PAGE 85 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:40 PS
of history at a different level when he tried to hide theatrically the
disparity between his declared intentions and secret goals. The ma-
chinery of power at work in Richard III was deployed in accordance
with a quasi-comical principle, while its political and social effects
were wasteful and tragic.
What was the Romanians relationship with Richard of Gloucester
and with a play that concentrated upon acting, deceit, and politics
as spectacle? They had experienced the fragmentation of order and
the absence of coherence after the war, when the Communist re-
gime came gradually to power. They saw how mask and face, role
and identity, word and action had been severed, and how the master
of the art of acting had become the master of politics. This Machia-
vellian personality that objectied the energies of moral dissolution
became an emblem of the violent ambitions let loose in the gro-
tesque ambivalence of the current situation in Romania at that time.
In an oddly diminished interplay of images, the incongruous gure
of Romanias political party ruler of the time, Nicolae Ceausescu,
appeared as emblematic for the eccentricities of power. The former
shoemakers apprentice, who lacked formal education and proper
diction, had become the Communist states absolute ruler because
of histrionics and awed historical contingency. The actor interpret-
ing Richard III, S tefan Iordache, claimed to play a medieval tyrant,
but he drew up the image of a present-day Romanian Communist
politician obsessed with the luxury of authority: a person who trans-
formed the potential virtue of power into the vice of dictatorship.
The director visibly intended his audiences to decode such mean-
ings in this production, and it is very likely that they did.
Reviewing the 1988 production of King John at the Comedy The-
ater in Bucharest, a Romanian critic discussed the situation of theat-
rical policy in preferring Shakespeare to other playwrights when
directors wanted to raise current (political) issues. Paul Cornel
Chitic started from the statement that the theatrical season saw
many Shakespeares in the theaters repertoires. This situation was
explained by the fact that, in selecting Shakespeare for the stage,
the theaters secured for themselves a steady prestige, given by the
accredited name of the English bard. However, Chitic argued, In-
troducing one Shakespeare here and there in the repertoire of one
theater can be only an expressionistic solution of the main issue.
The ostentatious cry of victory represented by Look what we are
producing! hides a concealed need to take refuge in the Giants
shadow, which defeats, through time and space, any other impossi-
ble and inhibiting cultural claim.
34
The critic further explained
that whoever produced a Shakespeare play was cleared of any blem-
PAGE 86 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:40 PS
ish, because Shakespeare was always contemporaneous with every-
one, the only contemporary author recognized as such by all.
Chitics irony was directed at those who selected the theaters
repertoires, and he elucidated how, after a recent release of a Shake-
speare production, the spectacles critics became all Shakespear-
ized and the audiences became Elizabethanized.
35
In other
words, all critics became Shakespeare scholars overnight, and every
member of the audience expected current political innuendo
through the production of that particular Shakespeare play, just as
the Elizabethans were supposed to have done in their time. In the
same ironic mode, Chitic demonstrated that everybody, critics and
audience, came to decipher the slightest nuances of topical political
references in the works of the most contemporarypost mortem
dramatist.
36
In this way, Chitic reasons facetiously, we become con-
temporaneous with Him, our contemporary.
The situation in the Romanian theater during the eighties was
identical to what Chitic ironically described. Two decades before,
His Highness had been the Supreme Daring Weapon a director
used as part of the repertory strategy. Whatever director succeeded
in staging a Shakespeare play cogently obtained the inalienable,
though debatable, right to be elevated to the status of a European
director of substance. At the position of the late-eighties theater in
Romania, however, the issue of selecting a Shakespeare play for the
repertoire was debated rather like a matter of Who dares? Mount-
ing a Shakespeare production became a challenge which, when
taken with feeble force, could become a total asco. Former theatri-
cal versions of Shakespeare focused on the centrality of the works in
the canon, raising the issue of whether one particular play lent itself
to the current interpretations that various directors appended to it.
However, in the late eighties the problem was through which philo-
sophical perspective directors should approach and re-appropriate
a Shakespeare play. The focus on the method of directorial interpre-
tation of a Shakespeare play rather than on the play itself shifted the
center of interest from the plays in the canon to the directors and
actors interpreting them. Consequently, a Shakespeare production
often became a kind of oversized costume donned by one or an-
other actor or director in order to show off how well it t them, and
thus the English playwright fell into the neglected background.
A Romanian staging designed to foreground current political is-
sues from a philosophically reective standpoint, however, was a
1988 production of King John. The problems with King John have
often been attributed to the absence of a central character, and this
want of a hero to dominate the entire play contributed to the plays
PAGE 87 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:41 PS
interpretive difculties. However, we nd that England was the hero
of the histories, suffering the tragedy of misrule, civil war, and inter-
national politics, and enjoying the momentary triumphs of peace,
empire, and prosperity. King John
37
directed by Grigore Gonta and
produced at Teatrul de comedie Bucharest in 1988, was an ironic
statement of historicity that sardonically deated what was still left of
the heroics of politics. The fact that it was produced at the Comedy
Theater was a clear indicator that the play mocked the rhetoric and
ceremony of history. At that time, Romanias situation was at an ex-
treme point of economic privation and political oppression. The
1989 public outburst of discontent was just one year away. In that
case, only the incongruity of parody and the mock-heroic could de-
scribe tolerably the question of right versus might and the legitimacy
of power.
This production of King John was announced as a stage version
of Shakespeares play. The translator, Florian Nicolau, operated
massive reductions of the text. His translation was rich in lexical ec-
centricities, which made it adequate to the parody mode of the spec-
tacle. The director preferred this Romanian translation to a more
scholarly elaborate one by the poet Dan Botta. However, the declara-
tion that the text was a stage version implied a deliberate directo-
rial choice of difference. Not only did Grigore Gonta offer a more
concise variant of the Shakespearean history play, but he modied
the basic prerequisite of the genre. His production tended to be a
satire aimed at the political situation in Romania, if not a forthright
parody. By dropping out parts of the character interaction and
stressing the texts sarcastic tone, the director sustained an alert
tempo on stage. In the rst part of this version, equivocation and
double-meaning jokes interfered with frolicking and more or less in-
nocent pranks directed at the idea of kingship and the bellicose
ardor. The phlegmatic irony, in this part, suggested serious revul-
sion against the tribulations of history. Toward the end, however,
there was an increase in dramatic intensity and the tone became
tragic. The Dauphin of France remained the only character who
preserved the farcical aspect. Marian Ralea, an outstanding comedy
actor, interpreted this controversial character.
The extremely simple setting of King John at the Comedy Theater
in 1988 gave the impression of weirdness. A catwalk traversed the
stage, and lots of ropes hung from the stage canopy, like lianas in a
tropical forest. Like in a simple sentence, this setting made a visible
statement: the world was a jungle. This homo homini lupus motto be-
came an ad litteram declaration when the audiences could see kings,
princes, cardinals, and attendants hanging from these ropes like
PAGE 88 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:41 PS
monkeys, and jumping into the political world of the stage. As a the-
ater critic noticed about this production, had we lived during King
Johns reign, we would have felt avenged.
38
This was an exception-
ally daring statement, because the critic clearly transposed the politi-
cal situation from British history to the present-day Romania,
regardless of the Communist censorship, which was very weak at that
moment near to the collapse of Communist regimes in Europe. The
readers of this theater review could make a direct connection be-
tween the complicated games of political intrigue in the Communist
regime, similar to those of the politicians in King Johns reign. On
seeing the incredible number of ropes the politicians had to pull in
order to achieve their political maneuvers, people would feel sorry
for their mediocrity, then and now, here and there. In a TV inter-
view taken in 2002 of one of Ceausescus acolytes from that time, the
former foreign minister admitted that it took a lot of energy and
cunning to deal with the irrational dictator. Getting him to approve
a certain project was like rope walking. This Shakespeare history
play directed by Grigore Gonta, produced at the worst time of the
totalitarian regime, showed the audience what was happening behind
the curtains of power in the real world, and probably suggested that
the power held by such pathetic people was very fragile.
On a symbolic level, this setting elucidated how moral rectitude
and verticality was the only possible sense of movement through eth-
ical space. In order to reach the incredible heights of worldly ambi-
tion and political power, the characters only direction was going
downward on a perilous rope. The horizontal stability of the stage
space signied the vast expanse of interior victory, ground zero of
human dignity. The memorable ending of this production was pure
directorial invention, but it was in assonance with the general mode
of the spectacle. Four of the last followers of King John were left
alone in the background obscurity. They tried to break free, but
were hindered by indistinct adversaries and forced to vanish in the
surrounding darkness. Having been gradually sequestered by the
higher conspiracy of history within the connes of a limited perime-
ter of political ideas, their only exit could only be into nothingness.
This was the destiny of all ideologies based on the imposition of au-
thority at the cost of human decency and common sense. Any dicta-
torial excess and disregard for the law rendered all tyrannical power
unstable and irregular. This Romanian production of Shakespeares
King John conveyed a warning, issued only a year before the Romani-
ans energies exploded in an unprecedented way, rising against the
annihilating authority of Communism in December 1989.
The succeeding democratic mutation of the early nineties in Ro-
PAGE 89 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:42 PS
mania brought an increased interest in the production of Shake-
speares English histories by the theatrical companies. As the more
or less obvious hazard of political censorship was there no more, di-
rectorial expectations came to govern the productions entirely, and
the theatrum mundi metaphor was regarded as a viable cultural re-
sponse to the inadequacies of everyday life. Theaters in Romania
would see the political and dramatic appropriations of the English
historical past in the Shakespearean version as a form of theatrical
collaboration that transcended cultural and linguistic barriers. The
theater created a new kind of cultural space in which the act of
playing replaced the everyday uncertainties of the social order
and the disappointment of dogmatic abstractions by representing
the truth through historical ctions. Romanian theater became
more self-conscious of its own medium and the magic of its illusions,
making the carnivalesque and the theatrical representation a the-
matic matter. Directors developed a spectrum of self-reexive tech-
niques to insist upon the theaters powers of pretense and make-
believe.
As a result, Romanian productions of Shakespeares histories in
the 1990s replicated, in a curious way, the situation in the Elizabe-
than culture in the 1590s and the role of the theater as an institution
in that culture. The Romanian audiences for these new interpreta-
tions of Shakespearean versions of English history could see actors
playing people consciously playing dramatic roles within the c-
tions, assuming disguises, parodying stage directions, deliberately
deceiving other actors, watching plays within plays, and so forth.
There was a visible and self-conscious directorial shift from the sig-
nicance of the text in translation to the visual, aural, and kinetic
elements of performance. Ritual, dance, and the rhythms of excess
replaced the traditional expectations of representing Englands
past. People expected such theatrical artice as part of the conven-
tion. They were even more aware than they had been in the past of
the interplay of theater, history, and politics, anticipating acting and
directorial developments that would conrm their prospects, espe-
cially when a Shakespeare play was concerned.
In 1994, Richard III
39
was produced at the Odeon Theater in Bu-
charest and at the Dancehouse, Manchester. The director, Mihai
Maniutiu, and his team of actors took this Romanian version of
Shakespeares play on tour through England. They gave the English
an image of their own history as seen through foreign eyes. The pro-
duction enjoyed favorable reviews in English newspapers and schol-
arly journals. In 1995, a condensed version of the three parts of
Henry VI
40
was produced at Teatrul National Timisoara, Romania,
PAGE 90 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:43 PS
and at Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, directed by Ioan Ieremia. In this pro-
duction, we see how international theatrical collaboration appeared
to rely on the English histories as a convenient starting point for cul-
tural dialogue, in an area where sensitive political and national is-
sues tended to become increasingly prominent and problematic in
real life. By producing a collaborative version of this history play, the
directors demonstrated that the theater was a viable form of commu-
nication between neighboring nations, making interaction possible
in a period when ethnic conicts were more or less articially main-
tained in political and military circles.
Apart from international partnership, a distinct approach of the
Romanian theaters self-reexive appropriations of Shakespeares
histories took the form of adaptations. In 1996, Victor Ioan Frunza
directed Falstaff after Shakespeare, produced at the National Theater
in Cluj-Napoca and adapted from Henry IV, Part 1 and 2 and The
Merry Wives of Windsor.
41
As if replicating Elizabeths wish to see Fal-
staff in love, which prompted Shakespeare to write a comedy featur-
ing Sir John, the Romanian director-adapter rewrote Shakespeares
histories and the comedy in order to respond to a highly stylized and
formalized Romanian theatrical culture. Since Shakespeares name
was involved in the equation, this particular director felt the need to
translate the political into the aesthetic and the comic. Some critics
tend to see the current need of re-titling and rewriting the English
histories for modern audiences as a form of making them accessible
to new theatergoers, who might otherwise perceive them as alien. I
prefer to see these conversions as an acclimatization and response
to increasingly self-reexive theatrical institutions and audiences. In
both Elizabethan and modern Romanian cultures, politics was/is
seen as involving the arts of spectacle, and the plays that touch upon
the history of English politics can best address the implicit nature
of the theatrical medium. Moreover, since its adaptation to various
national European cultures, the Shakespeare icon has evolved into
the political theatrical agency par excellance.
Highbrow Romanian theater criticism, represented by the re-
viewer of this production, Mircea Morariu, dened this composite
adaptation of the Henry IV plays as rudimentary, na ve and con-
fused, considering it to be neither Shakespeare nor Frunza.
42
However, its purpose was to please, and thus it became very much
Shakespearean. The sets by Adriana Grand visualized a three-storied
structure, suggestive of the Globe and the theater-within-theater
metaphor. A crowd of many-colored secondary characters gathered
within or around the construction. They were the audience of a
composite production, stepping in and out of it at times and under-
PAGE 91 ................. 11420$ $CH3 10-20-05 11:14:44 PS
going rapid metamorphoses. This patchy public attended the verbal
encounter between Falstaff and Prince Harry and volunteered com-
ments in the form of exclamations. However, the comic duel was un-
equal, and the less-experienced actor interpreting Prince Hal was
no match for the more-accomplished Dorel Visan, the actor playing
Falstaff. According to Morarius review, the production did not ap-
peal entirely to the Romanian public, educated in the spirit of per-
fection conveyed by former Shakespearean productions in general.
However, the uneven reception of this awed cross-genre adaptation
may tell us more about the modern needs of present-day audiences.
Like their Elizabethan counterparts, the Romanian public enjoyed
seeing Falstaff at war, in tavern, and in love, caring to a lesser extent
about the sophisticated philosophical and historical ramications
implicit in a more sober stage production. A similar 1996 adaptation
placed Falstaff on the stage of a musical theater in Constanta. The
musical was named Falstaff Story
43
and it focused mainly on its cen-
tral character, neglecting the story, or history, that lay behind
the comic gure.
The 1998 Romanian production of Richard II
44
at the National
Theater Bucharest directed by Mihai Maniutiu was the best example
of international theater collaboration, participation of the media in
advertising the play, and the self-referentiality of politics within the
dramatic text. The mechanics of the production was the outcome of
artistic and management collaboration between the Romanian Na-
tional Theater and an American Art Management Corporation
(SMART). The immediate result was that the play was conspicuously
present in the media, and the gure of Marcel Iures as Richard II,
complete with red velvet gown and golden crown, came to be
aligned to that of the current runners in the election campaign of
that year. In a ash of the TV screen, present-day politics and En-
glish history came to be associated with the current race for power,
and Shakespeares play suddenly became very popular with Roma-
nian audiences. Moreover, the theater-within-theater convention
was visualized in the rst part of the production, when Richard was
presented as the director and protagonist of his own show. He struck
the gong and invited the audience to step into his ctional world
and enter the play of life and death, of power and betrayal. The
games at Court or in battle were allegorically presented in Richards
royal theater, where ight was the dominant scenic metaphor. The
Court was a Chorus gure; the battles were in pantomime, part of a
symbolic theatrical representation. All the world is a stage seemed
to be the guiding statement. This particular Romanian production
of Richard II, however, forced us to read the formula both ways. We
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could observe the Elizabethan theaters potential for promoting or
subverting the ideology of its own culture and the relevance of the
English histories for modern-day theatrical companies at least, if not
for individual cultures.
This commentary has tried to extend the critical tasks from the
simple production history toward an understanding of the theatrical
dimensions of the history plays. Most often, the histories disclose the
partiality of competing explanations of political events. Human mo-
tives are particularly diverse, and historical circumstances expose
multiple ironies that challenge their interpretive completeness. The
paradoxes at play on the political stages of history make us wonder
whether the readings attributed to various productions of Shake-
speares histories are compatible with as many interpretations as
there are eyes to hear or ears to see, according to Bottoms particu-
lar perception. As Donald G. Watson points out, politics as paradox
insists upon the both/and of contradiction, upon what A. P. Ros-
siter called the two-eyed view, an ambivalence which submits two
opposed judgments or explanations without invalidating or discred-
iting either.
45
Like Touchstone, I would suggest the logical inconsis-
tency of if when advancing a possible interpretation of any foreign
reception of Shakespeares histories. If certain audiences in any par-
ticular country feel that they may read specic political meanings in
some of these plays, they are free to do so, without any record of
their actual interpretation. If theaters and directors choose to suit
their selective policy according to certain political needs, the subse-
quent analysis of these alternatives is purely conjectural. What re-
mains highly probable is that Shakespeare seems to have sworn by
what is not.
Writing about the reception of Shakespeares histories in Bel-
gium, Josef de Vos
46
documents the monumental adaptation of the
two tetralogies, entitled Ten Oorlog, during the 199798 period pro-
duced by the theatrical companies of Ghent and Antwerp. Josef de
Vos explains how Flemish producer Luk Perceval, in collaboration
with the translator/adapter Tom Lanoye, presented Shakespeare re-
written as an explicitly ahistorical trilogy, and afrms that the
reader or spectator no longer has the compelling sense of witness-
ing a series of events from English history.
47
The reason for this
unrecognizable adaptation lies, according to the critic, in the au-
thors deliberate intention to present a digested version of the evolu-
tion of Western history in general.
48
In this Belgian situation of
compressing Shakespeares histories in production, the foreigniza-
tion of the English playwright through translation/adaptation/pro-
duction is a case in point. There are instances of such adaptations
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in Romanian productions of these plays as well. I have mentioned
the conation of Henry IV, Part 1 and 2, produced at the Nottara
Theater in Bucharest (1976) and directed by Lucian Ghiurcescu,
and the Henry VI plays, directed by Ioan Ieremia at the National The-
ater of Timisoara (1995). Similarly, the 1996 Falstaff after Shakespeare,
produced at the National Theater in Cluj-Napoca, directed by Victor
Ioan Frunza, was adapted from Henry IV, Part 1 and 2 and The Merry
Wives of Windsor. However, what appears relevant in the account of
the Romanian theatrical appropriations of Shakespeares histories is
the fact that productions of Henry V are conspicuously absent. Proba-
bly this play is so especially relevant to British history and is so inex-
tricably connected with a specic brand of English patriotism that
directors elsewhere found it difcult to adapt it to a foreign domain
of signication.
The new criteria governing the Romanian reception of the history
plays recongure the equation involving the theatricality of Elizabe-
than culture and the theater as an institution in that culture. The
threat of the former Communist ideologys attempt at controlling
meaning and the theaters natural subversive reaction have been re-
placed by a self-reexive theatrical response to the challenge of the
modern audiences predilections. As Dennis Kennedy notes when
writing about Shakespeare in postwar Eastern Europe, people
looked for the same values in the crowded theaters as in the
crowded churches: condence, in search to regain lost humanist
traditions.
49
This novelty of interpretation through international
collaboration and reliance on visual and kinetic elements of per-
formance brings about an extravagant directorial tendency to adapt
or compress the text in favor of scenic innovations. Romanian audi-
ences still encountered difculties in relating to the political impli-
cations of Elizabethan national culture disclosed through the
histories, owing partly to their rather obscure chronicled relevance,
and partly to the incompleteness of the abridged Romanian text.
Nevertheless, the Romanian theater as an institution was very enthu-
siastic in performing the English historical past, with Romanian di-
rectorial and artistic skills, in a local but mostly international milieu.
Thus, the ten Shakespearean history plays tended to represent the
decalogue of multinational theatrical export. They acquired an exis-
tence outside themselves and became increasingly apolitical and
ahistorical for modern Romanian audiences and theaters, an aes-
thetic form of communication rather than an instrument of political
subversion.
Writing about Shakespeares histories from the direction of the
theory of drama, Pauline Kiernan argues that Shakespeare replaced
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historical accounts of past events with a self-proclaimed ction in
order to challenge historys claim to truth.
50
According to Kiernan,
the dramatization of a section of English history by Shakespeare is
not a representation of what actually happened, but a performance
that is taking place now in a process which is historicising prior au-
thorities on what happened.
51
Moreover, in the process of produc-
ing Shakespeares histories on the Romanian stage, one must take
into account the often-invoked authorizing function of the director.
Therefore, the production of a chronicle play does not only histori-
cize Holinshed and rewrites Englands medieval past in Elizabe-
than terms, but it recomposes Shakespeares authority in terms of
the respective directors intentions. Thus, what remains of the plays
interpretation must be located at the intersection between Shake-
spearean and Romanian directorial authorship, taking into account
the translators intervention into the text and the totality of the pre-
vious critical beliefs that found their way into the directors and the
audiences minds. In addition, when taking such productions of the
histories to foreign shores, such as in the Romanian versions of Rich-
ard III (Mihai Maniutiu 1994) or Richard II (Mihai Maniutiu 1998),
for example, the intercultural paradigm achieves an incredible in-
terpretative superstructure. The British, or Serbian, or Japanese au-
diences of these Romanian productions of Shakespeares plays are
confronted with a triple coating of historicizing Shakespeares his-
tories drawing on English history. This may sound confusing, but
it is how things stand at this point in Romanian appropriations of
Shakespeares histories.
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4
Romanian Metamorphoses: Comedies
The Layout
SPEAKING OF THE SUMMER AND FALL SEASON AT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON,
Russell Jackson gives an account of the RSC 2000 production of The
Comedy of Errors, directed by Lynne Parker, at the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre. Calling it the more satisfying of the seasons two come-
dies,
1
Russell Jackson notes that the permanent set of the town-
square was reminiscent of Casablanca.
2
We are shown a picture (re-
produced courtesy of the Shakespeare Centre Library) representing
Anthony Howell as Antipholus of Ephesus, in a Western suit and tie,
and Ian Hughes as Dromio of Syracuse, with a Turkish cap and vest.
Their discussion focuses on the key Antipholus holds in his hand, a
key to Adrianas house or to European tolerance between East and
West. Based on this scene, and recalling my general impression
when seeing this production in Stratford-upon-Avon (summer
2000), I incline to say that the plays East-West axis, Ephesus and
Syracuse, was clearly brought into focus. The rug merchant in Arab
dress, the courtesan dressed in a belly-dancing outt, and the gen-
eral Eastern Mediterranean turn-of-the-century atmosphere of the
now (and then) Turkish Ephesus would be very familiar to a Roma-
nian audience. Having been under Ottoman rule until the end of
the nineteenth century, many towns in southern and eastern Roma-
nia would have provided a similar decor of Turkish caftans, threaten-
ingly decrepit inward-slanting buildings in the main square, and
people donning head-wear like Dromios fez cap (in Romanian fes).
This personal reading reminded me of the function of the theater
in relation to national identity
3
and the audiences cultural horizon.
With this issue in mind, this chapter examines the modern pro-
ductions of Shakespeares comedies in relation to the current state
of Romanian theater and the diverse relevance of economical and
political transformations on cultural politics. In comparing the intel-
lectual vision and artistic choices visible in productions of Shake-
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96
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4: ROMANIAN METAMORPHOSES: COMEDIES 97
speares comedies from the sixties, seventies, and eighties to more
recent ones, the main point is that the choices open to the 1990s
appeared to be nancial, while the challenge was still to maintain a
highbrow directorial vision. Romanian directors have always revised
Shakespeares comedies to accommodate more demanding modern
audiences. They made alterations considering budgetary, casting, or
running time concerns, but only to a certain extent. The highlight
of these productions always remained a challenge to current social
and political concerns, marked by a kind of conservatism main-
tained by the authenticating presence of Shakespeare. Tracing the
recent history of romantic comedy Shakespeare on the Romanian
stage, one conclusion is that a diversity of form and cultural focus
characterized Romanian productions of Shakespeares comedies.
From the experimental 1970s, through the extravagant and subver-
sive productions of the 1980s, to the current vogue of adaptations
and foreign touring company productions, multiple metamorpho-
ses have been the dening mode.
Since the history of Shakespeare in performance was marked by
actions, reactions, and counter-movements as theater people
searched for new ways of selling the plays to the public, it is conve-
nient to divide the record of Romanian productions of the romantic
comedies into four broadly-delimited periods. In the early postwar
section of hard Communism (194959), most Romanian direc-
tors considered staging Shakespeares comedies as a form of evasion
from the Communist program of Russian acculturation, while at the
same time they saw it as a way of avoiding the ideological commands
of Communist propaganda. The production of the romantic come-
dies suited a practice of providing neutral readings, relatively free
from any political commands, though insisting on the social aspects
in the comedies. The decade of the sixties brought a different ap-
proach to producing Shakespeare in general. Far from seeing the
playwright as a cultural representative of the undesirable capitalist
other, as in the previous period, the Communist authorities
hoped to dignify and legitimize their political rule with the cultural
authority of British imports, and few names served their purpose
better than Shakespeare did. Consequently, they promoted the
productions of this particular playwright extensively. Translators
worked on improving the existing versions and scholars and theater
critics produced valuable commentaries of the plays, in the Ian Kott
vein.
4
In the theaters, however, directors and theater managers
showed a special preference toward producing the romantic come-
dies as an alternative to the more politically centered disposition of
the tragedies.
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During the seventies and the eighties, producing Shakespeare was
a special venture for theaters in Romania in point of experimenta-
tion. Determined to challenge a public accustomed to elaborate re-
alistic scenery, theaters engaged few actors and placed them in
simple, stylized settings. Shakespearean staging was re-conceived,
and a new mode of performance came to dominate the theatrical
scene. Directors reconsidered drastically the major elements of
production, such as the style of acting, the shape of the acting
area, the furnishing of the stage, and the treatment of the text. The
story of Romanian Shakespeare in this period was a narrative of dra-
matic texts transformed to suit the directors artistic exigency and,
occasionally, subversive ideological purposes. The potential of the
romantic comedies for political sabotage directed against the Com-
munist regime could not have been very high, but directors and es-
pecially actors found means to improvise extensively. Therefore, no
individual representation of each production was the same as the
one before itespecially the one in the opening night, when all
the ofcial gures would attend. In Romanian theaters all over the
country, theatrical practices became highly codied, in contrast to
the formal grandiloquent style of previous productions of Shake-
speare in the romantic mode. The comedies were a good vehicle for
theatrical iconoclasts to capture the publics attention and reinvigo-
rate Romanian appropriations of Shakespeare.
Since changes in the theater mimicked larger cultural transforma-
tion, in the decade of the nineties and into the twenty-rst century
we saw an unprecedented explosion of a particular kind of Shakes-
ploitation for theatrical purposes. The need for political subversion
was there no more, and the performance of Shakespeare became
the touchstone of any histrionic activity. The most far-reaching di-
rectors appropriated for Shakespeare consequential techniques of
abstraction, theatrical self-referentiality, and expressionism. In an at-
tempt to make Shakespeare relevant for the more informed post-
modern Romanian audiences, directors brushed aside historical
and textual authenticity in favor of theatrical virtuosity. They pro-
posed an expansive exploration of scenographic solutions, includ-
ing a theatricalization of the mise-en-sce`ne by incorporating music,
song, and dance. Such productions were based on a bold reworking
and modernization of the text in support of special interpretation,
going so far as to display the directors or the actors personal trans-
lations and rewritings, often severely remote from any scholarly cor-
roboration. Directors relied on a physical rather than a verbal
theater, and they attempted acute experimentation with time and
space. Shakespeares comic strategies, such as disguise, physical
PAGE 98 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:07 PS
identicalness, surprise, transformation, manipulation of letters and
songs, wrong delivery of letters, eavesdropping, drunkenness, and
confusion, were particularly suitable to the directors theatrical in-
tentions. The theater of the nineties suffered important transforma-
tions, and the productions of comedies in Romania in this period
were especially capable of mirroring these metamorphoses.
The Fifties and Sixties
In the Stalinist period 194959, the few Shakespeare plays that
were produced at Romanian theaters in Bucharest were mainly com-
edies,
5
in an attempt to avoid any political readings from the Com-
munist censorship. On reviewing one of these productions, a theater
critic of the time dared to ask timidly Why Only Comedy?
6
Caza-
ban did not go as far as to provide a convincing answer, but we may
infer, in retrospect, that the political neutrality allowed in staging
the comedies may have been the reason for which the theaters se-
lected these particular plays. Another reason could be that the com-
edies are fundamentally interlocutory. Jokes, comic situations, or
gestures demand a direct response. The audiences participation
nally constituted the comedy of a particular performance. By
choosing the comedies as the Shakespearean means of delivering
their theatrical, and often political, message, directors could nd a
perfectly valid reason for the audiences direct involvement in the
representation. If there was a visible reaction to covert political
meanings in the audience, or to the stimulation of the obscure nu-
ances in these romantic comedies, directors could avoid direct re-
sponsibility by ascribing these responses to the genres inherent
dialogical specicity. Accounting for the variety of meanings located
in the productions of Shakespeares comedies and their perception
by increasingly sophisticated audiences, it is possible to explain the
preference for Shakespeare as a form of cultural self-identication.
As David Willbern writes, Shakespeare is the occasion for idealiza-
tion in English literature, specically the mirror in which we see
our idealized selves.
7
In selecting to produce a Shakespeare play,
especially a comedy, or in decoding specic meanings in a certain
production, Romanian directors and audiences predictably tended
to idealize themselves as well as Shakespeare.
In a 1958 article entitled What Kind of Shakespeare Are We Play-
ing? a critic maintains that Romania was the leading country in the
Balkans regarding the number of Shakespeare productions. He de-
clares that Romanian theaters preferred the production of light
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comedies rather than turn to the great tragedies, the Roman plays,
or the histories. Flavius complains that we have not given a produc-
tion of one of the plays in the roman trilogy by Shakespeare, nor
one of his historical tragedies drawing on the English chronicles yet.
However, Flavius argues, we produce, at extremely high expense of
energy and funding, Much Ado About Nothing . . . Twelfth Night . . . The
Taming of the Shrew, and so on.
8
The theater critic raises the essen-
tial question of his study:
What could have determined our theaters, in their noble contest of stag-
ing Shakespeare, to have preferred the homely wit of the comedies
before the universal spirit necessary in the formation of the social con-
sciousness of the present-day audience? Could it be the comfortable and
conservative need of choosing the easy way and a more or less beaten
track, without probing the Shakespearean sea with inexpert or hesitant
ngers? Could it be the tendency of showing off by producing what is
the most decorative in Shakespeare, instead of raising the audience to
the high emotion of his most representative work? Could the cowardly
defense against the competition with lm, which has given us an unfor-
gettable Hamlet, an interesting Othello, an impressive Richard III, an un-
usual Romeo and Juliet have caused this preference for the comedies?
9
The critics series of rhetorical questions, when viewed from the di-
rection of truths he could not say, lead to a singular conclusion: the
periods preference for light Shakespeare may have been an un-
acknowledged way of counteracting the political commands of an
alien but very aggressive ideology. When directors would no longer
confront the loud clamors of Soviet-generated Communist doctrines
launched in the desert of peoples minds, they chose to elude the
unwanted dogma by providing a bright theatrical smile, just like
Shakespeare did in his time.
A statistical survey of the Shakespeare productions during the dec-
ade 196070 leads to the not-so-surprising conclusion that the come-
dies were preponderantly produced in Romania. We nd that state
theaters all over the country brought forward to their public one
production of As You Like It, one Comedy of Errors, one Much Ado about
Nothing, two productions of Twelfth Night, and two of Two Gentlemen
of Verona. The most popular comedies, however, were The Taming of
the Shrew (four productions) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (four
productions). Rather than offering a comprehensive review or anal-
ysis of each of these productions, I will focus on a few particularly
memorable and indicative moments in some of them. I hope to un-
pack encoded attitudes toward the viewing audience of each period,
the social and political function of the performance, and the em-
PAGE 100 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:08 PS
bodied subjectivity of certain characters. As W. B. Worthen has
pointed out, performance criticism tends to assimilate Shake-
speare to a universalized sense of theatrical practice, practice which
is founded on modern notions of identity and the subject.
10
In
studying the ways in which modern stage practices textualize per-
formance, Worthen invites us to approach performance and text as
forms of cultural production. Thus, performance criticism explores
the reproduction of Shakespearean authority through the textualiz-
ing process of diverse stage practices. In showing how Romanian
productions of certain romantic comedies advanced different models
of identity and the subject in approximately each decade of Roma-
nian appropriation of Shakespeare, this discussion implicitly sends
messages about the prevalent theatrical practices of the period.
Earlier Romanian productions of Shakespeares comedies during
the sixties were played in the common key of enacting festive fantasies.
According to these dominantly playful directorial readings, Shake-
spearean comedy was a dramatization of common wish-fulllment
fancies. The audiences of the grim post-Stalinist years needed to
know that love affairs could be satisfying, families were bound to ex-
perience harmony, and young men and women were able to nd
happiness nally. Directors were willing to trace through these plays
the development of the comic catharsis, the fusion of realism and
fantasy, the dialectic between self and other, and the process of indi-
vidual maturation from the solitary to the social. While being able
to avoid direct political interpretations, directors found ways to pay
lip service to the Communist authorities by insisting on the social
aspects in the comedies. Further on, theater critics took over the po-
litical directive and emphasized the Socialist message by providing
extensive Marxist-inuenced readings of one production or other.
The main question for Romanian directors was still what can and
what do I want to do with this play? However, the important ques-
tion of what this play can do for the audiences surfaced frequently in
many productions of comedies during the sixties.
A prominent translator of Shakespeare in this period gave a brief
history of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-
Avon, and reviewed a number of productions dedicated to the cen-
tennial jubilee of this theater on April 7, 1959. Mihnea Gheorghiu
entitled his article, published in the main Romanian theatrical jour-
nal, Shakespeare at his Home and Ours. Regarding the Bucharest
theaters, the Romanian critic and translator mentions the produc-
tions of The Merry Wives of Windsor, King Lear, and Twelfth Night.
Gheorghiu adds other plays, mainly comedies, to the long list of
Shakespearean productions of the late fties, including Much Ado
PAGE 101 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:09 PS
About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew. This record, listing the
Shakespeare productions running in 1959 in Romania, is far from
exhaustive, but it offers a brief glimpse on the abundance of come-
dies produced in this decade. As a conclusion to how and why Shake-
speare has been appropriated by various cultures, Gheorghiu writes
that the productions and translations of the English playwright can
integrate the artistic values of all nations everywhere. The reason for
such universality is, according to the critic, an intentional
11
pre-
sentation of a changing world. Ignoring the assertion regarding the
authorial intention, which was part of the periods critical apparatus,
Gheorghius suggestion that Shakespeare mirrors a transforming
world emerges as consistent. The English playwright composed his
drama in a world of transition, and the multiplicity and often ambi-
guity of messages makes these plays applicable to varied and often
exotic cultural readings. All the more so when these cultures, like
Romania, pass through difcult and repeated periods of social and
political transition, either from the pre-war monarchic regime to
Socialism, as the situation in the fties demonstrated, or from the
totalitarian Communism to democracy, as indicated in the 1990s
productions.
An interesting example of the directors use of comedy in express-
ing subversive, dark, and politically provocative designs was the pro-
duction of As You Like It at the Bulandra Theater. In 1961, the then
young director Liviu Ciulei designed the sets of this production and
chose to play Melancholy Jacques. Thus, the director was scenogra-
pher and actor at the same time. He played the downhearted Jac-
ques, an image of the philosopher who rejected a shallow and
adverse society. The choice of the same actor for playing the two
dukesthe usurper and the usurpedrendered the ght for power
even more dramatic and ambivalent. The audience was faced with a
total spectacle displaying extravagant and highly accurate Elizabe-
than sets and costumes. The proscenium and tiring house were duti-
fully presented, and the harlequin and masked personages attended
the performance as the audience. Most characters were wearing
masks, and the grotesque elements appeared as incongruous in the
middle of the rich scenery representing the forest of Arden, with
drawbridges and catwalks. By intensifying the deformed portion
within the pastoral and festive atmosphere, the director intended to
raise questions regarding the total appropriateness of a delectable
reading. Ciulei played Melancholy Jacques, the raisoneur of the play,
and the only character that remained outside the magic circle of
harmonious nal happiness. Thus, the audience was warned against
trusting the overall cheerful ambiance of light comedy completely.
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Based on the common theatrical practice that posits the ideological,
authorizing function of the director, it is possible to infer that the
entire spectacle had a special meaning, which needed to be decoded
with a directorial key.
The critic reviewing the 1961 production insinuated a note of dis-
approval in the directors treatment of the play in the comic-lyric
mode, stressing its unreal character of fantasy, of a fairy tale remote
from reality. In a period that praised socializing readings in the real-
istic mode, critics could hardly agree to a production insisting on
the playful component of this romantic comedy. They recom-
mended a more Socialist-oriented theatrical reading, which would
present the play as a satirical pamphlet against the world of the
usurpers court, the tyrant, the clergy, and the mysticism they pro-
claim.
12
Moreover, Alexandrescu expressed his displeasure at the
fact that Ciulei dared to present critically and in a parodic manner
not only the representatives of nobility, but also the working people.
A servile Socialist production would present the shepherds, squires,
and the servants as ideal hardworking supermen and superwomen,
endowed with all the humanist-Socialist qualities. Having his shep-
herds and shepherdesses wear masks, the director made them the
caricatures of real people who were not exempt from the attribute
of falsity and corruption. Following the requirements of materialistic
and anti-religious propaganda, critics in the sixties claimed in their
writings a form of social satire that suited the regimes re-fabrication
of life and history in the materialistic mode. It so appeared, however,
that Liviu Ciulei did not want to voice the play in the Marxist tone.
His insistence on the comic fantasy and on the incongruous aspects
of the comedy being represented helped him avoid the required
Socialist-realist historicizing perspective.
The Romanian directors interpretations of Shakespeares come-
dies were open to multiple possibilities because of the strange blend
of tones. The carnivalesque, joyous atmosphere always disguised
some dark and troubling elements. As You Like It was more than a
simple pastoral comedy. It contained satirical elements and abound-
ing philosophical meditation. When the director wished, the play
could become a satirical pamphlet against tyrannical and despotic
political government. The appearance of a light comedy of love, sub-
merged in poetry and lyricism, concealed the vehement message of
freedom, truth, and social justice. Ciuleis 1961 production at the
Bulandra Theater, for example, represented a subtle form of protest
against a despotic Communist regime. The subversive meanings
were concealed behind the mask of a merry comedy of love. Thus,
the theater itself became a form of disguise and dissimulation. In
PAGE 103 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:10 PS
Ciuleis version, the Elizabethan setting was the frame for a modern
interpretation, and the theatrical metaphor worked as a apper
to the audiences ears, reminding them that they were supposed to
decode dramatic images. The two sides of the stage were painted
with a ctitious audience, thus enhancing the self-reexivity of the
play. Liviu Ciuleis restatement of As You Like It remained a land-
mark for Romanian productions, and some of the plays political as-
sociations were meant to be disquieting for the current regime. In
1963, there was a slightly different version of this production at
the same Bulandra Theater, featuring an essential modication in
the cast. Ciulei no longer played Melancholy Jacques, and thus the
meaning suggesting covert directorial signication was lost.
A polyphonic play with a complex structure that harmonized nu-
merous themes and various stylistic formulae, Twelfth Night was one
of the favorite comedies in many Romanian theaters. It represented
an important challenge both for the stage directors and for the
actors imagination and creativity. Especially in the Communist pe-
riod, this plays handling of illusion, disguise, and duplicity was used
by many directors for addressing their special political agendas. In
1964, the Shakespeare jubilee year, Twelfth Night was performed in
ve Romanian citiesPitesti, Iasi, Bacau, Targu Mures, and Petro-
sani. Each version brought up new and original details in point of
directorial intention and the audiences potential responses to it.
Two productionsone of Iasi National Theater, the other of the
team in Bacauwere relevant through their originality. The stage
directors (Crin Teodorescu in Iasi and Vlad Mugur at Bacau) decon-
structed and then reconstructed the text in a personal way, accord-
ing to the main idea they wanted to focus on. The directors also
chose different translations of the play (Florian Nicolaus and Mih-
nea Gheorghius), in order to achieve the desired and accurate cor-
respondence between text and image. Though these directors were
very different in their approaches to Shakespeare, they had similar
concerns about the twin pressures of being true to Shakespeare
and making Shakespeare our contemporary.
The Iasi production underlined the comic essence of the play,
which presented a rich variety of human relationships. It revealed
vitality, dynamism, joy of life, and optimisma festive, Dionysian vi-
sion of the world. The director insisted on the characteristics of a
folk festival, a carnival, presenting an overwhelming mixture of
music, light, and color, a contagious euphoria and energy, farcical
elements, and subtle irony. The original title was slightly changed
Twelfth Night became The Kings Night [Noaptea Regilor], in order to
illustrate better the carnivalesque topsy-turvidom and the ckle al-
PAGE 104 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:10 PS
terations of power in a disturbing world. The costumes and the back-
ground decorations descended from the commedia dellarte. Masks,
harlequins, and columbines emphasized the cheerful atmosphere
and the theatrical implications. Music, dance, and scenic move-
ments were more than simple dramatic instruments in this 1964 pro-
duction of Twelfth Night at the Iasi Theater. These auditory and
choreographic devices became states of mind. Sir Toby Belch and
his friends were the central exponents of this carnivalesque world.
They did not appear as a gang of disreputable drunkards, but as the
embodiments of the festive spirit, in oppositions to the stern Mal-
volio. He was a trouble-fe te character, repugnant through his misan-
thropy and servility. The reviewer of this production commended it
as a popular spectacle,
13
in which the audience was expected to
relish in the collective euphoria of carnival and reject sarcastically
the pious puritan snobbery. The critic especially celebrated the pro-
ductions tone of popular feast, with young men and women rejoic-
ing themselves, because it responded to the Communist regimes
necessity of representing an illusory world in which everybody was
happy in the Socialist community, far from the troubles of real life.
The articial, frigid aristocracy was presented with subtle irony in
this production of Twelfth Night. Orsino and Olivia were fatigued and
lonely, and they despised the simple joys of life. The two aristocrats
rejected reality and were trapped in a fake world. They were unable
to escape the appearance imposed by their rank. Viola repre-
sented the plays active principle by provoking self-knowledge in
others. Her disguise made her the mediator between the vivid carni-
valesque folk atmosphere and the articial world of the gentry.
From this perspective, the production was servile to the Marxist
ideological commands of presenting the devitalized and debauched
nobility, for obvious satirical purposes. However, the director al-
lowed the actors to freely express their fantasy and talent. Relying on
the assumption that the body was also the vehicle for Shakespearean
meanings, Teodorescu left to the actors the liberty to release a spe-
cic, ideologically constructed Shakespeare through the metaphor
of their acting. The scenographer reinforced the festive dimension
by using a prodigality of colors. Sometimes the beauty of the scenery
was too overwhelming, provoking in the audience a special attention
to the elusiveness of existence. When reading the reviews of the time
about this production, one has the impression that the director gave
an ideologically servile version of Shakespeares comedy. The happy
carnival atmosphere may be seen as in accordance with the pre-
scribed buoyant spirit of early Communist energy, when young
working men and women were presented in the media as splendid
PAGE 105 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:11 PS
architects of an impeccable Communist society. However, when
seeing images from this production, an observant eye notices that
the festive group of Sir Toby, Maria, and Sir Andrew was wearing
the conventional costume of stock commedia dellarte characters. The
image intensied the theatricality and illusion of the representation
and raised doubts about a straightforward comical and festive
reading.
While the production of the Iasi theater seemed to enliven the
already energetic script with a touching, optimistic tone, the per-
formance of the Bacau theater focused on a more philosophical and
meditative attitude. Vlad Mugurs Kings Night proposed to under-
line the fact that life should not simply be lived through, but it also
needed to be understood. The lyrical meditative tone was an-
nounced through the preliminary recitation of a number of Shake-
spearean sonnets. In using the sonnets as a framing device, by
way of a prologue, the director tried to induce the audiences self-
awareness by showing them an antagonistic and vicious world. The
relationships between the characters were quite different from the
version of the Iasi theater. For example, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew
were no longer merry friends. The former treated the latter with
aristocratic haughtiness and witty irony. Sir Toby felt intellectually
superior to Sir Andrew, but both were presented as the inadequate
voices of the declining nobility. By comparison, Olivia was more
human and more willing to accept real life, while Orsino seemed to
be unable to grasp the truth. All the while, Violas disguise was not
very efcient, as she could not fully hide her feminine side, her shy-
ness and fears leading to comic moments. Feste was at the center of
the play, the true master of the appearance-essence game. He was
presented as a chameleonic and protean gure, combining melan-
cholic pose with sharp irony and with ludic temperament. By con-
ducting the Fool gure to the front of the stage, Vlad Mugur focused
on the plays poetic and philosophical dimension. The melancholic
wind and the rain nale reminded that real life was not enacted
in a happy amusement park, and that beyond the cheerful comedy
and exemplary reunions lay the chill of everyday actuality. The
music and the changes in lighting emphasized the characters meta-
morphoses, their transitions from illusion to self-knowledge.
The important number of productions of Shakespeares plays in
general during 1964 is explicable through the political and cultural
command occasioned by the quatercentenary jubilee. The Commu-
nist regime considered an extensive cultural appropriation of Shake-
speare in Romania at this stage as an efcient form of legitimization
of their political practices and Marxist-Leninist cultural theories.
PAGE 106 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:11 PS
They thought that, by nancing the production of Shakespeares
plays in many state-owned theaters all over Romania, audiences
would be exposed to a classical exible gure of world repute, which
they could interpret according to the Communist ideological con-
straints. The selection of plays and the directorial choices rested
with the theaters. At this level, the situation became less controllable
and in need of denition of nuances. The options for the comedies
sprang from a general exigency of avoiding difcult and oppressive
plays, in a period when everyday life in Romania was heavy and de-
pressing enough. The fact that certain comedies, such as Twelfth
Night, were produced in ve cities around Romania in the same year
showed that directors at the theaters in the provinces, outside the
Bucharest cultural center, chose to represent a Shakespearean ro-
mantic comedy in a frivolous mode, adducing few politically subver-
sive implications. When social satire was present, it was interpreted
in accordance with the Marxist critical requirements, thus adjusted
to a perfectly orthodox explication. Directors outside Bucharest
dared to produce few deviations from the Socialist and Marxist mea-
sure, and their productions of the comedies were routine festive en-
tertainment events.
The Seventies and Eighties
Inasmuch as Shakespeares comedies explore false authority and
unstable relations of power, they can be read in the historicist mode,
with certain precaution. The decades 197080 and 198090 were
marked by certain subversive theatrical readings inscribed in the
comedies. In this period, directors focused mainly on the great trag-
edies to express seditious meanings directed at the unpopular Com-
munist regime. When theaters did produce comedies, these were
treated as a serious approach to the omnipresent anomalies in
real life. Concentrating on the mischief, verbal dexterity, the con-
vention of disguises, and the role of clowns, the directorial discourse
stressed the interplay between the Shakespeare text, the theater in-
stitution, and the historical and political conjuncture. Alternative
production approaches to the comedies during the seventies and
the eighties showed the precariousness of the institutions by which
authority was socialized, and intended Shakespeare to be a place
where ideology was being produced and communicated simultane-
ously. In these cases, the question is it or is it not Shakespeare?
turned out to be simply rhetorical. By not privileging an individual
subjectdirector, author, or actoras the site of meaning, these
PAGE 107 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:12 PS
productions worked through a displacement of authorityboth tex-
tual and performativedesigned to show the different ways in
which identity was constituted.
Apart from the theatrical readings of the comedies relating to on-
tological status and internal politics, there was an important reason
pertaining to the dialectics of acculturation regarding the Roma-
nian production of Shakespeare in general in this period. The poli-
tics of Russication of Romanian culture had failed in the
previous two decades. In the period 197089, we witnessed a bene-
cial cultural freedom from this particular direction. In schools,
Russian was not a mandatory foreign language anymore, and the po-
litical command was less aggressive in the theaters. Students in this
generation were among the rst who were allowed to choose the for-
eign language to study at school, and, in a natural way, most opted
for English (or French and German to a lesser degree). This choice
of foreign-language study in schools might not mean much for the
cultural history of a nation, but, in the end, it created an educated
audience in the large cities, which would already be familiar with
the English cultural markers. Consequently, they would appreciate
more eagerly the artistic alternatives aimed at adopting Shakespeare
as a vehicle for theatrical and political confrontations. Moreover,
the popularity of studying English as a foreign language among the
younger Romanian generation can account for their increasingly
larger interest in and familiarity with issues raised by Shakespeares
comedies.
I could designate the decades 197080 and 198089 as the period
of As You Like It in point of Romanian productions of comedies. At
theaters all over the country, no less than seven productions of this
comedy appeared on the Romanian stages. Comparatively, there
were four productions of The Taming of the Shrew, three of Twelfth
Night, three of A Midsummer Nights Dream, and two productions each
of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, Two Gentlemen of
Verona, and Much Ado about Nothing. Therefore, the repetitive pro-
duction of As You Like It on the Romanian stages in this period may
prove a few points. It seemed that the political message of spurious
authority inscribed in the serious texture of As You Like It was not
alien to Romanian directors, who indirectly wanted to convey veiled
public meanings under the guise of discreet laughter and appar-
ently joyful harmony in a pastoral setting. According to the critic
who reviewed the 1978 production of this comedy at the Bacau The-
ater, there is frail understanding and little true harmony in the for-
est of Arden.
14
All the productions of this comedy, mounted mainly
at state theaters in various towns in Romania, not in the capital, visu-
PAGE 108 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:12 PS
alized an antagonistic world of somber comedy, a comic view that
centered on exposure, punishment, and exclusion.
Such a complex comedy as As You Like It represented an artistic
touchstone for any theater or director. The 1976 production by the
fourth-year students of the Theater Institute Bucuresti demon-
strated creative audacity, both in the choice of the Shakespearean
comedy and in the directorial alternatives. The study of Shakespeare
represented a mandatory subject in the core curriculum for the
drama students in Romania, in both the acting and directing sec-
tions. Producing a Shakespeare play meant to the students a major
test of their artistic capacity. The large number of young people se-
lected to populate the play dictated the particular choice of As You
Like It for this 1976 graduating student production. The young stu-
dent-director replicated some of the theatrical maneuvers used in
Ciuleis production, such as casting the same actor to play the
usurped and the usurper Duke. However, the actor was not so con-
vincing, neither was his political message of false versus legitimate
authority properly brought home. The reviewer of this production
notes that the play created the ambiance of a school festivity.
15
The irony of this remark could be better understood if readers
knew that the festivities during which prizes were given to the best
students at school degenerated into formal affairs devoid of any
meaning. Such conventional ceremonies were a relic of the Stalinist
ritualistic claim of rewarding the nations best youth at an early age.
Likewise, this graduating student production of As You Like It out-
lined a happy commonplace pastoral world populated with artless
youths, which seemed very far from the cynicism and perverse can-
dor in real life. Despite their lack of artistic experience, the young
actors showed talent and creativity in performing Shakespeares
contradictory and ambiguous characters. The set designers created
a very simple but ingenious setting: a mere string suggested the con-
tours of pointed arches of the castle and the trees of the Arden for-
est. The music was well chosen (the songs of Myriam Marbe),
16
emphasizing the characters inner metamorphoses. The costumes
were very simple, offering freedom of movement and of interpreta-
tion. The young actors performance was designed to underline the
idea of liberty that dominated Shakespeares play, but they missed
the grave tones and invariable questioning of identity.
In 1975, Aureliu Manea put on stage at the Cluj National Theater
a production of Twelfth Night that stressed the metaphysical signi-
cance of disguise. The director introduced the play in a very per-
sonal manner: the characters groped in the darkness, under the
spell of Maria Tanases folk lullaby. They looked for each other,
PAGE 109 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:13 PS
stumbled, and staggered, as if they were sleepwalkers. The critic re-
viewing this production wrote that Manea admitted, in a note in the
program, that he intended to symbolize the night of the spirit and
those who allow themselves to be lured by it.
17
Paraphrasing theatri-
cally Goyas engraving entitled The night of reason engenders
monsters, Manea drew the audiences attention to the irrationality
and psychological deterioration within the system. This Twelfth Night
became a night of the loss of reason and a night of wonder. The
costumes seemed to draw on the Victorian age, but the space deter-
mination was ambiguous. Connotations of the British Empire and
the extension of power from the West converged with the irrational
proliferation of power from the Communist Russian East. The set-
ting might be the superstructure of a steam ship, or a stylized image
of an Elizabethan stage. In fact, Illyria was a place of confusion and
insight, the magic land of self-discovery. The carnivalesque atmo-
sphere had a hallucinating effect on the characters. For a moment,
Sir Toby and Sir Andrew replaced the Bacchic libations of wine with
the exotic marijuana. Everybody struggled to escape the state of
illusion. Violas transvestitism functioned as emblematic of this
topsy-turvy world. Cross-dressing here led not only to homoerotic
implications, but also to the subversion of power. The heroines
male disguise offered her the privileges of masculinity, helping her
to make her way in the alien land of an oneiric world. This produc-
tion emphasized the dark side of Twelfth Night. Consequently, the
characters attempts to grasp the truth from the darkness of igno-
rance and alienation seemed to be quite unsuccessful. The joyful at-
mosphere in the end of the play was just another mask, hiding
undisclosed fears.
In 1978, Cristian Pepino, a young director at the Bacau Theater,
had the audacity to produce As You Like It in a politically parodic
mode, after the famed and revered production by Liviu Ciulei. In
the plays program, the director emphasized the disruptive and
threatening tones deriving from a political reading of the play. The
Forest of Arden was a locus of ctitious authority and deceptive bu-
colic landscape. The critic reviewing this play quoted the directors
notes in the program, and observed that the Arcadian Arden Forest
was only illusory, because of the threat of death looming over its resi-
dents.
18
In the conning critical spirit of the seventies, when a
Shakespearean comedy was not properly produced unless it focused
on aspects of social satire, Bogdan Ulmu disagreed with Pepinos pa-
rodic and politically sensitive theatrical interpretation. The critic
considered that the satire of courtly life and the plays metatheatri-
cal component were not sufciently highlighted. The young direc-
PAGE 110 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:13 PS
tor preferred to foreground what Ulmu called secondary episodes
centered on slapstick comedy and melancholic music, composed by
a reputed Romanian folk singer, Nicu Alifantis. However, Pepino
chose to cast the same actor in the roles of Duke Frederick and Duke
Senior, and the acting was declarative and obviously parodic. Thus,
this production made a statement to the audiences of the small pro-
vincial town of Bacau, a place where signicant and revolutionary
events rarely happened. Living in a world of make-believe and con-
tent with satisfying the needs of the body and the requirements of a
good life seemed a doubtful option. In the real world of Communist
politics, where all the games were being played, people had two
faces, and brothers destroyed each other for the sake of power. How-
ever, nobody could distinguish between good and evil because the
entities were very much alike, if not identical, like the Duke twins.
Another production of As You Like It, directed by Alexandru Dab-
ija at the Cluj National Theater in 1979, raised not only the usual
metatheatrical issues and the political innuendo, but it addressed
religious concerns. In a period when religion was, if not under per-
secution by the Communist regime, at least in a state of deliberate
neglect, the main sets designed by Theodor Ciupe showed a high
gure in a long white robe, with arms stretched like in crucixion.
This ve-meter-high structure was placed in a central position on
the stage, arms outstretched, dominating the setting. The vertical
position of this frame formed a cross with the two horizontal levels
of the stage space. The Christ-like representation, which was a
bearded and bald-headed person very similar to the Shakespeare au-
thorial image, loomed over the actors scaffolding and ladders.
These constructions pictured synthetically the Elizabethan stage
doors and the tiring house. The scenographer Theodor Ciupe was
awarded an important Romanian theatrical prize for the sets to As
You Like It in 1980. The director articulated social issues in the lan-
guage of the theater. The social hierarchy was represented at the two
levels of the stage, and the climbing or sitting on the two ladders
placed on the sides gured the ascension to or descent from the
positions of power. The Christ-like gures long robe covered both
levels of the structure, and its middle folds worked at times like a
curtain. Jacquess head popped up at the upper level, in the heart
region, to meditate on the world as a stage theme, while Audrey and
Touchstone consummated their ribald jokes from the folds at the
lower level, generally corresponding to the gures crotch area. The
production showed a world of Columbines and Harlequins moving
like puppets on a string. In the nal reunion scene, the two
worldsof the court and of the forestwere clearly delimited by
PAGE 111 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:14 PS
the central presence of the crucied Christ-author, which domi-
nated the theatrical and social hierarchy. Parties kept on their allot-
ted sides of the stage, and there was no communication, or nal
communion, between the illusory woodland world and the elabo-
rately structured circle of the court.
In Romanias cultural territory of the seventies and eighties, the
Youth Theater of Piatra Neamt was considered a launching space for
new talents. Young up-and-coming directors and actors started their
artistic trajectory from this Youth Theater in the extreme north of
the Moldova region. This theater created a tradition in staging
Shakespeare, and the fact that the majority of actors were young
made the productions of the romantic comedies a good opportunity
for promoting fresh talents. The young director Alexandru Toc-
ilescu, for instance, interpreted The Merry Wives of Windsor at this the-
ater, in 1978, as seen through the eyes of his generation.
19
The
entertainment characteristic of the comedy was the main outline of
this spectacle, where color, music, rhythm, dance, and movement
contributed to create the impression that the audiences participated
in a special game of modern mystery-theater. The production
looked like a musical, because Nicu Alifantis, a popular folk singer
and composer, created the music, while the young painter Francois
Paml designed the sets. The critic reviewing this production con-
sidered it a total show
20
but interpreted the modern setting as a
sample of the current western consumer society.
In the required note of social criticism, Mira Iosif analyzes how
the production parodied some of the Western myths and an obso-
lete system, presumably the capitalist one. The critical implication
is that everything coming from the Western world was corrupt and
harmful. According to this reviewer, Shakespeare satirized the evils
of His society in this comedy, just as this particular production
satirized the vices of the entire Western industrialized civilization.
21
The Ford and Page couples, Shallow, Slender, and Mistress Quickly
were presented as typical characters through which Hollywood stars,
international sports gures, advertising, and art as consumer goods
became the object of ridicule. Such a socializing Marxist reading was
meant to hit home the idea that capitalist values were harmful, and
that only Socialism was the viable way to progress and civilization.
Paradoxically, an author of this reviled Western civilization was em-
ployed by the Communists to interpret their biased views of the capi-
talist society. How the Marxist idea had been proved to be wrong,
only life could tell. In any case, this production of The Merry Wives of
Windsor offered an image of a social universe in which the consumer
society was made to look limiting and disabling, while the Romanian
PAGE 112 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:14 PS
people of those times were deprived of most goods dening con-
sumerism. Many of them wished to have lived in such a futile society
and enjoy the commodities it could offer.
Theater critics could say all they wanted about a certain produc-
tion, because the reality of the theater was different. Like in life,
where the Romanians social and material problems belied the So-
cialist materialistic views of a festive ideology, the theater showed a
different version than the one envisaged by the Communist leaders.
Tocilescus 1978 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor responded
only partially to this socializing interpretation according to which
the play satirized the vices of capitalist society. Viewing the rst half
of the comedy, satire and light entertainment could indeed offer
this general impression. From the second half of the play, however,
the tone was somber and more profound. When Falstaff, the pre-
dominant vice gure of this modern morality play, was punished at
Hernes oak, the production showed the worlds cynical ruthlessness
and indifference. The clown became the knight of the triste gure,
and the audiences could see how unmerciful and inhuman their
world was. The rest is silence, as this sad ending said without words.
By introducing this dispirited note in the festive tone of the comedy,
the director hoped that the audiences leaving the theater would not
retain the image of festivity and delectation, but the muteness of a
harsh world. People were expected to remember that they lived in
a cruel society, which had no regard for the individual, and where a
valuable intellectual could be branded at the pillory just as easily as
a fool could obtain academic titles. Like life, the theater could be
what biased ideologies wanted to make of it. There was always a vari-
able factor, like the nal silence and sadness in this production of
The Merry Wives of Windsor, which told more than the critics pru-
dently designed words could ever say.
In 1980, the Youth Theater of Piatra Neamt produced The Taming
of the Shrew, directed by Iulian Visa. About this production, critics
agreed that it was light and supercial, with many elements of the
slapstick comedy. While praising the innovative spirit of this profes-
sional youth theater, Virgil Munteanu noticed that the Romanian
theater of the eighties had transcended the need for modernization
as an end in itself proposed just for the sake of experiment.
22
The
critic considered this compulsion for originality, manifested in the
form of an appetite for parody and the extraordinary, as a character-
istic of the immature adolescent youth, which the more adult Roma-
nian theater had fortunately outdistanced.
23
Iulian Visa produced a
dynamic spectacle, yet staged in an excessively comic mode. The in-
duction was played in the theaters foyer, among the audience. The
PAGE 113 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:15 PS
scene at Padua was set on the main theater stage, and it was played
in a more conventional fashion. The third part, however, was per-
formed in the center of the theater hall, in a circus arena. Here, the
taming of the shrew was executed as the taming of a wild animal
in public view. This interpretation diminished the psychological pro-
portions of Katharinas transformation and lost every dramatic pur-
pose in the ridicule of frivolous laughter.
Katharina terrorized her father and relatives by shooting a gun.
People laughed. Lucentio in love acted like he was inebriated,
banged his head on the walls, and started to speak Italian. People
laughed. Petruchio came to the wedding dressed as a kindergarten
kid. People laughed. Bianca sang in parody of opera and pop music.
People laughed. The horse spoke English, and people laughed. The
audience laughed because the knockabout farce was funny and
there was a lot of rough-and-tumble. However, where was Petruchio?
Where was Katharina? Their complex personalities were buried in
the incredible amount of cheap horseplay. Such light productions
would suit the ends of the Communist authorities. They wanted
their people as brainwashed and subdued as possible, addicted to
low entertainment and circus in order to forget their material
needs. Incidentally and, probably, involuntarily, the young director
Iulian Visa created just this type of play out of Shakespeares com-
edy. Even this exceptionally comic mode of interpretation speaks for
the enduring power of Shakespeare to compel audiences, despite
the type of inated rhetoric that often accompanied such state-
ments. Shakespeares cultural force could easily lead certain direc-
tors to dilate on the praise of the power immanent in the text.
One year after the production of the Shrew in 1981, the same inge-
nious director Iulian Visa staged The Merchant of Venice at the Boto-
sani Theater, in the north of the region of Moldova. This production
was important because it revived a tradition of performance of this
comedy, which had been interrupted for more than half a century
on the Romanian stage. While earlier Romanian theatergoers had
seen The Merchant of Venice in the interpretation of great artists such
as Matei Millo and Constantin Nottara, theaters and directors in the
twentieth century neglected this play for more than fty years. The
splendid translation in verse by the Romanian poet and novelist
Gala Galaction gave a special elegance to this production of the Mer-
chant. However, Romanian critics suggested Socialist-oriented inter-
pretations of the play. One reviewer wrote about the satire directed
at an epoch of transition to capitalism and the de-humanizing in-
uence of money.
24
According to this critic, Shylock represented
the mores of a capitalist society whose materiality drove the individ-
PAGE 114 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:15 PS
ual to total despair and alienation. The Communist ideologists
wanted people to believe that theirs was the best of the possible
worlds, forcing them to see the black rose painted red. In this view,
capitalism was supposed to be a source of personal division and es-
trangement from the essential human values. The pursuit of -
nances and marketable commodity were seen as abominable sins by
the leveling Communist thought-speculators.
In Visas interpretation of The Merchant of Venice, romantic love,
considered an essentially human emotion, was set against the con-
suming forces of money and commerce. This opposition was rather
articially rendered through the contrasting worlds of Venice and
Belmont. The stage space was clearly divided between the Rialto,
where commercial activities took place and where all characters
plunged into huge water tanks whenever they made a transaction,
and Belmont, a pillow-like white place of idyllic purity. The all-too-
strong contrariety of wet and clean, evil and good, wild splashing
and divine music neglected much of the plays ambivalence. The
terms were too drastically dened, leaving no room for doubt or
wonder. The Communist ideas of equality and justice pretended
that all people were deemed equal, but practice had it that some
were just more equal than others were. Similarly, this production
suggested to its audiences that Western capitalism was bad and inhu-
man, but practice showed capitalism as the only place where money
came from, so it was very useful. Whether one waddled or dived in
the waters of commerce, one still had to get wet. History has proved
this point cogently, since all the former Communist rulers in Roma-
nia, supposedly holding high social ideals of equality and fraternity
are now very prosperous businessmen, fully adapted to the capitalist
system they used to vilify in words only. The rest of the population
in Romania, now as before, trudges in the shallow pool of full equal-
ity in poverty. The director chose to maintain the tension between
delity to the Shakespeare text, to the social and political reality in
Romania, and to the audience by exploring the play in a disruptive
mode.
Since dismal, threatening atmosphere and political corruption
were the order of the day in the real-world Communist Romania,
Measure for Measure seemed the appropriate dark comedy for the
beginning of the eighties. The Communist politicians were increas-
ingly distanced from the peoples problems, busy as they were with
their own business interests, and the moral and material criteria
were at their lowest. In such circumstances, a theater from a smaller
town in Romania, the Theater of Pitesti, produced Measure for Mea-
sure in 1982. This was the rst production of the play in the eighties,
PAGE 115 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:15 PS
after the memorable production directed by Dinu Cernescu in 1972.
The director of this stage version, Mihai Lungeanu, made signicant
changes in the character delineation and the plot. He altered the
ending, though without changing the text. The director departed
from the traditional version presenting an enlightened Duke Vin-
centio who wanted to amend the vitiated morality of the city of Vi-
enna. The Duke was enacted as an unscrupulous manipulator of
lives and consciences, a deceptive politician who planned a double
coup. He wanted to impose a drastic regime of constraint on his sub-
jects vicariously, using Angelo as an unwitting intermediary, and he
intended to discard a possible rival to power in the process, since
Angelo was Vincentios cousin after all.
The tradition of Angelos theatrical presentation was completely
overturned in this production of Measure for Measure when he ap-
peared as the self-righteous character whose ethical principles
threatened Vincentios corrupted pursuit of power. A self-possessed
intellectual whose highbrow contemplation kept him far from the
court intrigues and corruption, Angelo was sincerely convinced of
his mission of effecting ethical purication in the depraved city of
Vienna. When he came to rule, Angelo was not polluted in contact
with the entrapping force of Power. His indecent proposal to Isa-
bella disclosed just a moment of weakness, and was interpreted as
an inevitable tribute to her beauty and spiritual excellence. Thus,
Isabella appeared as une ame soeur, Angelos dyad of purity and truth.
Despite the contrasts between the two characters, the director pre-
sented Angelo and Isabella as aspiring toward the same goals, and
the moral corruption of Vienna could not pervert their lofty, re-
spectable ideals.
The director Mihai Lungeanu modied the plays ending too. By
ordering the killing of Claudio, despite the fact that his apparently
obscene inclination had been satised, or so he thought, Angelo
demonstrated that he chose to act according to the dirty rules of the
mechanism of power that he had at his disposal. After having been
ordered to marry Mariana, Angelo walked to the gallows, not ready
for any compromise. These were raised for him at the back of the
stage, on the same scaffolding that had gured the triumphal arch
celebrating Angelos elevation to power in the rst act. The audi-
ences could infer that he died with dignity, rationalizing the muta-
bility of power and of moral contingency. All the other characters
were modeled according to this fundamentally deconstructed an-
tithesis Vincentio-Angelo (and Isabella). In the special sequence of
characters created by this reversal, Escalus was the obscure person-
age lurking behind Vincentios dishonesty and deception, and Clau-
PAGE 116 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:16 PS
dio was a frivolous young man who lacked any sense of honor or
responsibility. The play was set in the Vienna of the latter half of the
nineteenth century, the period of Franz-Josephs reign and of the
Strauss waltz. The city of Vienna teemed with vice and displayed
cases of low and high treason. Angelo and Isabella opposed this cor-
rupt world with the frail arms of their intellectual integrity and/or
purity, so they had to be annihilated.
By reversing the traditional meanings ascribed to the two poles of
power and ethics in the play, this production painted an already-
dark comedy in even more dismal tones. This was the moral and
political panorama of Communist Romania in the early eighties,
and the corrupt and manipulative Vincentio could easily be identi-
ed with the Communist president Ceausescu, while Escalus and the
praetorian friars looked like his acolytes. The two sneaky and anony-
mous Gentlemen in the Friars company, who pulled invisible
strings, were the threatening gures of the Communist secret police.
These mute characters created by Mihai Lungeanu blended con-
vincingly in the background of suspicion and uncertainty underly-
ing the Vienna of this production. Faceless supporters of a distorted
ideology and maiming political practice, these symbols of the ever-
present secret police did not offer coherent actions for preserving
the regime or accomplishing Vincentios orders, but were a neces-
sary attribute engendered by fear. Having no clear identity them-
selves, the members of the secret police in the Communist state
were dreaded instruments of maintaining a power that had little or
no sustenance and justication apart from the oppressive state of
anxiety they were able to maintain among the populace. By showing
them on stage as the pillars of the Dukes regime of suspicion and
terror, the director used a signicant character addition to the
Shakespeare text in order to emphasize the dangers of the Commu-
nist totalitarian state for the peoples mental sanity and individual
good judgment.
A fascinatingly subversive production of As You Like It, directed by
Nicoleta Toia at the Iasi National Theater in 1982, raised important
issues regarding the indirection of a stage directors political agenda
in those times. While reviewers noted that this version of the play
was nothing more than a bucolic comedy in which all the profound
meanings have been submerged,
25
we may read differently between
the lines of the directors statements in the plays program. Like the
preface of a book, in which writers motivate their intentions, the
program was considered to capture the volatile and often conten-
tious directorial design of approaching Shakespeare. According to
the reviewer, Nicoleta Toia admitted that Jacques role in the play
PAGE 117 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:16 PS
was conventional and prosaic (Jacques is not Hamlet, after all), so
she dismissed this character to a minor plane. However, in the pro-
gram the director acknowledged the comedy as a philosophical par-
able of aggregated nuances and intense psychological intensity. It
replicated the absolute equation tyranny-liberty from the histories,
and the love paradigm from the sonnets. How could a director who
had such views of the theatrical amplitude of As You Like It have pre-
sented it in a simplistic farcical pastoral mode? Was Nicoleta Toia
not aware of the plays political connotations? The program says she
was. In that case, the only possible answer could be that she chose to
interpret the comedy in the high-spirited mode, in order to veil the
political commentary.
Nevertheless, a signicant change in the plays nal reparation of
injustice made the audiences think twice before leaving the theater
completely satised. Apart from relegating melancholy Jacques to a
secondary role, thus categorizing the abstract theorization of life as
spiritless and conventional, Toia suppressed the character of the
other Jacques altogether. The younger brother to Oliver and second
son of Sir Rowland de Bois was supposed to announce Duke Freder-
icks conversion. His episodic and conventional appearance would
have been meant to declare the restoration of the rightful order,
and the possibility for the legitimate Duke Senior to regain his law-
ful possession. Without this intervention, audiences retained the
image of a bucolic illusory world of the forest, where there was no
right or wrong, and no hereafter. Conversely, in the real world, the
usurper would be allowed to rule free of any care. No higher moral
or legal authority could penalize usurpation and fraternal malice.
Depression and lack of condence in the restoration of justice
were the prevalent moods in the Communist Romania of the early
eighties. People had lost all hope that something could be changed
in the implacable and expropriating grinding machine of Commu-
nist political power. The critic reviewing this comedy extended the
ideologically valid interpretation of the play in the merry mode, not-
ing that Jacques absence signied that nothing intervened to
change the paradisial life of the community in the Forest of
Arden.
26
Like the Communist ideological speculators, this critic
wanted people to think, or hoped they would think, that existence
in a utopian communal fairyland could efface the abruptness of real
life. The intention was to obscure the difcult reality of the Socialist
regime by suggesting an ideal image of the Communist utopia.
Toias version of As You Like It, however, offered her audiences no
false optimism. As long as the iniquitous ruler(s) did not change
their ways or resign, which they seemed unlikely to do, life in the
PAGE 118 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:17 PS
Communist community continued to be a false game of deceit and
betrayal under the appearance of happiness and prosperity.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona was produced in 1983 at the Comedy
Theater. Alexandru Dabija articulated the grave elements in this
early romantic comedy. He played the tension between female love
and male friendship in serious undertones, suggesting betrayal of
male friendship and an understanding of female love in heavily de-
termined sexual terms that amounted to near rape. The nal cele-
bration of male friendship and the comparative deation of male-
female love may have come as a possible expectation in a play largely
based on self-deceit. Valentine spoke of love as being some foolish
sensibility, and ended by falling madly in love with Silvia. Similarly,
Proteus in love appeared to be mentally alienated. Psychologically
unstable, his unrequited love for Silvia seemed to metamorphose
(1.1.66) him drastically, making him show some of the attributes of
the romantic damned heroes, according to Dostoyevskys fashion.
The directors choice of a prose translation by Anda Teodorescu and
Andrei Bantas highlighted the plays narrative aspect of disruptive
emotions, as well as the slapstick comedy in the clowns scenes. A
good joke could be conveyed in a serious mode or in a cascade of
laughter. Alexandru Dabija chose both methods to show the contra-
dictory nature of sentiments and the fractured rhetoric that lay be-
hind the facade of declarations. Love was seen at once as sublime
and ridiculous, and the audiences laughed at Proteus wearing a
necklace of love letters, which he had written to Julia in lachrymose
pathetic moans. The faithful Julia, who thought she could escape
the restrictive social conventions limiting her gender by adopting
cross-dressing for the perfectly conventional reason of getting her
lover back, behaved like a spoiled brat. Silvia was a frivolous lady
who imparted her ippant graces to many admirers. Her father, the
Duke, simulated deafness in order to hear once more the adulatory
chorus of female voices (his daughters young companions) who
wished him good morning.
In this 1983 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Dabija
tried to alleviate the strain produced by the violent and unexpected
turnabouts in the plays concluding moments through pure slap-
stick comedy. In the woods, where everything was possible, a erce
outlaw menaced his prisoners with a long sword, while he constantly
stumbled on the ropes he had tied them with. Lance looked into a
tree hole and suddenly wiped his face of his masters spit, which had
reached him against the wind. The erotic and the bawdy aspects of
love were conveyed through the inventory Lance made of his milk-
maids graces. The clowns splintered language, in which nothing
PAGE 119 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:17 PS
was communicated directly, appeared in coarse prosaic Romanian,
as the vernacular idiom of crude peasantry. Despite all this laughter,
Alexandru Dabija ascribed an intense and gloomy annotation to this
light-hearted comedy. After Valentine announced the happy closure
represented by the two marriages, which were supposed to conse-
crate one mutual happiness (5.4.170), the two heroines, who had
been at the center of all the adversities and disruptions, were left
alone on the stage. The ckle Proteus and the comic congregation
forgot about Julia and Silvia, who remained to nd their way in the
solitude of the deserted stage. For a moment, the crude white light
gave emphasis to their unjustied separation, as if the absence on
the stage replicated the waste in their souls. Seeming absolute bliss
resonated into something else. In showing the different ways in
which identity was constituted and disrupted in the play world, the
director of this production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona reminded
his audiences that, like in life, total content was and was not among
them.
A protean play, Twelfth Night may assume many shapes, in accor-
dance with the wishes of the directors who orchestrate it. Especially
in the early eighties in Romania, this play was used to typify the ab-
normality and irrationality of a world in constant degradation, ridi-
culed under the mask of carnival. The 1984 production at the
Bucharest National Theater, directed by Anca Ovenez-Dorosenco,
raised uneasy questions and an even more alarming answer regard-
ing the malformed spectacle of a social milieu in persistent moral
and psychological decline. In the program of this production, the
director announced a grotesque vision of comedy, as conrmed
by the critic reviewing this version of Twelfth Night.
27
Radu-Maria ar-
gued that the Shakespeare text, however, could not be restricted to
this limitative directorial vision.
28
We can nd here a deliberate
conict between what the director wanted to convey to the public
and the critical reading, which had to conform to the ideological
demands. Orsinos pathetic commendation of music as the food of
love and Olivias outrageous gestures and accents of voice were rep-
rimanded by the critic. However, the parodic representation of love,
and especially art, raised serious questions regarding the liberty
of artistic expression in the Communist regime. Viola and Sebastian
appeared in white uffy dress, the gentle metaphors of seraphic lyri-
cism. Violas cross-dressing typied an androgynous Eros dedicated
to childish pranks. The merry group was meant to suggest the libera-
tion of subconscious sensuality from the conventional constraints.
Sir Toby was a jovial old man who was having a good time within
certain limits. Sir Andrew, however, was a ludicrous clown who
PAGE 120 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:18 PS
jumped clumsily and yelled in a loud voice. The entire jolly com-
pany appeared to be the mimes of genuine feeling, like in the
clowns pantomime of life. This theatrical overstatement was meant
to shock the audiences into seeing the harsh difference between the
pretension of a good life, as promoted by the Communist authori-
ties, and the sorry reality.
In this production, Feste was placed on a stage of his own, mark-
ing the limit between the stage world and the real one. He lived in
an auxiliary realm at the frontier between the societies of the com-
edy and the audience. The superior and concessive note conveyed
by his humor was intended to remind everybody of the necessity for
reconciliation amid the madness of this world. However, Malvolio
was the character that focused the audiences attention. His gro-
tesque behavior was directly conductive to the illiterate upstart Ro-
manian president of the time (Ceausescu). The initial somber and
sardonic attitude adopted at the start by this servile character devel-
oped into a disproportionate aggrandizement of the self. Malvolio
had reached a prominent position in the house, but was still a ser-
vant to his mistress. The spiritual tumefaction of his ego made his
Twelfth Night directed by Anca Ovanez-Dorosenco at the Bucharest National The-
ater (1984). With Damian Crasmaru (Orsino), Tamara Cretulescu (Viola), Silvia Po-
povici (Olivia), Gabriel Oseciuc (Sebastian), and Mihai Malaimare (Feste).
Courtesy of the Bucharest National Theater.
PAGE 121 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:43 PS
tight black costume seem notably rigid, and the swelling in his legs
produced by the crossed garters typied an oversized individuality.
Likewise, the president Ceausescu was constrained within the nar-
row margins of the Communist ideology, which he promoted only
supercially. His servile position toward Russian politics and his
status as a social climber within a relative hierarchy were clearly
dened by Malvolios position in the power structure of servants.
Gradually, intense megalomania overpowered this self-deceiving
character, and Malvolios conduct attained an extreme of the ridicu-
lous when he imperiously demanded his mistress to admit to the
sentiments he believed she confessed in the letter by poking at her
with an umbrella. By using the theatrical meaning expertly, the di-
rector conveyed a covert message to the audience, inviting them to
acknowledge the phony quality of such an individual and to agree
to his nal exclusion from the general, though doubtful, mirth of
the spectacle.
In 1985, the Nottara Theater Bucharest inaugurated a new pro-
duction of As You Like It, directed by Dan Micu, in a remarkably in-
novative mode. The pastoral was adumbrated by the recollection of
death lingering among us in the happiest places and times. Melan-
choly Jacques and his reection on lifes ages and margins, as well
as the episode of the killing of the stag, was meant to remind the
audiences that the comedys ludic fantasy may decline into the un-
easy leaden shade of Saturnine melancholy. In the mid-eighties,
when the Romanians oppression by the Communist regime was at
its highest in the form of material deprivation, artists tried to offer a
glimmer of hope by sending messages to the effect that everything
was not lost after all, though it very much seemed so. The critic re-
viewing this production was vaguely deant of the censorship when
he analyzed the issues of usurpation, rebellion, and exile in a double
entendre mode. Constantin Radu-Maria writes that Shakespeare
does not lie to us: only the outlaw can escape into the wilderness, or
a person who refuses social servitude, which, in some moments of
history, may become more repressive than the natural conne-
ment.
29
The critic alluded to the repressive Communist regime,
and insinuated that the people who refused to accept social and po-
litical subservience placed themselves in the position of outcasts.
This description hinted at the numberless Romanian intellectuals
who chose the way of exile in the Western democratic world rather
than abide by the distorted rules of an oppressive political system.
Paraphrasing the depressing social and psychological situation in
Romania at that time, Dan Micus interpretation of Shakespeares
PAGE 122 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:43 PS
comedy asphyxiated all the light comic elements by focusing on the
dismal individual drama.
The director gured Duke Fredericks court as an instruction
camp, where the person was dehumanized and stripped of all dis-
tinct qualities in the process of ceremonial power. This place looked
like a boxing ring or an animal enclosure, and in both interpreta-
tions the image of violence and connement was overwhelming.
Moreover, this arena was doubly enclosed; besides the fence, it was
encircled with a kind of moat with stagnant water. Like from Com-
munist Romania, nobody could escape the enclave of spurious
power and incredible oppression. The inmates in this peculiar form
of prison had only two options: either to act in blind subjection to
the strictly determined rules belonging to the hierarchy of political
power, or to choose self exile in order to achieve consistency. Escape
to the Forest of Arden, which was a symbol of freedom and re-
naturalization, was not easy at all. Like the escapees from the con-
centration camps, erce hounds chased the poor fugitives. This
image recalled the innumerable tragedies having happened at Ro-
manias western borders, where large groups of emigrants were ee-
ing the Communist country-prison, some for nobler reasons and
others just for a better life. By alluding to a current political and
administrative situation in Communist Romania, the director used
modern stage practices to textualize performance, so that the Shake-
speare name became a highly valued pretext to contextualize Roma-
nian politics in a clandestine mode. Like many Romanian directors
of the late eighties, Dan Micu reproduced the Shakespearean au-
thority through the textualizing process of directly involving the dra-
matic text in the current politics of the city.
In this 1985 production of As You Like It at the Nottara Theater,
Dan Micu used the recurrent but signicant doubling of the usurper
Duke Frederick and the exiled Duke. This artice of physical iden-
tity drew attention to the relativity of relationships and of criteria
that lead to the negotiation of political power. While tyranny ex-
pressed the submission to a conventional form of hierarchy per se,
which annulled individual freedom, the escape into nature showed
how all forms and social conventions shrank and shifted in a differ-
ent milieu. When the formerly powerful personage encountered the
same hardships as his vassal, the genuine nature of peoples person-
alities became known. Relationships suffered a forest-change, in-
stead of a sea-change, like in The Tempest, being transformed from
an abstract socializing convention into concrete communal prac-
tices. The governor and the governed became mutually convivial.
The tyrant became the rst citizen, a model for the community by
PAGE 123 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:44 PS
his wisdom and rightful exercise of authority. He no longer enjoyed
the ethically meaningless games of the court jesters, who left him
anyway, but kept company with sagacious philosophers. Melancholy
Jacques reminded the duke of the right measure of things, in keep-
ing with the natural order, and he corrected all excessive escalation
of pride or emotion. In a paradoxical way, this directorial version of
life in the Forest of Arden was very far from advising people to rough
it in the wild in order to nd themselves. Moreover, this world of
civility and social order represented by the woods, where community
practices and individual values were judiciously appreciated, looked
very much like what the Romanians thought (and some still do) of
the Western society.
The austere setting representing the Arden forest did not look as
threatening and implicative of violence as the usurpers court. How-
ever, the world of freedom lay on the other side of a high wall, and
some ivy leaves climbing on it gured the greenery. This wall was at
the back of the stage, so that the audience had the impression that
they looked from the interior of this world of liberty. What lay be-
yond the tall wall, or iron curtain, or the tyranny-civility divide, the
audience could guess easily. As in a concentration camp, there were
two re escapes climbing on that wall, as if announcing that, in case
of emergency, there was always a way back from the self-exile of the
wood, or from the Romanians escape to the Western world. Dan
Micu provided a special ending to this signicant, though rather
gloomy, production of As You Like It. Conforming to the dispirited
image he wanted to impart on his audiences, the director could not
accept the comparatively easy and unmotivated optimistic ending.
When the wicked were reported to repent unconditionally and uni-
versal harmony was restored, all was too good to be true. Conse-
quently, the actors stepped out of their own roles, and they assisted
indifferently to a nal scene that was not acceptable from a realistic
perspective. Thus, acting as individuals outside the characters they
represented, the blessing of Hymen became a simulacrum in a now
shattered theatrical illusion, with actors divested of their attributes.
This was a harsh reminder that the reality of tyranny still existed,
and it awaited the audience beyond the illusory walls of the theater
building.
The 1986 production of As You Like It at the Brasov Drama The-
ater, directed by Florin Fatulescu, was a particular case in point re-
garding the directors authorizing function, which placed each
Shakespeare production in an idiosyncratic intercultural encounter
with current political connotations. In a period when many winters
of the Romanian peoples discontent and bitterness had assaulted
PAGE 124 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:45 PS
the social security of the Communist authorities, the director subor-
dinated the illusory vision of happiness and the plays meditative
sphere to a personal discourse relying on grave consideration and
scenic improvisation. The Romanian prose translation by Lucia De-
metrius was meant to convey the note of reality and immediacy to
the Shakespearean comedy. In the commedia dellarte mode, the the-
atrical troupe alighted on stage from their strolling players cart, dis-
puting their costumes frantically. While Melancholy Jacques
announced gravely that All the world is a stage, the actors enacted
parodically the seven ages of man. The usurper dukes court was
marked heavily by heraldry, symbolizing the combative spirit of the
current power. In a distant corner was a dusty piano locked with a
huge bolt, signaling that the arts were silenced when intolerant total-
itarian domination reigned supreme. In contrast to this dissolution
of the arts, the ghting scenes ranked high in the distorted scheme
of values. The jostling scene between Orlando and Charles was care-
fully represented in this version, suggesting that the combative spirit
and the spectacle of conicting violence were the preferences of
pastime for the authorities. Moreover, in order to enhance the ridic-
ulous nature of such belligerent entertainment, the director intro-
duced the droll gure of a Nurse, who instructed Rosalind and Celia
in one-to-one combat by manipulating a rag doll as the erce adver-
sary.
Rosalind and Celias escape from the usurpers concentration
camp was performed as a rope glide across the theater space, toward
the darkness of the backstage. The suggestion might be that there
was a drastic discontinuity between the grim reality of power and the
illusory world of the Arden forest. The other place of the wood was
grotesquely represented as a kind of theme park, where the histri-
onic banished duke conducted a phony chorus composed of his
faithful subjects, accompanied by the loud background music of a
gramophone. The resounding music from the machine obscured
the subjects false notes in such a way that the absolute rulers musi-
cal sense should not be harmed by the jarring sounds produced by
his dependents. The idea was that the appearance dominated the
absurd society of the wood, just like it was prevalent in the Commu-
nist society. The people pretended to sing (or say) as they were in-
structed and commanded to, yet they only made a show of it. They
appeared to be a team producing collective harmony, in the re-
quired Socialist spirit, yet they generated individual disturbing
noises. The conductor appeared to be in control of this discrepant
crowd, yet he was not. The semblance of harmony, however, needed
to be preserved. Seen from the exterior, all the people were ex-
PAGE 125 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:46 PS
pected to seem to sing in unison a song of praise to their beloved
leader. This role of cosmetic and supercial reparation of social and
political inadequacy was performed by the mimetic music of the gra-
mophone, an obsolete machine that rendered a repetitive tune.
The ceremonial scene of the hunt, in which the subjects brought
the dead animals under the Dukes aim, was another irony directed
at the Romanian Communist leader Ceausescu, who was known to
be a hunting acionado, but appreciated only the appearance of the
sport. Melancholy Jacques was self-exiled in a craggy ivory tower, and
he tried in vain to assert his presence by emitting false notes on his
trombone, in dissonance with the already-existing pandemonium.
He showed the position of the intellectual in the formal society of
Communist authority. The personal voice, itself distorted and false,
could not be heard in the leveling totalitarian regime, where think-
ing independently was considered a crime. The only alternative for
the meditative spirit was to retire in the ivory tower of creation, in
total isolation from the world of pretended social equity. Touch-
stones appearance in a tub walking on two booted feet, like a hilari-
ously cynical Diogenes, reinforced the grotesque imagery. The wise
fools alternative performance seemed to suggest a pragmatic accep-
tance of the incoherent surrounding world. Looking at it with a su-
perior and cynical smile appeared to be the best solution. For a
moment, Touchstone discarded his motley coat in order to take a
dip in the river. At times, everybody in this inconsonant society
seemed to be willing to compromise, including those who criticized
it. From his solitary tower, a voyeuristic Jacques watched Rosalind
and Celia bathe, using an ancient telescope.
In this 1986 Romanian production of As You Like It, the banished
Duke looked very much like the Romanian dictator Ceausescu. He
promised people prosperity and food, just like the Duke assured the
starving Adam that he would be fed, but when it came to real action,
no food was provided. The poor servant fainted of starvation, just
like the Romanian people, who almost lost their ber as a nation
because of the constant malnutrition deriving from the lack of food
available in the shops. In this rapacious society, Orlando was pre-
sented as the parvenu social adventurer willing to ascend to an ele-
vated position in this absurd mimicry of court by marrying the
Dukes daughter. The apparently nonsensical recital of theatrical
emblems closed with a political parable. The banished Duke, who
had directed the counterfeit chorus praising Hymen and the nal
familial harmony, suddenly left his directing/commanding position
of illusory power in a make-believe world in order to resume his dig-
nity in the real world. His usurping brother, who had become peni-
PAGE 126 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:46 PS
tent and determined to rule the false realm of illusion, replaced the
sham conductor and took over the prerogatives of spurious power.
The directors suggestion was that the future leaders of a diseased
society would behave exactly as their Communist predecessors.
What a somber foresight as to how things would work in post-
Communist Romania! This problematic directorial reading about
the cryptic relationships of power and the indeterminate role of the
arts within this puzzling game of make-believe appeared in a period
when the relations of hegemony in the real world of Communist
domination were equally precarious and uid.
In 1986, the Iasi National Theater presented A Midsummer Nights
Dream directed by Cristina Iovita. The director saw the play as an
adventure of the human spirit in search of knowledge, and this
Faust-like reading called for some interesting innovations. A pro-
logue and an epilogue in pantomime symmetrically framed the play.
In order to suggest that the Dream was the product of Oberons cre-
ative fantasy and science, the prologue scene showed how the fairy
king animated Pucks body. The framing epilogue revealed the dis-
integration of the spirited Robin Goodfellow back into the amor-
phous matter of the beginning. Cristina Iovita found that the plays
analogy with The Tempest could be an engaging mode to consider the
issues of creativity and spiritual adventure. In this sense, the director
constructed Oberon and Puck in the manner used by Liviu Ciulei
ten years before, at the Bulandra Theater, to fashion Prospero and
Caliban. Just as Prospero, in Ciuleis interpretation, had been a mas-
ter philosopher dominating Calibans brute force by the power of
his reason, Oberon, in this production of the Dream, was a divine
quintessence, and he chose to create a spirit to serve his almighty
intent. The similarity with an earlier Romanian production of a
Shakespeare play was designed to speak a lot about the directors
sophisticated intentions of self-referentiality. Cristina Iovita liked to
play a game of ambiguity, which was decoded by the theater connois-
seurs, conveying the message that different productions of Shake-
speares plays could be involved in a special dialogue of dramatic
intertextuality. By employing this strategy of interference and inl-
tration, the director asserted the supremacy of the directorial inter-
pretation over the production and the meta-directoriality of the
modern theater. Here, the play, its author, and the audiences
seemed to be just the excuses for the display of directorial workman-
ship.
The sets of this version of the Dream were constructed according
to the three magical and social levels of the comedy. The fairy world
occupied the highest level of a three-layered structure, a space
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where Oberons large library marked the notable authority of books
and knowledge in fashioning the extent and acquisition of power.
Like Prospero, in Ciuleis interpretation, the creative artist, armed
with the wisdom of art, could invent a superior universe and inu-
ence the social hierarchy down under. The strictly organized power
structure in society, with the aristocratic couples and the working-
class artisans performing below the fairy level, was just an illusion.
All the theatrical games of love confusion and the Pyramus and Thisbe
episode emerged from Pucks creativity, and the audience knew that
the spirit was also the conception of a superior entity. Oberons fer-
vid imagination wove love-and-revenge schemes on a large scale, and
he took visible delight in picturing Titania enamored of an ass. The
fairy world was partially effaced by the directors wish to show the
supremacy of the spirit and creativity. However, the production was
very dynamic in the elf scenes. The rich ornamentation of the wood,
Pucks energy, and the corporeal expression augmented the impe-
tus of this magic world. The choreography and the music were excel-
lent in the wood scenes, and the animation was ensured by the fact
that professional ballerinas performed as the group of fairies. Some-
times the creation-within-creation scheme went too far, like in the
scene near the conclusion, when Philostrate, a character-creation
like all the others, assumed his fate as an independent being and
committed suicide. Puck tried inefciently to re-animate his body,
in the manner used by the master Oberon, but the artistic trick
could not always work. The comedys harmony was clouded by this
new dumb-show performance which, like the prologue and the epi-
logue insertions, tried to say too much about a theater that had al-
ready exceeded its traditional perimeter.
In the Romanian theatrical territory of the mid-eighties, a group
of young directors working in theaters from the important towns,
such as Cluj, Arad, Brasov, and Iasi, turned to producing sparkling
Shakespearean comedies in an energetic mode. As a critic pointed
out in 1986, It is clear to us that in the past three or four seasons
the route to Shakespeare has been beaten at an alert pace from trag-
edy to comedy.
30
The critic considered this benecial exit from
inhibition as a remarkable evolution in the forms of Romanian the-
ater, triggered by the young directors activity. In the same season
198586, no less than four productions of comedies were registered
at theaters all over Romania. People could see Florin Fatulescus As
You Like It at the Brasov Theater, The Dream produced at the Iasi The-
ater directed by Cristina Iovita, The Shrew directed by Adrian Lupu
at the Arad Theater, and another Shrew directed by Mihai Maniutiu
at the Cluj Theater. All these productions bore the imprint of their
PAGE 128 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:47 PS
young directors, especially in the dynamics of the spectacle, which
at times progressed toward a special form of restlessness and excit-
ability. The two Shrews at Arad and Cluj, both cities in western Tran-
sylvania, were nervous productions that amplied the impression of
theater-within-theater. In the Arad version, Adrian Lupu com-
pressed many scenes and considered others in great haste. The di-
rectors intention was to achieve a realistic interpretation, but he
only succeeded in showing a kind of mechanical ballet. It seems
that, in their intention to drastically displace meaning toward the
director as author rewriting the Shakespeare text, Romanian direc-
tors of the eighties sometimes went too far in their specic ideologi-
cally constructed versions of Shakespeare.
Mihai Maniutiu at Cluj took further liberties with The Taming of
the Shrew (1986). He restructured certain scenes and shifted some
accents, such as, for example, when he dropped the induction alto-
gether, but maintained the theatrical illusion through the scenic
image of winding roads or arches and inclined planes of access. Sce-
nic movement was intense in this production; the audiences could
see a scared Bianca running away from her aggressive sister, who ap-
peared in the form of a warlike Amazon. Katharina tried vigorously
to force Bianca out of her act of passive submission, which was only
a mask like all the others in the play. Petruchio was a bellicose mer-
cenary, complete with huge backpack kit and boots. The nal scene
of Katharinas supposed capitulation, however, was acted as a hunt-
ing demonstration, where the tame wife shot the prize stag. Its im-
pressive horns descended from the display on the wall at the
wedding feast, through a complicated system of pulleys and ropes,
and were placed on Petruchios head, right at the moment when he
proclaimed himself a winner in the submissive-wife wager. The
music in this production consisted of an international collage of folk
songs, suggesting that the love trials and the betrayal stories were
the same the world over, like the masks everybody was wearing.
All the productions of Shakespeares comedies directed by the
young generation of artists evolving in the mid-eighties in Romania
were comparable in vitality of performance. The vigorous tone im-
parting ardent passions and robust emotions, though at times licen-
tious and rather libertine, was healthy in the young Romanian
directors productions. Through this merry note, they intended to
show the parameters of sane life in a society that had long lost, and
even forgotten, the hearty aspects of normality. In these produc-
tions, the privileging of the body and of spontaneity in performance
was meant to emphasize the director as the site of meaning. Such
essentialist strategies informed a range of directors writing about
PAGE 129 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:48 PS
their own works and sustaining the publics interest in the supposed
authority of the director over the meaning of Shakespeares plays.
Apart from the directors notes published in the programs of the
productions, in which they recorded their artistic intentions and
symbolic patterns regarding a specic production, there were inter-
views with the directors published in the main theatrical journal.
Like their productions, the allusions in these interviews were radi-
cally subversive, since neither directors nor the critics interviewing
them could speak freely regarding a certain political allusion. How-
ever, the language of Shakespeare was studded with so many disrup-
tive allusions that it became evident to the attentive reader of the
interview that the subject of the discussion was not Shakespeare, but
something else. Some of these interviews had become so distant
from the subject of Shakespeare (text and author) that it seemed
that Shakespeare was a mere interloper in the life of the Romanian
productions of his comedies. Author and text faded in the back-
ground of irresistible laughter, while directorial composition came
visibly to the foreground.
In 1987, the young director Dragos Galgotiu directed Twelfth Night
at the Braila Theater. It seemed that the directors at theaters in the
Romanian smaller towns were more daring in their use of the come-
dies for dispersing subversive political messages. The dream was the
main metaphor in this production. The immobile actors playing
Viola and Orsino and the court of Illyria were placed at various
points on the stage, and they came gradually to life as the action
evolved. All seemed to wake up from a deep dream (a re-evaluation
of the Calderonian la vida es sueno theme), and they looked like re-
vived marionettes in a puppet show (the life-as-a-theater paradigm).
The theater was the generator of ctional worlds that seemed truer
than real life, and it was gured as a diversion of masks intermin-
gling with faces in the confusion of carnival. A sequence of masked
personages combed the stage in search of hilarious and taunting
subjects, yet the feast had a cruel and mocking note and the laugh-
ter was subliminally grim and cruel. Despite the great quantity of
comic relief displayed on stage, this production was not at all merry
and serene. Festes melancholy song closed a feast in which Viola
was permanently hunted and aggressed, appearing as a victim of cir-
cumstances who longed for her femininity, dissimulated through
cross-dressing. Malvolios excessive erotic delirium drove him to the
extreme of almost ravishing Olivia. This was the image of a mad
world, a ship of fools, which landed only temporarily on the illusory
Illyrian shore. The excess of violence reminded the audiences that
they lived in a society which, through prolonged material austerity,
PAGE 130 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:48 PS
had succeeded in depriving its citizens of the joy of living. The feast
and celebration were only apparent, as was everything else in this
ideology-dominated society, where fake words subverted dissimu-
lated thoughts, and an oppressive reality was served, with a pinch of
salt, under the mask of carnival.
A year before the 1989 political explosion in Romania, in a period
when the social and material situation had almost escaped all con-
trol, another Shakespearean comedy rendered a violent dissonant
world, where the rapid and absurd movement on stage replicated
the nonsense of the system in real life. In 1988, Dragos Galgotiu ex-
ercised an expressive theatrical approach to Much Ado About Nothing
at the Ploiesti Municipal Theater. According to the reviewer of this
production, the spectacles rich imagery was displayed through the
pictorial representation and the vigorous movement on stage.
31
The
sets recalled notable Renaissance paintings extant in the art muse-
ums of the world, and the dynamic activity on the stage suggested
the intense passion and cruelty of a world in which the belligerent
ardor is the attribute of normality. The reviewer clearly stated that
this stage version observed the time the play was produced (1988),
the time of its composition (probably 1599), and the time of its pos-
sible temporal setting (1282). I am not very sure, though, on what
source Victor Parhon based his statement on the plays medieval
temporal frame, because the Oxford Shakespeare, for instance, does
not mention such a time setting.
32
The sure thing is that this produc-
tion of Much Ado About Nothing was set in medieval Messina and was
saturated with suppressed violence. Moreover, the suggestion of the
crusaders in the background emphasized the idea of the futile ideo-
logical and religious battles.
At the end of the play, when Benedick is informed of Don Johns
capture, he defers the punishment and possible tragedy till tomor-
row (5.4.121), proposing dance as an alternative to torture. In this
production, however, the audiences actually saw the horrifying
scene of the malignant slanderer being skinned to death and evis-
cerated, as if in an attempt of physically reaching the essence of his
evil. The fact that Don John was wearing devilish bat wings, a dis-
torted Dracula image, told a lot about the malefactors bloody des-
tiny. The abhorrent scenes of violence, however, maintained a note
of ambiguity, and the nal dance was supposed to camouage
human misery and cruelty. The director was speaking through the
symbolic ambiguity of a fallen angel, an active raisoneur of what hap-
pened on stage, who ultimately turned out to be an alter ego of Be-
atrice as a future wife, or the symbolic angel of death. The medieval
danse macabre suggested at the end of the play was represented
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through a mysterious choreography of the shadows of death, which
happened behind a red curtain used to mark the scene transitions.
The symbol of the iron curtain had been variously used by Roma-
nian directors to suggest many things, from isolation of the Eastern
from the Western world to the blood victims of Communism. This
red curtain, however, brought the Mask of the Red Death right in
front of the audience, reminding them of the injustice and cruelty
of the Communist system.
Medieval morality scenes abounded in this production, ranging
from the horrid to the grotesque. The conspiratorial fabrication of
appearances and the skillful manipulation of the code of shame and
honor united Benedick and Beatrice. The audiences of this produc-
tion could actually see the two chang lovers exposed in a cart of
shame for their guilt of being in love, but the public performed the
punishing lapidatio with straw instead of stones. Everything was gro-
tesque and menacing in this comedy, where hatred lurked behind
the lovers meetings and permanent intrigues were the prevalent so-
cially approved practices. The director operated various doublings
of minor characters, thus increasing the ambiguity, but the signi-
cant change was made in the character of Borachio. Dragos Galgotiu
extended the role of Borachio, the principal calumniator in Don
Johns company, by transferring many of Balthazars parts to him.
Thus, the faithful servant of honest Don Pedro was dropped into
the background, while the evildoers ambivalent presence became
pivotal in this production. Who were the bad persons, and who were
the good characters? In which society of what century could one
make a clear ethical delimitation? Like life and like Shakespeare,
this Romanian version of Much Ado About Nothing never seemed to
give a direct answer.
In a 1991 interview given to a Romanian theater journal, the
young director Alexandru Darie speaks about the codied theatri-
cal language
33
that used to dominate the Romanian productions
of Shakespeare before the installation of democracy in 1990. The
interview is entitled Alexandru Darie: We no longer live in a world
of simplicity, and it reviews the situation of the Romanian theater
at the beginning of the nineties. Darie notices that in the Commu-
nist period, when directors read a Shakespeare play, they searched
for the political relevance and the live impact on the audiences. In
a fraction of a second, as Darie says, they would see the political sig-
nicance of Measure for Measure or Hamlet for instance. The appro-
priate reading was in the air, and it was like a biological reaction,
34
according to Darie. In their turn, the audiences expected to decode
clandestine political meanings in the productions of Shakespeares
PAGE 132 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:49 PS
plays, and this was a reason for their popularity. After 1989, however,
Darie notices the predictable change in the theatrical language in
Romania. The relationship theater-audience was reconsidered, and
directors focused on free expression through the spectacle, without
any constraints for current political relevance. As Darie says, many
directors used to stage certain plays, Measure for Measure, for in-
stance, in order to speak about dictatorship, while now they can di-
rect this play in order to speak about . . . Measure for Measure.
35
Considering this interview about the Romanian directors inten-
tions in relation to producing Shakespeares plays, my rst reaction
was that probably this compulsive predilection for political implica-
tion accounted for the overwhelming tension in these past produc-
tions of Shakespeares plays, even the comedies. I was tempted
to speculate that this almost visceral or biological need of directors
to commit to public arguments explained the general oppressive
atmosphere in which Shakespeares comedies were staged in the sev-
enties and especially the eighties in Romania. Likewise, the threat-
ening violence, disrupted emotion, frequent use of masks, dissonant
noises, and excessive movement on stage may be plugged in the hot-
wired circuit of political interpretations. However, after more than
ten years of seeing Shakespeares comedies in the theaters of demo-
cratic Romania, I wonder if this corporeal-oriented implicit arroga-
tion of Shakespeare on the Romanian stage was not a form of meta-
theoretical and meta-theatrical approach to an increasingly indis-
tinct and challenging subject: Shakespeare. Instead of dramatizing
a concerted ideological plan of political subversion against the Com-
munist authority, Romanian directors seemed to have tried to tie up
the slippery text belonging to a highly valued author from another
time and place with the golden strings of their creativity.
The Nineties and the Twenty-First Century
The decade 19902000 advanced additional riddling components
to the already-puzzling picture of theatrical versions of the comedies
in Romania, while also removing a few. The political urgency for
subversion was no longer valid, considering the incorporation of
democratic practices at all levels of political, social, and cultural life.
Since the dissident component was unnecessary, theaters and direc-
tors concentrated on the comedies representation and shaping of
identity through theatrical self-referentiality. In statistical terms, this
was the decade of A Midsummer Nights Dream,
36
considering the ex-
tant six productions of this comedy. By comparison, Romanian the-
PAGE 133 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:49 PS
aters presented four productions of As You Like It, four of Measure for
Measure (conrming an increasing taste for problematic plays),
two of Twelfth Night, and one production each of Much Ado About
Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming
of the Shrew, and an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. It seems that
the emphasis on metamorphosis and the multiple levels of dramatic
irony in A Midsummer Nights Dream made directors and spectators
realize that they were caught in a social matrix they could neither
understand nor fully control. The double metamorphosis, involving
both physical and psychological transformation, was central to the
meaning and the form of this particular comedy, but the paradigm
may be extended to all productions of Shakespeares comedies and
to the theater in general.
Romanian directors seem to have seen the theme of transforma-
tion, responsible for shaping Shakespeares comic dramatic struc-
tures, as best representing an increasingly volatile theatrical milieu
and a shifting or elusive everyday reality. The theatrical multiplicity
of the comedies, and especially of A Midsummer Nights Dream, gave
directors an unprecedented liberty to construct the dramatic debate
as one between the verbal and the visual, with interfering extremes
of invention. Most of these productions of Shakespeares comedies
were aimed primarily at shocking the spectators with unusual images
and sounds, working through auditory interaction to animate the
audience in a physical way.
37
Directors and the acting team forged
their own translations or conated versions of the text, and the of-
fensive visual or auditory invasions were frequently used to display
an abnormal and grotesque relation to reality in the Bakhtinian
mode. It is not easy to assess such Romanian productions of the
nineties, which verged on the extraordinary and even outrageous.
Perhaps the fairest thing to say is that they localized Shakespeare
in productive and interesting ways, to borrow Leah Marcuss
38
enor-
mously useful term, which she employed to describe the practice of
reading Shakespeare with reference to specic sites, societies, and
beliefs, rather than through a universalizing moral or psychological
model. To the attentive observer, these post-Communist Romanian
productions of Shakespeare might say more about the current state
of directorial authorship postulating their historically created no-
tions of authenticity rather than about the volatile Shakespeare
topic.
Right in the crucial year of Romanias change, 1990, Alexandru
Darie directed A Midsummer Nights Dream at the Bucharest Comedy
Theater. As if positing a predicted metamorphosis of the Romanian
theater in the nineties and the celebration of its marriage with other
PAGE 134 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:50 PS
visual arts, this production had several elements of transition, some-
thing old and something new, something borrowed, and, probably,
something blue. The much-edited repetitive elements were the fa-
miliar commedia dellarte modes, the parody, and the wild movement
on stage. The new scheme was evidenced in the suggestion of a di-
rectorial game with several strategies. For example, Darie used all
the extant translations in Romanian of this play, in both verse and
prose. From the early twentieth-century translations by the Roma-
nian poets, S t. O. Iosif and George Toparceanu, to the later, more
scholarly verse translation by Dan Grigorescu, the director invented
a collage of many Romanian versions. Thus, he stated the volatility
of the word as text and the status of the translation as an evanescent
process of transition from the English Shakespeare to the Romanian
lexical appropriation. Moreover, Darie produced his own contribu-
tion to the text, a directors translation, probably suggesting that a
director who could read the play in English should make a state-
ment in the new order of his spectacle by placing himself as a link
between text and performance.
The borrowed constituent in Daries interpretation was the re-
current character doubling. The frequently used doublings of the
Theseus-Hippolyta and Oberon-Titania couples were not new. How-
ever, Darie produced a tripling of the Theseus-Oberon character by
casting the same actor in the role of Peter Quince. Transition was
the word in this production, and the characters transitions on stage
allowed the audience to notice the transformations from one role to
another. A costume accessory, a symbolic gesture, or musical signals
announced the moment when such transitions were effected. The
blues aspect of this comedy appeared in the melancholy tone per-
vading the lovers and the mechanicals episodes, and in the sugges-
tion of the starry night through a dark canopy studded with
sparkling lights, which lay like an unnished tent in the background
of the wood scenes. A reviewer of Alexandru Daries 1990 produc-
tion of the Dream notes that the director declared the need for a
freedom of passage
39
through this interpretation of Shakespeares
comedy. The director needed to assert and dene his human sensi-
bility through the theatrical production. Thus, he created a comedy
in which the multiple games of deception embraced several strate-
gies and the building tension achieved a potent psychological status.
The general idea stated and conveyed by the director was that the
dream condition could be translated in real terms as a multiple artis-
tic game with many variants. All the characters progress designed a
special kind of stage geometry, like a ballet of various couples, as-
cribed to various levels of social and cultural, but mainly imagina-
PAGE 135 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:50 PS
tive, hierarchy. The royal couple kept to the solid ground of reality,
and the lovers hung on ropes or splashed in water basins. The me-
chanicals displayed a special dignity of the theatrical profession
when Bottom, after the show, made his companions refuse the hu-
miliating money Philostrate threw at their feet as a reward for the
comic relief they provided. The central metaphor of the theater as
the ultimate illusion and reality appeared in the interesting combi-
nation of live theater and puppet show. At the end of the spectacle,
all the actors retired to the back of the stage and human-sized pup-
pets descending from the ceiling performed their parts. Thus, the
actors stepped outside their own system and observed the theater as
an abstract and tangible entity. Self-referentiality was the word for
Daries interpretation of the Dream, as for many other Romanian
productions of Shakespeare emerging in the last decade of the mil-
lennium.
The renowned production of A Midsummer Nights Dream directed
by Liviu Ciulei, recently returned to Romania from the US, at the
Bulandra Theater in 1991 was a new assertive directorial statement
that required many pages of critical interpretation. In keeping with
Peter Brooks reconsideration of the original empty stage space in
producing Shakespeare, Ciulei gave this vacuum a dominant color:
red. In contrast with the purity of white, as envisaged by Brook, red
was meant to assault the audiences cortex and transmit a message
of intensity and violence. On the red platform, which was a square
red partition formed of shining slates, all characters walked bare-
foot, suggesting a direct relation with the earth and the possibility of
immaterial ight. At the back of the stage, the red and black stripes
isolated the scarlet frame from the rest of the world. The almost-
irritating and shocking predominance of the red color was intensi-
ed by the presence of a metallic platform lit with neon lights, which
descended from the Heaven of the stage. Just like the red space
was transformed in turn into the palace in Athens or the wood of
ardent instincts, this platform was converted into a chandelier, Ob-
erons voyeuristic observatory, Titanias bower, or the stage for the
Pyramus and Thisbe tragic mirth. Thus, theatrical metamorphosis
was the ruling concept in this new Ciulei Shakespearean produc-
tion.
A huge, abnormally oval, shining full moon overhung the aggres-
sive red color dominating the decor both horizontally and vertically.
The subconscious connotations related to the moon symbol per-
tained to the text, but the combination with the blood-colored red
created a visceral and sinful attraction toward the obscure zones of
the hallucinatory physicality. The obsessive setting in this play certi-
PAGE 136 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:50 PS
ed that the deep parts of the unconscious were uncontrollable, and
yet the dream was in the outside world. The abyss on stage suggested
that the dreams dream and the nightmarish visions of the subcon-
scious derived from the state of consciousness. Ciuleis setting made
the statement that the other reality we have within us, though dis-
torted and strangely awry, is still part of our darker nature. Like the
red color of the setting, violence (manifest or subdued) was the key
word for the characters behavior. The audiences could see the war-
like Hippolyta dispossessed of her Amazon costume, which was sym-
bolically burned, and dressed in a white robe, like all the others at
Theseuss court. The static but contorted dummies in the back-
ground vaguely hinted at war and its violence. The confrontation
between Titania and Oberon, which in the text seemed like a force
of nature disturbing the genuine order of things, was here an appar-
ently civil debate between two powerful monarchs from the two far
ends of a dividing magnicent table. Sitting rigidly on two stools
placed at a certain distance from the table, the protagonists spoke
in a subdued tone. The restrained passion was only revealed when
Titania involuntarily knocked over a carafe of rich red wine, which
spilled assertively on the white tablecloth.
The costumes were opulent but simple, consisting mainly of red,
white, and black capes. The artisans wore coarse cloth, as if obeying
a strict sumptuary law, but each of them had a red token in the form
of a collar, a necktie, or a pocket trimming. The fairy gures were
clouded in the shady black capes of the night, since they were crea-
tures of darkness and the subconscious. One of the critics reviewing
this play noted that Ciuleis interpretation of the Dream was inten-
tionally symbolic and visual. Dan Micu writes that the production
suggested several interpretations of the dream, which was the
site of all possible metamorphoses.
40
Beside the changing multi-
functional sets, the theme of transformation was suggested by the
evocation of Ovid, whose inuence on the construction of this com-
edy was generally recognized. All Romanians knew that Ovid was ex-
iled and died in the ancient Black Sea city of Tomis, and the
projected image of Ovids statue from the city of Constanta (Tomis)
in the background sent the exact signals referring to the Latin poet.
The inferences about the historicity of art and the transmission and
inuence of poetic arguments through intertextual metamorphosis
were logical conclusions for those who saw Ovid projected on stage.
Just like Ovid was seen in Shakespeares time as the paragon of po-
etic magnicence, and his work constituted the source for many
plays, including the Dream, so did Shakespeare become the wor-
PAGE 137 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:51 PS
shipped model of theatrical virtuosity, equally unrecognizable in the
process of negotiation.
The stage space in Ciuleis vision was symbolic of the attributes of
the two sides of the brain discovered by modern research in psychol-
ogy. The right side (from the audiences perspective) signied con-
centration, attention, reason, and interest, while the left side meant
compassion or affective motivation. In this gurative space, people
progressed like in a dream, with slow gestures and leaps. Movement
played an important part in this production, and its partial impedi-
ment was meant to look like the effortless leaps the mind performed
in dreams. When he intended to avoid the escalation of conict be-
tween the two confused pairs of lovers, Puck commanded the fog to
descend on stage. This fog was the kind of articial cobweb that is
hung at American windows on Halloween night, and Ciulei had cer-
tainly brought the material from the States. The complicated chore-
ography performed by the professional ballet dancers in a slow
tempo had the role of spreading this gossamer substance along the
expanse of the stage. The lovers tried hard to free themselves from
the imsy but encumbering ties of almost-invisible matter which,
like the dream, kept them entangled in surreal circumstances. In
this way, the contribution of modern technology and substances un-
known in Romania helped Ciulei make a directorial statement re-
garding Shakespeares comedy that played on the insubstantiality of
dream-formation. It seems that Ciulei did nd a palpable means of
giving the airy nothing a local habitation and a name.
The Romanian director intended (and succeeded) to give tangi-
ble expression and visual accuracy to the stuff that dreams are made
of. The Romanians at that time were still healing their wounds from
the psychological war of the nerves that some used to call the Roma-
nian revolution against Communism. During the psychological anxi-
ety in the winter of 1989, people thought they could see or hear the
so-called terrorists attacking from almost everywhere, only to nd
out that, in many cases, it was some electronic-sniper device. The
psychological pressure was too much for many people living in those
dramatic days. There were moments when many could not distin-
guish between the reality of a social and political revolution and the
illusory creation of the media (especially the TV). This psychologi-
cal tension would have a long-lasting impact on the Romanian sub-
conscious, so that Ciuleis production of the Dream in hallucinatory
red and violent notes could only remind most people psychologi-
cally affected by the conict about the real-life nightmarish events
they had experienced in December 1989. Thus, going to the theater
and being confronted with the hallucinatory visions of the subcon-
PAGE 138 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:51 PS
scious made into a material conguration became a form of expiat-
ing suppressed fears and insecurities. This is how productions of
Shakespeare could develop, besides other things, into an efcient
form of psychotherapy for a large number of confused Romanians.
A prominent Romanian director, Andrei S erban, schooled with
Peter Brook in London, returned in 1990 from abroad with the en-
thusiastic and noble purpose to set things right in the world of Ro-
manian theater. He was immediately named the director of the
Romanian National Theater in Bucharest and produced ve plays
there, including Twelfth Night in 1991. The play was entitled The
Kings Night or What You Will, and the former title was part of a Ro-
manian translation tradition, because this was how Dragos Proto-
popescu, a prolic pre-war translator of Shakespeare, entitled his
Romanian version. I believe that the Romanian title was derived
from the correspondence of the Twelfth Night in the Orthodox reli-
gious calendar with the celebration of St. John the Baptists behead-
ing, an important feast in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical year. The
kings night might be connected with the period of feasting of the
Jewish kings, resulting in the nal beheading of John the Baptist at
Salomes request. The tragic connotation was very powerful in this
Romanian translation of the plays title, but directors in the previous
Communist period had used the reference to the kings to explore
the issues of legitimate versus illegitimate accession to power. Andrei
S erbans directorial statement made the theme of disguise and con-
fusion of identity the principal pivot of his spectacle. Deception and
masks already exist in Shakespeares comedy, but S erban used dif-
ferent theatrical modes to signify the transition and transformation
of the theater in the process of producing this play.
As was the case with many nineties directors, self-referentiality was
the guiding declaration. Like in Shakespeare, self-irony dominated
the spectacle, but, in this production, the director played freely with
the preexistent modes of the theater. The initial storm scene was
realized in the grand opera style, with carton-arching waves and zinc-
clattering thunder sounds. The audience could see Sebastian being
separated from Antonio, who traversed the stage-space ying from
the top of the mast to the turmoil below. The director wanted his
production to be a free game of masks, travesties, and styles. Or-
sinos court of Illyria was elevated on some kind of platform, which
looked like a funeral monument in the Florence of the Medici. The
place swarmed with people, who appeared to be members of the
Neoplatonic Academy, participating in poetical ceremonies. The
scenic groups of courtiers signied various arts: there were two
painters at work, a sculptor fashioning a statue, and suave maids
PAGE 139 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:13:52 PS
Twelfth Night (The Kings Night or What You Will) directed by Andrei S erban at the
Bucharest National Theater (1991). With Vivian Alivizache (Olivia), Claudiu Bleont
(Feste), and Gheorghe Dinica (Malvolio). Courtesy of the Bucharest National The-
ater.
playing the harpsichord. The neoclassical columns, or the frequent
changes of light and color, gave the impression of a changing space,
which was and was not from this world, and the period was rather
indenite. The indistinct collage of styles in the Illyrian decor at-
tained a shocking climax when Orsino jumped from a carton heli-
copter pointing a pistol at the audience. He was surrounded by his
bodyguards, and alighted in this neoclassical-Renaissance milieu in
the formidable noise of a police car. The contrast between the verses
of love and music spoken by the Duke and the pandemonium sur-
rounding him was meant to strike the audience with its incongruity.
Apart from the discontinuity created through the apparent mixture
of theatrical styles, the carton props (helicopter, cars, and gun) sug-
gested the convention and the material unreality of the theatrical
productions of all times.
Among the recurrent anachronisms in S erbans production of
Twelfth Night we could see Cesario traversing the stage on a bicycle,
Malvolio watching the Romanian TV news, Maria using a vacuum
cleaner, and Sebastian and Antonio chatting in a bar that displayed
whisky ads and lascivious dancers on the counter. The Dukes ro-
PAGE 140 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:13 PS
mantic apparelwhite satin gown and long curls around his shoul-
ders, sporting a silk handkerchief hanging from his little
ngerwas in tone with his pose of disconsolate romantic lover.
When a courtier brought him back the refused bouquet of red roses
from Olivia (articial owers, of course), Orsino uttered it like a
fan and commanded it to be taken to his owery bed, which looked
like a funeral dais. In this production, Romanian audiences were
shown complex blends of cultures and costumes, temporal anoma-
lies, and symbolical props that signied confounding issues. The
scene when Orsino lamented his unrequited love visualized in the
background the romantic ruins of decrepit towers. At the Dukes re-
quest, Feste started to sing the melancholic Come away, come away
death, in English, and Curio (an actress in travesty role) attempted
to translate the text. The words were accompanied by grotesque im-
ages, which showed the tears and death of the unhappy lover, and
how he lay in his cofn among cypresses. Apart from the sadness
of the scene, the audiences could see how the original verses were
translated into a foreign language, emotions were translated into
concrete images, and true feelings were parodied through the theat-
rical metaphor of the mask.
S erbans Illyria was a travesty space, the image of an image, a mask
adopted by every character, in total forgetfulness of their genuine
existence. Among these images of inconsistency, Viola-Cesario
hoped to incorporate delicately the double truth of her identity by
reaching for her inner self, whom she had rejected by adopting the
inimical disguise, while searching for her twin brother, whose image
she had appropriated. Andrei S erban created a troubling scene
when Viola passed by Sebastian in the street of the illusory Illyria,
without either of them seeing the other. Like Shakespeare (through
Viola), S erban told us that adopting a disguise was very dangerous,
and that those appropriating the images of others were courting di-
saster. Very much aware of the directors role in the theater, invari-
ably in charge with assuming various authors identities as their own,
Andrei S erban predicated the question of metatheatricality in direc-
torial terms. The nal scene added a melancholy note to the cou-
ples happy reunion. The storm that had marked the tormented
beginning returned, and the characters turned their backs to the
public, divided from them by the double row of carton waves. The
barely united pairs faced an uncertain future in immobile serenity,
but they were part of an articial decor, which singled them out as
just the romantic representations of some thespian illusion.
In an interview given to the main Romanian theatrical journal,
entitled On the Eve, which marked the eve of the premie`re of
PAGE 141 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:14 PS
Twelfth Night, Andrei S erban made a note about how he saw the in-
terpretation of a Shakespeare play: Knowing that a person experi-
ences two lives simultaneouslythe everyday life and, at the same
time, an invisible, secret, interior existenceShakespeare devel-
oped a form of theater, like Picasso in the portrait form, a method
by which we can see simultaneously the expression on a persons
face and the hidden inner-soul vibrations. That is why his characters
are in perpetual change, at times realistic, or romantic, or formal,
or stylized . . .
41
A director whose afnities with the Shakespearean
mode of reection went back a long way produced this particular
production of Twelfth Night on the huge stage of the Romanian Na-
tional Theater. The staging debated concurrently the issues of per-
sonal or collective identity, but also the shifting faces of the theater
toward the end of the millennium. No longer accepting the exi-
gency of a particular fashion in presenting certain plays or charac-
ters, by complying with the romantic-declamatory, the mannerist,
the political, or the modernizing necessities of the period, the the-
ater turned upon itself in a reexive manner. Rather than providing
just the foil for the abstract and brief chronicles of the time, the the-
ater generated its own analytical structures, according to the direc-
tors interests. In this way, the audiences could see a double image,
namely, the external presentation of a Shakespeare comedy and the
inner, secret, and often conicting faces of Melpomene, and Thalia,
in close entourage of Clio, Euterpe, and Terpsichore. This trans-ge-
neric directorial approach to Shakespeares theater, which stressed
the visual and the choreographic, combined a variety of styles in the-
ater history with music and dance. The Romanian directors ap-
proaches to the comedies in the decade of the nineties and into the
twenty-rst century seemed to go along these intersected and convo-
luted lines, and their sophistication was caviar to the general.
A special attention to the deceptive game of ambiguity in theater
and life brought about an interest in the production of Measure for
Measure on the Romanian stage in the mid-nineties. For almost
twenty years, ever since a remarkable political production by Dinu
Cernescu at the Giulesti Theater of Bucharest in 1972, directors and
theaters had not approached this difcult, dark comedy consis-
tently. There was one exceptionthe 1982 production directed by
Mihai Lungeanu at the Pitesti Theaterbut this was a provincial
playhouse, not the central Bucharest forum. Probably the plays
moral ambiguity and its somber tone did not appeal to directors be-
fore 1990, interested as they were in destabilizing the Communist
regimes absolutist self-centeredness from the direction of politically
signicant productions of Shakespeare. In 1995, however, there was
PAGE 142 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:14 PS
a production of Measure for Measure at the Theatrum Mundi play-
house in Bucharest, directed by a young student in the class of the
director Theodor Marascu named Mihaela Sasarman. The reviews
of this production were not very good, and the reviewer considered
it a form of undergraduate exam for the drama school, a juxtaposi-
tion of dislocated signs that forward no signicant idea.
42
A rag doll
tossed from one side to the other, probably to signify the use and
abuse of morality, or the onstage live-construction of a scaffold with
some wooden boards in order to impress the viewers could hardly
constitute a pertinent approach to the play.
A year later, however, in 1996, a young-generation director, S tefan
Iordanescu, proposed an inciting and equivocal version of Measure
for Measure at the Arad State Theater. The unique decor was con-
ceived as the baroque terrace of a mansion, with stairs on both sides.
This setting allowed for the elaborate suggestions of superimposed
planes (especially in the scenes involving Angelos negotiations), so-
cial and rank difference, and the characters inner conditions. The
modern-day note was given by the costume design and by the ner-
vous and alert acting. Ambiguity was the dominant mode in this pro-
duction. Duke Vincentio was a deceitful person, obscuring his
reasons under the mask of affable bone mine. Not for a moment
did the audiences know for sure whether Vincentio chose the friar
disguise in order to get acquainted with the social problems of his
city, problems that his loyal subjects wanted to keep hidden from
him. Maybe he decided on the disguise in order to trap Angelo, a
possible enemy and dangerous rival. In addition, he might have had
the hidden purpose of consolidating his authority. The Duke might
have retired from the public life for the declared motive of improv-
ing his citys morals. Who knows? Perhaps he went away in the hope
of experiencing extreme life situations. All alternatives were possi-
ble. Angelo was also a cryptic personage, equally perverse and enig-
matic. He was a cruel and fanatical defender of justice, both
hypocrite and sincere, an authentic image of the contradictory
human nature. Isabella was incomprehensible and paradoxical to
the end. The fervent passion she demonstrated in defending her
chastity showed that she was just as dangerous and intolerant as An-
gelo.
S tefan Iordanescus Measure for Measure revealed the impossibility
of knowing where evil ended and where good began, where and
when people were right or wrong, because in that world, like in ours,
lies and truths were perpetually associated. In this universe of inse-
curity, the only certitude was that everything was changing. Truths
turned into falsehoods, the dukes into friars and the reverse, minis-
PAGE 143 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:15 PS
ters were worse than the executioners were, and these might have
become more human than their rulers would have ever been. In
Dinu Cernescus 1972 production of the play, centered on politics,
the conicting interpretations had been less perplexing. There, the
dictators used all means in order to achieve power, and used this
domination to subdue the others. There, Isabella had no choice in
the end but to kneel wordlessly before the red-mantled colossus who
condescended to ask her for his wife. There, the red Communist
power was limitless and it subjugated all genuine feeling. With S te-
fan Iordanescus production, however, the audiences had changed.
In the age of democracy, the Romanian public no longer expected
to decipher subversive messages about the discredited Communist
authority. Their tastes evolved, and they perceived a real mad, mad
world in the concrete form of a double ight of stairs, which people
climbed and descended incessantly. Values, identities, families, and
emotions were traded continually at the universal stock exchange of
this mutated world, where all was conditioned, reprogrammed, and
even cloned. Iordanescus production recycled Shakespeares uni-
verse of innuendo for the newly fashioned Romanian audiences of
the late twentieth century.
Intending to give an informed overview of the large number of
Romanian productions of Shakespearean comedies, I have made a
point of registering the more modest attempts of less famous direc-
tors as well as those by the prominent gures of the Romanian the-
ater. These artists strove to address the problems in the comedies
from their perspectives and to speak for the audiences all over the
country, not necessarily in the cultural center of Bucharest. The situ-
ation of the drama school in Romania has changed signicantly
since 1990. While before this decade there was only one extremely
elitist Academy of Theater and Film, after 1990 many universities
in the country offered courses in drama and canto, though not so
many in directing. Before this crucial decade, being admitted in this
special club of the privileged few students at the only drama school
in Bucharest was no easy role, and many young people tried for
years on end before reaching such a desired status. By the mid-nine-
ties, there was already a new generation of actors and directors who
would approach with enthusiasm any Shakespeare play, which they
perceived as a certication of their professional caliber and, possi-
bly, a passport to international fame. Vasile Nedelcu was one of these
young artists, and he was still a student when he approached the
Dream with a team of professional actors at the Toma Caragiu The-
ater in Ploiesti (1995). The reviews for this production were good
PAGE 144 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:15 PS
because, as one critic said, the director constructed a coherent and
lively colored spectacle.
43
Nedelcu centered on a dominant idea of theater-within-theater
and the scenographer designed the sets as a multi-plane series of
proscenium arches. Various many-colored curtains (white, red, blue,
and black) delimited these playing spaces. They rose or descended
successively to reveal various scenes in the play. The vertical demar-
cation was suggested by an ingenious rocking chair that glided like a
toboggan, sending every character expected to slide into erotic self-
deception to the obscurity of nothingness. The interplay of curtains
revealed sequentially the interpenetrating worlds of the illustrious
court, the fairy woodland, and the unpretentious milieu of the arti-
sans. When these would-be actors took over the stage play-world in
the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude, the other actors became a special
kind of audience, taking their seats in the area normally reserved
for the orchestra in the playhouse. This entity of performance was
differentiated from the real audience, who occupied a distinct space
in the auditorium. The director made the statement that the whole
world may be symbolically compared to a stage, but it was not one.
There were differences between the gurative world of the theater
and the world outside. However, when a play was performed, actors
and audience joined a conventional reality that took the part of
their world for the two hours trafc on the stage.
In the mid-nineties, many Shakespearean comedies found their
way in the metamorphosed Romanian theater. As You Like It had
been used extensively in the Communist period to signify political
sedition. When this play was produced in the nineties, however, it
showed audiences how cultivated, rened, and postmodern its di-
rector was. The production of As You Like It directed by Nona Cio-
banu at the Bucharest Teatrul Mic (1996) was one of these cases of
afrmation of directorial expertise. The rst assertively creative ac-
tion was performed at the initial stage of the preparation of the play,
when Nona Ciobanu produced a new translation. She devised an ad-
aptation from the English version, collating the extant Romanian
translations by Virgil Teodorescu, Lucia Demetrius, and Ion Brez-
eanu. The implied idea in this recurrent habit of translation activity
by modern Romanian directors was that they were in complete au-
thorial control of the spectacle, and the text should be adapted to
their Prospero-like demands. The next symbolic issue was the wood-
land as a stage, implicit in the placement of Jacques monologue in
this medium. While he spoke the famed lines (in prose), the actor
used his capacity as a mime and acted the description, but he ap-
peared like an interesting four-handed Shiva, and his Indian-like
PAGE 145 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:15 PS
motion typied a mythical dance of life and death. The director
counted on her trained audiences to decode these kinds of signs,
and to appreciate the accumulated erudition existing in the theater
hall at that specic moment.
The complex mixture of styles and cultures could be identied in
many instances of this production of As You Like It. People at Duke
Fredericks court used a sophisticated jargon, derided extensively by
Touchstone. Orlando displayed the vocation of suffering expected
from the romantic hero of the amour courtois convention, and he
wrote his sonnets directly on the leaves of the carton trees, in total
disregard of environmental necessities. However, the theater props
are not real life, and carton leaves are made of the same stuff as the
books we read from. The relationship Rosalind/Ganymede-Orlando
was very physical in this production, and they often fought not only
in words, but also in action. Jacques homespun philosophy was
meant to appease the lovers ardent combat, but the frantic Orlando
turned his invectives upon him. Even verbal abuse had cultural con-
notations in this sophisticated version of As You Like It. On parting,
Orlando called Jacques Monsieur Tristesse, while the melancholy
protagonist called the disconsolate lover Signor Amoroso. Nona
Ciobanu counted on her audiences prociency in French and Ital-
ian, as well as on the more cultivated connotations sending to the
French convention of medieval courtly love and the Italian Renais-
sance sonneteering mode.
The irony of pastoral comedy in this production was addressed
to the common cultural assumptions of the audience. Originally a
population of shepherds, Romanian culture has a specic pastoral
myth represented in the folk ballad entitled Miorita [The Darling
Sheep]. In this folk verse narrative, two nameless shepherds were
envious of the third one, who was richer and more handsome, and
they decided to murder him. A miraculously articulate sheep
warned her master of the danger, but the shepherd chose to await
his death passively. He visualized his end as a mystical wedding, in
communion with nature and the universe. Critics identifying this
passive submission to fate as characteristic of the Romanians na-
tional spirit have derisively coined this defensive and inactive indi-
vidual reaction to the aggressive modern world as mioritic. Thus,
instead of taking arms against a sea of everyday troubles, selecting
an active involvement in the life of the community, Romanians are
generally indicted for passive submission and patient expectancy.
Nona Ciobanus production of As You Like It was rst performed dur-
ing the general election campaign that promoted the idea of
change, and the Center-Right party slogan was active participation
PAGE 146 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:16 PS
in the construction of capitalism. The plays ironic view of the pasto-
ral spirit in the mioritic mode indirectly promoted the idea of active
interest and political responsibility. It is very likely that the rened
intellectuality usually attending these Shakespeare performances
took the message directly, and they voted for the Center-Right idea
of operative change in the old Socialist mentalities, and for an op-
tion in favor of the full capitalist system. However, these high-
spirited ideas did not last more than four years of political mandate,
because lofty ideals collided constantly with the ragged asperity of
the bare necessities of life.
In the Romanian election year of 1996, many Shakespearean com-
edies were used one more time to convey partial political messages.
This time, the criticism was more obvious, because there was no for-
mal censorship apparatus, and it was directed to the political parties
emerging directly from the Communist past, which used the per-
fectly honorable reason of democratic election to ascend to power.
Schooled at the formerly select Communist academies training peo-
ple in the competence of spreading fear, hatred, enmity, and cal-
umny, the members of these neo-Communist political parties relied
on disseminating rumors and the denigration of the opposition in
their electoral campaign. In a 1996 production of Much Ado About
Nothing directed by Alexandru Dabija at the Youth Theater of Piatra
Neamt, the director relied on this idea of subtracting information,
spreading falsied reports, and manipulating peoples beliefs by dis-
torting truths and misrepresenting errors. This ambivalent Shake-
spearean comedy acquired a serious tone in describing a world of
deceit, dangerously traversed by the disconcerting buzz of the dis-
crediting whisper. The large quantity of distorted messages trans-
formed ordinary life into an unbearable wasps nest where hypocrisy
secured the appearance of normality. The director addressed his po-
litical criticism to the gullibility of some, as well as the perversity of
others.
The sets and lighting in this production suggested shady actions
and movements in the chiaroscuro region, where danger and incerti-
tude lurked from every adumbrated corner. The stage looked like a
space designed for keeping an eye on people, spying on their pri-
vacy, with the contemptible purpose of using the information for
obscure reasons. This menacing setting would recall to many the
productions of the play in the Communist period, when the threat
and spying were implied to emerge from the authorities. The cos-
tumes were designed in such a way that they covered some charac-
ters faces. Hidden eyes peered at their interlocutors from behind
the shaded light of some dubious lanterns. These ickering lights
PAGE 147 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:16 PS
thrust at peoples faces were shocking, and they left the peaceful
and credulous citizens of Messina temporarily blind. The faceless
gures who conducted such veiled and Inquisition-like interroga-
tory on innocent inhabitants were the recycled members of the for-
mer secret police, who knew how to obtain their information and
who took advantage of peoples naivete. In this atmosphere of suspi-
cion, Don Pedros victorious soldiers made a grand entrance. They
carried the dead bodies of their comrades as trophies, and these dis-
integrating cadavers would dominate the world of the play, like dis-
heartening omens portending disaster. The obvious political
message of this scene was that the current governing Social-Demo-
cratic party, derived from the Communist predecessors and formed
mostly of members of the former secret police, used the glory built
on the dead martyrs of the 1989 revolution for democracy in order
to satisfy their appetite for power.
An accredited member of this disbanded and morbid army, Don
John was exceptionally versed in the art of provoking people, incit-
ing them to rise against each other. This character was called simply
John, and his name alluded to the corresponding political leader of
present-day Romania, Ion (John) Iliescu, president of the country
and perpetual candidate for ever-renewed mandates. Death was very
present in this morality play of the nineties because the corpses be-
came strangely animated and they mingled with people and ex-
changed masks with them in a grim danse macabre. The setting was
dominated by an enormous reproduction of Rembrandts painting
The Night Round. The characteristic obscurity of the background
in this painting and the contrasting illumination of the faces belong-
ing to the immobile gures of soldiers frozen in a formal deploy-
ment of duty spoke about the ceremoniousness and formality of
Romanian new politics. Likewise, the presence of the Rembrandt
painting was an eloquent image of the degree of sophistication
needed in decoding the artistic message expected by the director
from his audience. It was also a sign of the melange of reexive artis-
tic techniques used in the theater to signify diverse messages.
The directorial commentary in this production of Much Ado About
Nothing was a warning against relying on erroneous rumors, which
derived from the absence of communication among people. Normal
relations were replaced with formal poses, and there was no sympa-
thetic comprehension and appreciation of the other. The conclu-
sion the director wanted to lead his audiences to in this production
was very sad, but the atmosphere of suspicion really existed in Roma-
nia in those years. Unfortunately, the change of political regime as
a result of the 1996 elections, as well as the 2000 democratic vote,
PAGE 148 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:17 PS
did not change much of the general impression of mistrust captured
by Alexandru Dabija in this production of Shakespeares Much Ado
About Nothing. This was a play infrequently performed on the Roma-
nian stage, probably because very few directors dared to reconsider
and refashion in new cultural dimensions the already unsettling and
indeterminate tone of this implacable comedy. However, the plays
ambivalence recommended it to modern audiences, and many Ro-
manian directors used its morally uncertain intensity to convey topi-
cal political allusions. The relative infrequency of producing this
comedy in professional theaters in Romania speaks for Shake-
speares perennial double life, straddling both popular and elite cul-
tural productions. It also adduces the problem of dissemination of
political dissension among the theater audiences by using a Shake-
speare play as a vehicle. This form of theatrical manipulation in Ro-
mania used to be a strategy of the 1970s and 80s, but it is clear that
the directors in the 90s thought it useful to revive some of their
artistic schemes.
It is easier for directors to deal with Twelfth Night from any per-
spective because the dimension of carnival and departure from the
subliminal self can take so many forms that it lends itself to many
culturally diverse readings, both popular and rened. The produc-
tion directed by Victor Ioan Frunza at the Hungarian State Theater
of Cluj-Napoca (1996) was played under the sign of mystication
and androgyny. The production relied on pictorial image, and all
confusion seemed to derive from inexplicable optical deciency.
The director led his audiences to think that they lived in an androgy-
nous universe of easily shifting identities. The characters looked like
the delicate decoupages from the Japanese shadow theater, and the
disembodied gures could not communicate directly because they
were placed on disparate planes and the rules of perspective did not
apply. The technique of perspective painting was translated into the
rules of theater, accounting for the imprecision of dramatic view-
points. Since the characters in this romantic comedy often fall in
love with the wrong partner or are disillusioned by other people,
all the actors transacted their roles as disembodied entities, in no
apparent relation with their respective partners, because the rela-
tionship was just an illusion. By showing they had a false image of
themselves and the world around them, the characters in Twelfth
Night gave directors the occasion to explore issues of identity in vari-
ous disguises, including the Romanian perspective, to suggest the
metatheatrical fantasy.
The objects of decor illustrated the self-referential idea of the the-
ater as illusion. A translucent disk illumined by neon lights repre-
PAGE 149 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:17 PS
sented Moon. That it shone only when lit, after the prop was set on
stage, communicated the potentiality and the function of the theat-
rical setting. A number of massive woolen bales descending from the
ceiling gured nature and a synthetic pastoral setting in the articial
world of carnival. The white marble statues symbolized classical bal-
ance and harmony, replicating the Renaissance idea of humanist
order, but their prominent presence in the scenes about love had
clear erotic connotations. In contrast with Andrei S erbans reading
of Twelfth Night as a world that misconstrued the territory of the real
into the hallucinations of the absurd, Victor Ioan Frunza proposed
a changing theater world that helped people reconsider their
perceptions of reality. Discovering its contradictory nature, the audi-
ences were forced to admit the inherent antagonism and inconsis-
tency, but also harmony, existing in the real world as suggested by
the theater of illusion. Frunza ultimately cautioned us, as critics and
auditors, not to repeat Malvolios mistaken notion of performing
the trick of singularity (3.4.70). By exploring the dense interac-
tion between text and performance in this production of Twelfth
Night, its Romanian critics and reviewers established this comedy as
a work realized within changing social and erotic constructions of
identity.
A 1997 version of As You Like It directed by Alexandru Colpacci
at the Oradea Theater showed this romantic comedy in an almost
traditional mode, only highlighting some minor characters and
scenes. The director reconsidered the banished Dukes relationship
with Amiens by casting an actress in travesty in this role. Le Beau
appeared as a self-important character, somehow similar to the arti-
cial Osric in Hamlet. Minor occasions, such as serving the meals in
the woodsan intentionally sumptuous affairor the appearance
of some bizarre animals roaming around, became signicant. The
setting was intended to replicate the Elizabethan stage, with a long
proscenium arching over the center area of the stalls to the boxes
behind. This brightly lit area accommodated the court scenes, while
the main stage was in total darkness. When the Arden forest was the
setting, the main stage was illumined to show a splendid medieval
tapestry representing a hunting scene in the woods. This pictorial
effect of art representing nature was characteristic of the Romanian
directors interpretations, especially in the nineties period. What
caught my attention when reading the review about this production,
however, is the fact that the critic recorded an amusing event con-
cerning the audience on the night he attended the performance.
Adrian Mihalache writes that a group of high-school students were
the majority of the audience on that particular night and the kids
PAGE 150 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:18 PS
were very restless; they moved around during the performance,
talked, and even tossed their popcorn at the actors. Consistent with
their profession, the actors assumed a mock-educational role, and
those who had minor parts descended from the stage during their
moments of intermission and made a show of reprimanding the dis-
ruptive members of the audience in jest.
44
Aware that this is how
things must have happened on some performance nights with the
Elizabethan audiences, the actors endured stoically the risks and
magnicence of their profession.
Alice Georgescu, a theater critic reviewing a 1997 production of
The Comedy of Errors at the Comedy Theater Bucharest directed by
Alexandru Dabija, starts with an interesting analysis of the general
styles of producing Shakespeares comedies in Romania. Georgescu
writes that the productions of the tragedies in the past decade have
taken reputable theatrical congurations, while the productions of
the comedies have been modest, even inadequate, in form, not in
number.
45
The critic further justies that A Midsummer Nights Dream
and Twelfth Night have been most widely and adequately performed.
However, the so-called pure comedies, such as The Two Gentlemen
of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The
Comedy of Errors, have been either facile humorous presentations or
dismal commentaries of a comic theme.
46
The production of The
Comedy of Errors directed by Alexandru Dabija at the Bucharest Com-
edy Theater was an exception, in the sense that it interpreted the
text in a jovial key. There were some darker nuances in the visualiza-
tion of the inherent violence characterizing the citizens of Ephesus,
or their hostility toward strangers, in Adrianas morbid jealousy, her
sisters sentimental insecurity, or the kitchen maids grotesque
erotic xation. However, these drab touches did not alter the effer-
vescent comic tone. The predominant blue lighting was a specic
feature of this production. A directorial technicality meant to in-
crease the confusion of likeness was the casting of the same actor
playing both Antipholuses and both Dromios respectively, when
they appeared alternately on stage, and when they acted at the same
time the roles were played by different actors. This operation was
confusing enough with critics and scholars, who knew very well what
was going on, but the general audiences that took pains in under-
standing the comedys intricate plot as it was had a hard time of it.
In the review of another Shakespearean comedy, a dark variant
of Measure for Measure, the critic Alice Georgescu notes that Shake-
speare is the dominant gure of the 19961997 season.
47
Georg-
escu observes that Measure for Measure is most attractive for modern
theaters and directors because of its relevance for present-day poli-
PAGE 151 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:18 PS
tics and corruption in Romania. Many directors have seen the plays
moral double meaning and the cynical questioning of accepted val-
ues as a good occasion for exposing what is happening in the newly
capitalistic and democratic Eastern European country. The problem
of eradication of corruption and the purication of morals has been
the central concern for all Romanian governments since 1990, and
this is the declared purpose of Duke Vincentios political maneuver.
However, the concealed question regarding the Dukes real motive
of his retirement appeared immediately in this production directed
by Theodor Cristian Popescu at the Targu Mures National Theater
in 1997. A 1996 production of the play directed by S tefan Ior-
danescu at the Arad Theater raised similar issues, which showed that
they were (and are) a constant problem of Romanian society. Popes-
cus suggestion was that Vincentio wanted to eliminate a potential
political adversary in the person of Angelo by compromising him
publicly. The actor playing the Duke had slow, feline gestures, and
his humble-carnivorous smile divulged his concealed intentions and
dubious character. Lucio played an equivocal role in assisting Vin-
centios plans, and his reactions on the stage made the audiences
compare him to a benign version of the manipulative Iago. Escalus
typied the envious and resentful high government ofcial, while
Pompey, Elbow, and Froth represented the petty charlatans. Angelo
was neither innocent nor culpable, and Isabellas ingenuity had its
hidden aws. All the characters were pretenders, and they pro-
gressed in parallel worlds, where right and wrong had no denite
borders, and people were taking double truths by any other name.
Ambiguity and excess were the dominant modes of producing the
comedies in the nineties in Romania. The production of A Midsum-
mer Nights Dream in the version of the director Ion Sapdaru pro-
duced at the Iasi National Theater in 1998 was a sexist and erotic
interpretation. The critic reviewing this production argued that this
sexually oriented version of the Dream neglected the text and was no
longer connected with Shakespeare.
48
The director declared in the
program that he saw the characters as inclined to sexual excess, even
abuse and perversion, likely to lose their identity in romantic and
carnal pursuits. Sapdaru visualized them as homosexuals, pedo-
philes, sadomasochists, and zoophiles. He did not intend to present
these sexually perverted characters in a poetic mode, performing in
a natural and Edenic environment. This spectacle was neither lyrical
nor ostensibly pastoral. The sets were very simple, and the music was
a mixture of harsh sounds that nullied what was left of the poetry
and mystery of the text. The verse was heavily deteriorated, and no
accurate translation was manifestly used. The audience was ag-
PAGE 152 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:18 PS
gressed with dissonant noises and deafening roars. Titania was an
unrestrained nymphomaniac who roared Uahh! and the fairies
needed to tie her with ropes in order to prevent her from sexually
assaulting poor Bottom. At times, Oberon cried Craa! suggesting
a crow, or a raven, or something like that. The entire production
bore the stamp of luxuriance and intemperance, though the direc-
tor may have most honorably intended to reveal the submerged
erotic fantasies lurking in the unconscious.
The 1999 production of A Midsummer Nights Dream directed by
Victor Ioan Frunza at the Cluj National Theater was a different
transgressive version, which cut through the comedy elements to the
bare bone of tragic parody and self-irony. The play was presented as
the caricature of sexuality in excess, where Puck was a little pervert
genius and Oberon a voyeuristic old lecher. The director adapted
the text freely. He produced a collation of the ve extant Romanian
translations, spicing it with insertions from the Marquis de Sade and
the Holy Bible. The Pyramus and Thisbe section appeared as a de-
formed self-parody to Romeo and Juliet, and the play ended abruptly
in this note of theatrical failure into the ridiculous, without being
saved from derision by the nal intervention of the fairy world. The
spirits were malec and perverse instruments of mischievous trans-
formations. They seemed to have strange bird shapes, looking like
evil fallen angels who amused themselves by playing tricks on the
foolish mortals. According to Victor Ioan Frunza, those who laugh
at the comedies are fewer and fewer and the director intended to
tell a pleasant fairy tale about sin.
49
Increasingly so, productions of
Shakespeares comedies in the late 90s focused on the conicting
elements within the plays, such as grave festivity, carnival, the gro-
tesque, and sexual and moral license. These sober, but almost gro-
tesque versions of Shakespeare in late-90s Romania were a silent
reminder of the directors tendency to transform the popular acces-
sible Shakespearean stories and spectacles into serious art, the pre-
serve of an elite intellectuality.
The directors interest in the problematic Measure for Measure was
very active in late-nineties Romania. If, in the previous decades, dur-
ing the Communist period, cases of moral degradation and the cor-
ruption of power were plentiful, these issues were never addressed
directly. In the usual manner of pretending that their society was
perfect, the authorities preferred to ignore the problem. In this
manner, they did not readily authorize the production of certain
Shakespeare comedies that posed too many problems. In the nine-
ties, however, when no censorship menaced the choice of plays to
be performed, directors thought that the issues of power and pro-
PAGE 153 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:19 PS
teering could be better debated through a problem comedy that
anatomized the most unpleasant social and political infections. This
process was similar, in reverse, to the one Lawrence Levine de-
scribed when writing about burlesque versions of Shakespeare in
nineteenth-century America. In showing how Shakespeares popular
stories have been turned into the sanctuary of the ruling classes, Lev-
ine exemplies his idea by the 1849 Astor Place riot. He sees this
phenomenon as a sign that theater no longer functioned as a cul-
tural form that embodied all classes within a shared public space,
nor did Shakespeare remain the common property of all Ameri-
cans.
50
Similarly, the Communists, when in power, saw Shakespeare
as a cultural idol that could legitimize their social ascension through
lofty educational highways, while later post-Communist models of
interpretation chose to go beyond and behind the plays to nd the
process of institutionalization and canonization at work. Thus, direc-
tors rendered all manner of Shakespeare worthy of consideration,
not only those comedies endorsed by the institutional vanguards of
literary and theatrical value.
A reading of Measure for Measure directed by Bocsardi Laszlo at the
Theater of Sfantu Gheorghe (1999) was used to perform a theatrical
incision into the purulent wound of Romanias social and ethical
pollution. The main question regarded the governments capacity
to exercise power. Is one person in a position of authority capable
to decide the destiny of a nation? To what measure can one act in
the name of the others? Who can bring order in a world dominated
by chaos, duplicity, and moral degradation? How can the law be ap-
plied exibly and efciently, without invoking severe conventions
and rigid codes? These were the questions asked by most Romanians
on the brink of the twenty-rst century, after ten years of democracy
and two Center-Left and Center-Right governments, when they saw
that things had not changed at all. Expecting their audiences to go
to the theater to see a Shakespeare comedy that seemed something
else, and which looked so close to the corrupt real life they were
experiencing, Romanian directors of the nineties acted upon a so-
cial and cultural command. They saw the performance of Shake-
speares problem plays as evolving not in an ahistorical vacuum but
rather as located in specic historical and political circumstances.
Thus, cultural history blended with performance practices, and
Shakespeare functioned as a factor of democratization in post-
Communist Romania, challenging structures of inequality and cor-
ruption instead of conserving them, as was often the case in the past.
Duke Vincentio was a doubtful character in this staging of Measure
for Measure, but he was not the tyrant of previous productions. He
PAGE 154 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:19 PS
was genuinely conducted by a will to change the corrupted status of
his country, but his good intentions were suffocated by the precari-
ous circumstances. This authority gure indicated the current
Center-Right president of the country, Emil Constantinescu, a well-
intentioned university professor who had hoped to purge the evil
habits in Romania; but the task seemed to be too large for his shoes.
For Angelo, power meant tyranny, terror, and cruelty. Power dehu-
manized this character, and Laszlo Bocsardi showed the conse-
quences of moral alienation on a general social level. The prison
scenes were especially terrifying, because they revealed a world
where people lived in fear and despair, screaming from the dark
dungeons, with no effect other than the jailers sarcastic laughter.
The oppressive atmosphere was almost tangible when the convicted
subjects and their wardens walked among the audience, showing
them that they were also part of that maltreated population. At that
time in Romania, like today, taxes and prices were very high, remu-
neration very low, and when somebody wanted to claim a right he
or she encountered a blind wall of non-responsiveness and indiffer-
ence on the part of the authorities, cloaked under the pretense of
legality and shrouded in impenetrable bureaucracy. Although the
theater was no longer expected to address topical political issues di-
rectly, the current relevance of Shakespeares problem comedies for
a discordant Romania was unavoidable.
Two productions, one of As You Like It by Mihaela Lichiardopol at
the Timisoara National Theater (2000) and one of the Dream by
Tudor Marascu at the Constanta Theater (2000), did not enjoy such
good reviews. About Lichiardopols interpretation of As You Like It,
Doina Modola argues that it was like a defective decoupage,
where the bare white stage did not signicantly disclose the complex
game of contrasts and appearances from the Forest of Arden.
51
How-
ever, the serious tone of this production, meant to reveal the relativ-
ity of destiny, where good and bad fortunes and ethical values
intermingled dangerously, was characteristic of most Romanian pro-
ductions of Shakespeares comedies at the beginning of this century.
Lichiardopol tried to insert a kind of feminist innovation in the
character structure by casting an actress in travesty for the role of
the banished Duke and by doubling many parts, but the effect was
not very convincing. Delia Voicu writes about Tudor Marascus ver-
sion of A Midsummer Nights Dream that it is a disharmonic and
forceless spectacle.
52
However, when I saw the production, there
was enough time to notice some positive aspects. While they are not
enough to recommend the production as a landmark for the theatri-
cal interpretations of Shakespeares romantic comedy in Romania,
PAGE 155 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:20 PS
Marascu introduced enough self-referential theatrical material to
conclude that, at least from the directorial perspective, this produc-
tion could make a statement.
The production blended traditional interpretation and innova-
tion. Theseus was a warlord of the wild nineties, complete with tat-
too and skinhead, and Hippolyta was a veritable Amazon. She was
dragged in chains into the marriage and produced aggressive com-
ments directed to the actors in the play scene. However, she was a
visibly tamed Amazon by this time, and the chains, the only vestiges
of her reluctant spirit of feminine freedom, were used as adorning
diadem and bracelets. Oberon and Titania formed a female couple,
but the sexual innuendo was traditionally guided in the direction of
Bottom and the classical connotation of the asss sexual potency.
Puck was a triple ubiquitous gure with the qualities of an acrobat,
popping out of the pit and the side doors simultaneously. The fairies
played the neat schoolgirls with satchels, led by an authoritarian and
musical Mary Poppins. Titanias bower looked exactly like the ow-
ery crimson bed of feathers suspended from the ceiling in Peter
Brooks 1970 RSC production. Marascus version showed a mixture
of styles and interpretations of Shakespeares play, combined with
diverse cultural allusions. The mechanicals artistic transaction and
the critique of theatricality carried allusions to Ophelias mad dis-
course through a suave distribution of owers. Additionally, there
was an interesting pantomime performed by (presumably) an added
Feste, the Kings Fool, who broke the chains of ignorance and
learned who he was through the theatrical show and through Pucks
emancipating intervention. The epilogue was theirs, and so was the
conclusion of the play. Tudor Marascus production made a state-
ment regarding the condition of Shakespeares theater in the un-
easy year 2000. The general tendency was toward no more, or
probably less, politics, while many productions were a recapitulation
of styles and theatrical strategies.
In a discussion ranging over a variety of Romanian productions of
Shakespeares comedies during almost half a century, it is difcult
to pinpoint a pattern describing Romanian performance practices.
However, just like Shakespeare is a dramatist of volatile identity,
changing color like a chameleon
53
according to the culture in which
he is being presented, so are the Romanian productions of his com-
edies in various periods of Romanian theater history. Probably more
extensively than other plays in the Shakespeare canon, various theat-
rical rewritings of the comedies force us to a reconsideration of the
ways the theater can articulate the myths of our society. In a period
when Communist policy was restrictive, the comedies were a form of
PAGE 156 ................. 11420$ $CH4 10-20-05 11:14:20 PS
escapism in the theatrical ivory tower of fantasy. During the decades
of subversive anti-Communist discourse, the comedies provided a
delightful mode of exposing unpleasant truths. The productions of
the romantic comedies in the new millennium, however, are no
longer romantic affairs, but they disclose many ambiguities and a
roughness inherent in the decentered mode of modern-day theatri-
cality.
The current stage of Romanian productions of comedies during
the nineties and into the new century evidences an emphasis on the
transgressive and perverse elements actively undermining the har-
mony in the comedies. This aggressive and often offensive mode of
producing these plays is meant to have an effective impact on post-
modern audiences. It forces them to admit the deep-seated contra-
dictions in real life and, implicitly, draws their attention to the
modern theater as a cultural institution, whose popularity has been
threatened by an increasingly peripheral position in relation to
other versions of Shakespeares comedies on lm, video, or televi-
sion. Faced with increasing material and nancial difculties, Roma-
nian theaters try to tell audiences that they are still there, attempting
to make them laugh or wonder. I cannot venture to provide a cogent
answer as to the audiences responses to this challenge. All I know is
that the box ofces in Bucharest and other cities are always fully
booked, for Shakespeare or for any other play that is running in one
season, for that matter.
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5
Shakespeare, Communism,
and After: Tragedies
WHAT MEANINGS DID THE ROMANIAN PRODUCTIONS OF SHAKESPEARE
generate for those who knew only the Stratford variants? Romanian
productions of Shakespeare, especially during the Communist
period, were an enigma and a closed chapter for mainstream
Shakespeare in performance criticism. The countrys economic,
political, and cultural isolation did not allow for many informational
exchanges and the theater was no exception. At the same time, how-
ever, the Shakespearean theatrical show in Romania went on, be-
cause the Communist authorities knew intuitively that they had
everything to gain by adapting the plays to their ideological de-
mands. In an attempt to refresh the state of Romanian Shakespeare
for interested readers, this chapter examines how Shakespeare has
been initially appropriated and gradually localized in Romanian the-
ater under the forty years of Communism and in the decades that
followed the 1989 change in the political system. In studying the sig-
nicance of Shakespeare to the cultural development of Communist
Romania, we can easily see that he entered the domain of this the-
ater by stages and became a predominant touchstone of theatri-
calif not politicalidentity. Shakespeare became a paradigm of
cultural evolution and the theatrical maturity of a nation. Moreover,
the tragedies played an important role in revitalizing the peoples
political combative spirit, especially in the last decade before the fall
of the Communist regime.
In the early years of ideological Socialist oppression, the produc-
tions of Shakespeares tragedies were used either for cultural legiti-
mization of Socialist practices, or manipulated to signify the
superiority of Communism over capitalism by applying idealized
Marxist theories to the theater. In the hard Communist period of
the 1950s and 60s, when the authorities wanted to legitimize their
control over Romanias past and present in every possible way, pro-
ducing Shakespeare extensively was a vehicle for exploring identity
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158
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5: SHAKESPEARE, COMMUNISM, AND AFTER: TRAGEDIES 159
in relation to the other. As a rule, the Bard was seen as a paradigm
of classical elegance. At times, certain critics and Communist pro-
paganda exploited the Romanian publics increasing taste for
Shakespeare by drawing attention to the dangers of accepting the
ideas of the perilous Western other indiscriminately. In reviewing
one production of Shakespeare or another, the critics authorized
role was supposed to raise the readers awareness regarding the con-
fused recognition of a playwright who described the mores of a
country that had embraced the capitalist and imperialist values
throughout the centuries. However, certain critics used their reviews
of Shakespeares productions as a form of masked anti-Communist
resistance. They knew that the people attending a Shakespeare play,
or those who read the reviews, belonged to the middle-class intellec-
tuals. Most educated people did not adhere to the proletarian views,
and the Communist authorities worked hard at creating a class of
intellectuals deriving from the working class. In the meantime, how-
ever, certain elements in the theatrical performance, as well as some
allusions in the reviews about a production, were indirectly and pi-
quantly subversive.
It is convenient to look at the history of the Shakespeare in per-
formance in Communist Romania as being divided into three liber-
ally delimited periods. The decade 195969 was a time of adaptation
and cultural integration of the plays in the national theatrical cir-
cuit. This adoption was limited, however, by the political and cul-
tural commands. Theaters and directors chose to elude the indirect
and selective censorship by producing those Shakespeare plays that
were less adaptable to overt political commentary. In this sense, the
light comedies were denitely preferred by theaters, especially in
the state theaters of the large cities, in contrast with the tragedies.
The tragedies were mostly produced at the theaters in Bucharest,
and their frequency was comparably lower than that of the come-
dies. The explanation is that there was a larger concentration of re-
ned middle-class intellectuals in the capital. These cultured
audiences could taste the ne casual theatrical references in certain
productions and interpret the anti-regime insinuations appearing in
the written reviews appropriately. In their misguided attempt to
stabilize
1
the Shakespeare text, as W. B. Worthen puts it, Roma-
nian directors and theaters constantly needed Shakespeare as a ban-
ner to legitimize cultural and political debate. Probably less aware of
the theoretical issue related to the fact that the directors concept of
interpreting Shakespeare is also hermeneutically shifting on a con-
tinual basis, Romanian directors relied on the common notion that
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Shakespeare, as they saw him, was somehow uniquely interpret-
able, renewable, and relevant.
In the period 197080, the theaters experienced a process of
modernization, and Shakespeare was as much read as performed.
From the earlier demure attempts at making Shakespeare known to
a larger Romanian public while eluding the inexible Communist
censorship, directors in this period started experimenting and even
radicalizing Shakespeare. Considering such issues as staging, acting,
improvisation, ceremony, and ritual, we can see radical changes in
how theaters staged Shakespeare for Romanian audiences. The
need for camouage was still there, but directors became more ac-
tive and efcient in conveying clandestine transmissions with politi-
cal resonance under the guise of theatrical innovations. In their
turn, the audiences expected and enjoyed political innuendoes, and
the theater became a place where the publicly oppressed Romanian
people could release their frustrations in a verbalized cultural fash-
ion within the restricted theater space.
In a similar indirect manner, certain departments of the Univer-
sity of Bucharest educated the members of the younger generation
in the spirit of Western values through Shakespeare. For instance,
the undergraduate students at the Faculty of Letters, especially the
English section, emerged in general from an intellectual middle-
class social background, and their system of values was more liberally
oriented. At times, the director invited groups of students to attend
a Shakespeare production, manifestly in order to become ac-
quainted with English culture, but in particular they formed the
younger age group that would examine critically the irrational
claims of the totalitarian regime.
In the decade 198090, theaters passed through a period of redis-
covery marked by political and cultural appropriations. The bird
named Shakespeare
2
was transparently put to ideological uses, and
local theaters became more involved in undermining the collapsing
Communist rule by reshaping mentalities about the prerogatives of
power.
3
The theaters subversive inuence over two decades of pro-
ducing Shakespeare in Romania might have culminated in the 1989
political displacement of autocracy in the real world. The politically
informed audiences in this decade of communication expected di-
rectors to adopt a more ideologically combative attitude when pro-
ducing Shakespeare. The tragedies, particularly Hamlet, dramatized
social imperfections, the nature of power and the relations of power,
authority, and legitimacy. Romanian directors produced these plays
relying on the impact of economic and social transformations on
cultural politics, knowing that this was what their audiences ex-
PAGE 160 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:27 PS
pected of them.
4
The result was a particular kind of Shakespolitic
that took into account the publics expectations and the exigencies
of the modern theater, and focused on the tragedies as sites on
which profound political contradictions were intercepted, re-
hearsed, or displaced.
After 1990, when the international panorama of producing
Shakespeare expanded and Romania entered the circuit of theatri-
cal collaboration, producing Shakespeare became the primary me-
tonymy for the theater itself. For many theaters and directors, the
plays in the canon, plus a large number of adaptations, combina-
tions, and contractions, became a veried mode of afrming their
artistic resourcefulness. Most productions of the tragedies were per-
formed in the meta-theatrical key, and the productions successes
were cashed in, internally, through the box-ofce sales, and exter-
nally, by various international tours, especially in England and the
US. Eager to escape the unfair prior marginalization and isolation
from the worlds cultural circuit, the Romanian theater companies
found that producing Shakespeare by using the Romanians excep-
tionally creative talents was a rewarding activity. During the entire
period of the nineties, a remarkable number of directors applied
their artistic skill to producing Shakespeare, and the tragedies had
their special place in this worthy and useful venture. We still see the
directors and theaters tendency to evoke as authority a Shake-
speare that, nonetheless, betrays a perpetual straying from deni-
tion, since this is a mode of authorization by historicity. However,
this time, Romanian directors and theaters got involved in a special
kind of Shakescommunication, understandable in an age of cell
phones and satellites.
Tragedies and Communism
Considering the distinct adaptability of the Shakespearean trage-
dies to political commentary, I will focus mainly on the productions
of some of these plays during the forty-year period of Communist
rule in Romania. The need for restriction does not allow me to refer
to Romanian productions of Hamlet, which is an issue in need of a
special chapter. Romanian directors and critics have always consid-
ered Shakespeares tragedies as a public platform of debate erected
within the theatrical platform of the stage. Directors relied on the
relationship of the theater to politics in Shakespeares use of Rome
to explore aspects of empire and republic in Julius Caesar, Coriolanus,
Titus Andronicus, and Antony and Cleopatra. Similarly, the politics of
PAGE 161 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:28 PS
deceit in the four great tragedies gave them the possibility to trans-
mit ambiguous meanings, or to interrogate peoples ability to com-
municate and interact socially. Through the mediation of the
inwardly self-reexive heroes of the tragedies, directors aimed to
raise the audiences historical and political awareness, as well as to
give them a glimpse of transcendent metaphysics and interiority. In
a society that could barely account for its public and cultural param-
eters, the productions of the tragedies showed the audiences how to
question the current system and distinguish between what people
pretended to be and who they really were. Moreover, the simple idea
that such a questioning was possible emerged as rewarding enough
for a nation that had been impeded from thinking freely for several
centuries of foreign political and ideological dependence.
Most Romanian directors read Shakespeares tragedies as meta-
phors of social disintegration and explained the world they lived in
as a further stage of decline. Hamlets rage and depression were
seen as his responses to the complacency of the world around him,
which could be easily identied with the assertive and corrupt Com-
munist privileged few. King Lear objectied the horror of individual-
istic logic, and this disregarding attitude typied the posture of the
Communist rulers of the time. Macbeth internalized the inexible
determination in the pursuit of power, and the productions sent ex-
plicit messages to an audience that had experienced the obdurate
extravagance of the Communist leader Ceausescu and his ambitious
wife. Antony and Cleopatra considered the impossibility of a full hu-
manity in an inhumane society, and many productions made the au-
diences question the inconsistency and inadequacy of Communist
rule.
Timons all-consuming hatred resulted from societys unrelieved,
totally irresponsible pursuit of wealth, and Romanians knew that the
members of the Communist autocracy had amassed huge amounts
of assets and privileges at the expense of the ignorant working class
they pretended to represent. In general, the tragedies exposed a sus-
tained contravention of moral logic accompanied by invariable dis-
honesty in refusing to acknowledge this fact. This particular brand
of moral duplicity was characteristic of the Communist ideology
when applied in practice. The lofty Marxist ideals, brassily promoted
in theory, were belied in everyday social practice. Here, the poor
were still poorer, while their elected government representatives
enjoyed inconceivable privileges. Directors sought to raise the pub-
lics attentiveness to these issues by mainly playing on the Shake-
spearean tragedies theatrical complexity.
On reviewing the theater agenda for 194757 in Romania, the
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general impression is that the theaters preferred local authors.
Among the foreign dramatists, it was a matter of national policy and
Communist party propaganda to promote Russian and Soviet play-
wrights, such as Chekhov, Gogol, or Ostrovski. Shakespeare was the
undesired epitome of bourgeois and capitalist Western culture
and, as such, was unofcially banned from the stage. Only certain
Soviet troupes on tour could afford to adopt a pose of educational
patrons and produce one Western play here and there. In 1953, for
instance, the Mossoviet troupe presented a decient Othello at the Bu-
charest National Theater, in 1957 they reappeared with The Dark
Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw, and in 1959 they pro-
posed an ideologically neutral version of The Merry Wives of Windsor.
When Romanian theaters did produce plays belonging to Western
European playwrights, they mainly focused in the direction of Mo-
lie`re, Goldoni, and Ibsen. The comedies by Molie`re, Goldoni, and
Shakespeare for that matter could provide the indispensable light
entertainment that would make people forget the precarious status
of their lives as drab survival. The directors, on the other hand, had
not reached that special degree of sophistication that would allow
them to exploit the serious and disruptive constituents of the come-
dies and disguise everything behind the mask of the spectacle.
After 1958, however, the theater became a matter of national pol-
icy. The Communist rulers had enough political acumen to assume
that they could control the already-frightened and tame masses bet-
ter by providing panem et circenses, bread and circus, for them. The
alimentary side came in the material form of many food shops
(called Alimentara in Romanian), destined to cater to the basic
needs of a still-famished population. An ideological tag suggesting
that it was the omnipresent and omnipotent party who cared for its
peoples welfare accompanied all food supplies. Concomitantly, the
media inundated minds with downpours of patriotic music and
clamorous speeches about how Romanian agriculture was surging to
incalculable heights with the help of zealous workers, while in reality
the land and all property was being taken from the legal owners and
transferred to the state. In the middle of this ideological circus,
which articulated the increasing discrepancy between seeming and
being, Shakespeare became as good an inuential tool as any to
serve Communist propagandas ends. In 1957, the Bucharest Na-
tional Theater produced Romeo and Juliet in a subdued love-and-
death tone, while theater criticism of the time favored the Brechtian
view of epic theater and the importance of historicizing interpreta-
tions.
5
An anonymous article in a theater journal of the time, signed t.,
PAGE 163 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:29 PS
debated the situation of the repertoire policy in Romanian theaters.
According to the unnamed author, an order from the Socialist De-
partment of Culture, General Direction of Theaters, stipulated that
In the Popular Republic of Romania the theater contributes to the
peoples cultural progress, enhancing their education in the spirit
of action for promoting Socialist values and universal peace.
6
How-
ever, the author complained about the lack of funding from the
state. These budget cuts made theaters replace the production of
money-consuming Shakespeare plays (such as As You Like It at the
Bacau State Theater) with less demanding authors. The critic ar-
gued that the troupes limited budget should not interfere with the
managerial selection of producing valuable plays. Despite the politi-
cians indoctrinating wish to reshape Shakespeare according to the
Communist agenda, directors and theater managers could nd ways
of eluding the political implication. Willingly or not, they seemed to
have selected for their repertoires those Shakespeare plays that were
least adaptable to political and ideological commands. It is a docu-
mented fact that in the dark period of inexible Communism
(194960) mostly Shakespearean comedies were produced on the
Romanian stage. It is true that all directors insisted on the presenta-
tion of social conicts in the comedies, but, apart from this aspect,
there can be little political concern in the love-and-marriage tribula-
tions of the characters from The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives
of Windsor, or Two Gentlemen of Verona.
In a comic cartoon designed by Val Munteanu in a 1961 theater
journal, under the rubric entitled Theater Stuff, the reader can
see an image of Shakespeares bust on a pedestal. Behind the Bards
statue is a scared artist (director?) who is being chased by a fear-
some-looking critic (or Communist censorship member) with a club
in lieu of argument. The caption reads, When you aim at your ad-
versaries, do not hide behind the monuments of famous people.
They have not been erected to this purpose.
7
In the best form of
double entendre, it is difcult to discern the roles of the two protag-
onists of the cartoon. We may consider the person hiding behind
the Shakespeare monument to be an actor who performs a Shake-
speare character badly. The director reprimands him, and he nds
an excuse for his failure in the authors greatness. Thus, we may
have the sort of neutral reading that would look good to the ofcial
eye. Another tame opinion would be that an indolent director wants
to escape any artistic responsibility and he selects Shakespeare as a
comfortable screen for his deciencies. When the reading becomes
more rened, however, an important question is being raised: Who
is the adversary? Is he just a resentful critic, or does he represent
PAGE 164 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:29 PS
the political censorship, those who have been trained at the Stalinist
schools to use clubs as arguments? In this new and unconventional
light, the director sees the representative of the Communist propa-
ganda as his contender or an opponent of the theater in general,
and he hides behind the great Shakespeare gure in order to be
able to say things he could not have voiced otherwise. This interpre-
tation is only for those who want to go beyond the imsy appearance
of Communist indoctrination. Such a cartoon is a sure example con-
cerning the permanent dual signication of many artistic represen-
tations during the fties. This kind of dissimulation designates the
solid defense screen the theater and the arts chose to adopt against
the offensive domination of Russian culture and the aggressive in-
trusion of Communist propaganda and censorship.
The idea that producing Shakespeare was a necessary prerequisite
for fostering a nations ideological progress suited the Communist
authorities very well, so they dutifully embarked upon a pro-
grammed promotion of staging Shakespeare for the masses, in
order to advance their revolutionary spirit and their taste for social
prosperity. This was what the authorities wanted to happen. What
theaters really did was another matter. A similar pattern consisting
of impersonal and apparently nonpolitically biased productions of
comedies advanced by Romanian theaters characterized most of the
sixties. From the ofcial perspective, this period was one of unprece-
dented opening to the cultural values of Europe in general. With
attempts at Russian acculturation still very high, the Communist au-
thorities allowed, however, a larger penetration of the literature and
theatrical inuences from the West. Shakespeare in particular was
seen as the archetype of dramatic value and a cultural platform of
debating certain economic and social principles, which the rudi-
mentary Communist ideologists thought they had invented all by
themselves. They considered it their responsibility to transmit these
values to the people via the classical intermediaries. Particularly
around 1964, the year of the quatercentenary Shakespeare celebra-
tion, theaters all over the country responded to the cultural com-
mand of producing Shakespeare extensively with an enthusiasm
equaled in social life only by the workers very vocal efforts to recon-
struct the countrys infrastructure.
The 1964 edition of the central Bucharest theatrical journal dedi-
cated an entire number to the Shakespeare phenomenon, and
most theaters produced at least one play in the canon, especially in
the period 196264. For instance, the writer Florin Tornea surveyed
a number of twentieth-century critical receptions and argued that
Shakespeare demonstrates a particular sense of history because his
PAGE 165 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:30 PS
plays reveal the essentially popular origin of his characters. There-
fore, the critic proposed a materialist and historical critical interpre-
tation.
8
Ana Maria Narti surveyed some late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century Romanian productions of Shakespeares plays.
9
In
the same jubilee issue of the main theater journal, Dana Crivat pre-
sented the usual facts about Shakespeares life and the Elizabethan
social and theatrical milieu and argued that the playwright was a
great actor and a practical man in everyday life.
10
In point of produc-
tions of Shakespeare, the comedies were still in high regard in this
celebratory year, but there were also some remarkable productions
of the tragedies. Apart from a 1963 Macbeth at the Bulandra Theater
and a noteworthy Richard III with George Vraca at the Nottara The-
ater (1964), however, this splendid devotion to the Shakespeare
cause materialized mainly in the production of comedies. I could go
as far as to pronounce the decade 195969 as a period of intensive
production of Shakespeares comedies in Romania. Even after the
auspicious year 1964, during 1965 through 1969, the comedies occu-
pied an important part of the Romania theaters Shakespearean rep-
ertoire.
Among the fewer tragedies produced in the sixties decade, a full-
text Antony and Cleopatra at the Nottara Theater in 1961 needs to be
mentioned. The director, George Teodorescu, experimented with
the young actors theatrical skills rather than focusing on political
allusions. Audiences could see a conventionalized and aseptic-
looking Rome, complete with the classic costumes of the Roman sol-
diers, but Cleopatras Egypt provided no contrast to it. The entire
production left the Shakespeare text and the actors to speak freely
in the particular language of the theater, without any directorial in-
tervention regarding certain political innuendo. The text was un-
abridged, and the translation was adequate to the cultural
necessities of the time. A closer look at a picture representing the
scene of Antonys suicide in this production, however, shows that the
four stern soldiers surrounding the Roman triumvir who pleads for
his death look like his executioners rather than his faithful guards.
The three guards and Dercetus, followers of Antony, look ercely at
their commander and have their swords drawn in a position of war.
Antonys company of apparently faithful attendants is evocative of
the periods hostile secret police, a group of militiamen who would
be present instantly, whenever one leader or advocate of the anti-
Communist resistance was expected to collapse.
Quite differently, the 1962 production of Macbeth at the Bucharest
National Theater focused on the ethical issues raised by the play and
the social evil the deed generates. The director, Mihai Berechet,
PAGE 166 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:30 PS
confronted his audience with the larger-than-life and murderous
gures of the King and his Lady, interpreted by prominent actors of
the Romanian stage at the time, Emil Botta and Anca S ahighian. As
a reviewer pointed out, Denouncing the bloody tyrants despotic
autocracy has been the central concept of the spectacle . . . This led
to the conclusion that the root of all evil and every misfortune befall-
ing a country lies in the possibility of continuing dictatorship.
11
The critic offered an initial socializing commentary on the hard life
of the working class in the Elizabethan age, which counterbal-
anced such a bold assertion, rather inadequate for this Communist-
oppressed period. Nicolau informed the Romanian readers that in
the Elizabethan period, the emerging capital prospered, sustained
by the Queen, while the people were plunged in the darkness of
increased suffering.
12
The policy of the enclosures was interpreted
as a forceful conscation of the farmers lands, leaving the workers
without means of subsistence and turning them into vagabonds and
mendicants. The Elizabethan monsters who did such a thing to
the impoverished people were, according to Nicolau, the represen-
tatives of those elements on which the capitalist structure was
founded. The religious persecutions in England were allegedly at-
tributed to these capitalist demons, whose cruelty had caused the
execution of 72,000 people, as Nicolau said that Holinshed wrote.
13
A dutiful Marxist quotation in this amazingly biased theatrical re-
view appeared to certify the sound ideological framework. However,
the critics passing reference to the concept of dictatorship was
conducive to a concealed allusion to the Communist totalitarian
government.
Given the prejudiced Socialist version of English history, Shake-
speares position toward the common depravity in his period was
supposed to be one of pungent criticism. Thus, the playwright, ac-
cording to Nicolau, was expected to show his ardent love of virtue,
his admiration for the hero who protests and ghts against the social
evil, and his hatred for those who are the instruments of this evil.
14
In this view, Macbeth was the protagonist who, though gifted with
great psychological force and noble attributes, lost his humane qual-
ities when he let himself slip into the evil ways of his age. Trying to
reach happiness through oppression and murder, Macbeth erred
because he thought that he could achieve the full potential of his
humanity by becoming a king. According to the Communist propa-
ganda, kingship was the least desirable of all social hierarchies of
power because it involved alienation. Macbeth renounced his hu-
manity in order to be king, just as Lear attained his humanity when
he lost his kingship status. Florian Nicolau maintained that the play
PAGE 167 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:31 PS
was meant to condemn the vices of autocracy and despotic monar-
chy and to assert the legitimate right of the people to rise against
their tyrannical kings.
15
Considering that this play was produced
only ve years after monarchy was abolished in Romania by a politi-
cal coup, which was presented as the peoples revolt against the au-
thority of kingship, the Communists tried to use distorted meanings
by Shakespeare in order to justify their dubious political ways.
When looking at the records of this production with critical eyes,
a few elements of subversive and intentional anti-Communist mes-
sages can be noticed. For instance, the director Mihai Berechet gave
an exceptional importance to the weird sisters scenes, a choice very
much criticized because it did not correspond to the social material-
istic requirements. By giving the workings of providence and the su-
pernatural an important place in shaping human destiny, the
production implicitly denied the objectifying materialistic stance.
Moreover, the protagonists roles, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, were
performed by different actors at different stages of their moral disso-
lution. The same actress playing one version of Lady Macbeth inter-
preted the role of Hecate. All the supernatural scenes, including the
apparition of Banquos ghost, were very prominent in this produc-
tion. This directorial choice derived from a particular artistic resis-
tance to the atheistic and positivist commands of the regime. In the
same subversive key, the murder scene had a special connotation,
especially at the moment when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth ex-
tended their bloody arms in the form of a Satanist cross. The gesture
might be interpreted as a critique of religious practices in an atheis-
tic reading, but the two intersected bloody arms could also signify
the crossed scythe and hammer against the red background of the
Russian Communist ag. Apparently, this production of Macbeth did
not please the Communist authorities of the time, so the director
reviewed it in 1963 with a different cast. This time, the same theater
critic Florian Nicolau wrote that one can clearly see the heroes
tragic fate, determined by the social evil undermining Shakespeares
age.
16
This distinct shift of focus toward the socializing commentary
would better suit the censorships command for a more neutral and
less politically inuential production of Macbeth.
At rst sight, the domestic version of tragedy in Othello could
give little scope for political or social stage readings. The 1965 pro-
duction at the Craiova National Theater, however, focused on Iago
as the duplicitous motor of the conict. In his directorial percep-
tion, Calin Florian emphasized the tragedy of deceived good
faith.
17
He tried to avoid previous interpretative errors based on
stereotypes, such as the synonymy between Moor and jealousy, or
PAGE 168 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:32 PS
racial and pathological speculation. The audience could see how de-
ceit and dissimulation destroyed the individuals moral ber, and
the last words they could hear on stage were the open-ended De-
mand me nothing. What you know, you know / From this time forth
I never will speak word. (5.2.30910) This equivocal nale might
suggest that the director intended to warn about the disastrous
moral consequences of psychological dissimulation, especially in a
period when only few were really convinced of the unprecedented
economic, social, and moral benets of Communism. Most people
could see merely material deprivation under the ofcial pretense of
plenty; social injustice under the rule of the working class; and the
moral disaster of hypocrisy, when people could see one thing but
were forced to pretend to see another. This ethical duplicity on a
social scale could nd the best theatrical representation in the Iago
character. The suggestive sets and lighting of the production con-
tributed to the psychology created by the shifting images. A complex
set of panels, walls, and arcades, which changed position succes-
sively, suggested in order the Venetian street, the Cyprus square, the
Senate in Venice, or Desdemonas bedroom. Nothing ever was as it
seemed to be in Venice, in Cyprus, on the Romanian stage, or in real
life.
The 1969 Othello at the Bucharest National Theater raised similar
issues of error, misunderstanding, and ethical crisis. Additionally,
the director Cornel Todea introduced the innovation of subtle
humor underlying the tragedy brought about by hypocrisy. The
Iago-Roderigo scenes had a greater importance than those featuring
Iago and Othello had, and they were acted in the commedia dellarte
improvisational spirit. This Arlechino-Pucinella type of dramatic ex-
change made the tragedy seem an obstinately burlesque farce de-
vised by a traitor and a dupe. The director showed preference to the
montage lm technique, so the production abounded in panoramic
and group scenes, close-ups, and ingenious interplay of lighting and
shade. This productions apparent lack of metaphoric signicance
and its whimsical tone gave the reviewer the impression that this
variant of the tragedy was a reduction, a simplication of the fabu-
lous, gigantic Shakespearean universe to the inferior proportions of
cheap affairs happening in a provincial garrison.
18
The intentional
low-key tragic note could be another directorial artice to avoid the
intrusion of political or ideological issues in the fabric of the Shake-
spearean tragedy. The productions emphasis was on psychological
development. The hero was presented as a slave of his instincts, who
at the peak moment of his regression into mental disorder heard
the obsessive drumming of his African ancestors, who used to exor-
PAGE 169 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:33 PS
cise the demons of the mind by using mysterious shamanistic prac-
tices. This tendency toward insinuating occult meanings in a
positively secular tragedy of the mind could be explained by the art-
ists need to resist the atheistic requirements of ideological indoctri-
nation through the suggestion of a supernatural world above the
visible everyday existence. As long as the allusion was not so loud as
to disturb the Communist self-centeredness and theoretical recom-
mendations, all was ne with the Romanian world of Shakespeares
theater.
The then young-and-upcoming student-director Andrei S erban
displayed a cultural spectacle
19
in producing Julius Caesar at the
Bulandra Theater in 1968. The main character in this production
was the Shakespeare text, and the young director, the actors, and
the set designer (Liviu Ciulei) harmonized in leaving the script its
freedom to construct an ample commentary of the present times
based on historical circumstances. This modern-dress Julius Caesar
evoked the classical drama of the Senates confrontation with the
nature of tyranny, easily translated in Elizabethan terms as the
Queens conict with the Parliament. However, the theatrical meta-
phor extended to present-day Communist Romania, where the spec-
ter of totalitarian power was already a critical issue. The specicity
of the theatrical representation was exploited to suit covert political
ends in this production. The assassination scene was set in a huge
amphitheater, the Senators and Caesar on its highest level. As Casca
dealt the rst blow Caesar did not fall immediately, because actors
only represented reality on stage, they did not actually live and die
on the podium. Caesar covered his face with the scarlet toga and
descended one step, where he was stabbed again. Thus, blow after
blow and step after step, Caesar, as the theatrical metaphor of de-
posed power, descended the stair of absolute magnicence and re-
covered his initial human proportions. On the lowest platform,
when Brutus struck the deadly blow, the tyrant became human and
he looked at his murderer with love and understanding.
However, Caesars red mantle, an effective spot of color in the rel-
atively simple modern dress of the spectacle, symbolically repre-
sented his potentially tyrannical power, but also his death and the
extent of the Communist power in Eastern Europe. In the Roma-
nian political climate, the red color had an obvious Communist sym-
bolism, and the annihilation of the mantles importance after
Caesars death had a denite anti-Communist meaning. In addition,
the symbolic spreading of the mantle signied the extension of the
Communist sphere of inuence in the world. This intense directo-
rial tendency to append symbolic meanings to Shakespeares plays,
PAGE 170 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:33 PS
and even to the props as dramatic text, shifted the paradigm of theo-
retical discussion from the idea of an author at work to the fact that
each dramatic text could be almost always contextually (re)con-
structed. While Romanian directors claimed a unique delity to the
elusive Shakespeare, they exploded the na vete of anxious audi-
ences, eager critics, and vigilant political censorship. The Shake-
speare they served to the Romanian public ceased to be even the
entity directors believed to have adopted as their artistic mentor,
which was an epitomizing idea that sprang from a historically cre-
ated notion of authenticity. Frustrated and limited by their own and
the publics need to see a particular production as Shakespeare,
Romanian directors were hampered in their aspiration to transgress
the text by the very fact that they assumed a stable text in the rst
place. Thus, they betrayed a universal implicit imposition of contin-
gent ideological values upon Shakespeare.
In Andrei S erbans interpretation of Julius Caesar, Brutuss error
was his tragedy. He inferred that, when devoid of any sense of reality,
the highest ethical ideal might become its antithesis. On an existing
ideological plane, any member of the 68 audience could extrapo-
late the message and see the decline of the lofty Marxist ideals into
the reality of the Stalinist regime of subjugation and terror. Al-
though at that time the fear of Bolshevik repression had subsided
substantially in the mind of the population, there was still a general
feeling of persecution and control in the form of the omnipresent
Communist Party secret police, or the Securitate. Paradoxically, the
name of this repressive institution, which was famed for imprisoning
and torturing everybody that opposed the Communist regime, im-
plied that this state organization offered Security to the countrys
citizens. The question was for whom it provided this kind of security
service. Was it for the people, as they claimed? However, the Roma-
nians were mostly persecuted for their different political views. Was
it for the Communist Party? It was most certainly so, because
through this suspicion-and-fear-generating instrument the un-
wanted regime consolidated its authority. The production of Julius
Caesar implied that names and denite labels could be tragically mis-
leading in the game of world politics and power under any totalitar-
ian regime.
Two conclusions are evident from the survey of this decades pro-
ductions of Shakespeare in Romania (195969), namely, the come-
dies were predominant in the theaters selection of Shakespeare,
and the majority of these plays were produced at theaters in the
main cities of the country, not in Bucharest. The few Shakespearean
tragedies produced in this period, however, were staged at central
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theaters in the capital. Local directors may have been aware that
less-informed and more-easily-manipulated audiences in smaller
towns were less likely to respond to the undercover political innu-
endo the tragedies could yield, so they chose the form of light enter-
tainment provided by the comedies. The directors in the capital,
however, were more tempted to experiment with theatrical tech-
niques of dissimulation and elusive practices, in order to convey
meanings that would go against the direction of ofcial mainstream
Communist propaganda. Sometimes the directors intended politi-
cal message was outstretched, in the sense that many made other
theatrical energies become subservient to the sole purpose of politi-
cal criticism. Essential concepts of performance, improvisation, and
imitation, as well as issues related to the social construction of race,
gender, and subjectivity remained on a secondary plane in the Ro-
manian representations of the tragedies during the sixties.
The decade 197080 was a period of radicalization and subversion
for Romanian productions of Shakespeares tragedies. Directors
self-consciously tried to convey a covert political message under the
appearance of theatrical innovations by selecting those Shakespear-
ean tragedies that could yield political interpretations. The rate of
productions of comedies in Romanian theaters was still high, but
those tragedies that were being performed could initiate a particular
type of communication with a more educated and radical audience.
The authority and decoding agency of Romanian audiences at that
time could be interpreted in terms of an intense and receptive theat-
ricality and rhetoric. The audiences varied responses to the stage
might be viewed as anticipating the postmodern pluralism of theatri-
cal transactions. Their expectations from the performances, espe-
cially of Shakespeares tragedies, were so high that the tension was
almost a palpable presence in the theater. This was the decade of
King Lear, Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, and Macbeth, because these
tragedies were adaptable to certain clandestine directorial interpre-
tations in the political mode. Moreover, during a particular perform-
ance, actors would use specic techniques of their art to improvise,
by brief pantomime, tone of voice, gesture, or even intrusions in the
text. Thus, each individual night of Shakespeare was a special occa-
sion for ingeniously eluding the censorship, to the audiences de-
light.
The 1970 King Lear at the Bucharest National Theater, directed
by Radu Penciulescu, incorporated theatrical innovation and public
issues. The modern-dress production exploited the sets by Florica
Malureanu to convey the idea of the poor theater, relying on
human potential rather than elaborate sets and costumes. At the be-
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ginning of this production, all the actors were on stage. They were
the audience within the audience, observing the beginning of their
own show. The stage-within-stage convention appeared through
the setting of an Elizabethan inner stage, which provided the main
acting space where key scenes were played. The second section was a
metallic catwalk, which was the area of the institutional and ordered
world, accommodating Goneril, Albany, Oswald, and others. Transi-
tions from one zone to another typied the escape from the evil and
corruption of the world of politics. Edgar ed this conning terri-
tory and retired on the main stage the moment he became poor
Tom. A third playing area was represented by the theater itself. One
lateral box was turned into a stage where Lear confronted the Fool
and Edmund and Edgar unfolded their brotherly dispute. This was
the place where Lear told the audience about ingratitude and crack-
ing natures moulds or about omnipotence and vain authority. The
focal point of this spectacle was the intimation of fate, or time incor-
porated in history. The courtiers shiny white capes symbolized cere-
mony and authority. The calm order of a self-sufcient world was
disrupted when Lear initiated the abdication ceremony. At this mo-
ment, chaos began, and the attending squires lashed repeatedly at
these white capes enfolding the protagonists. Goneril and Regans
visceral grotesque laughter, Oswalds sly smile of complicity, and
Lears nal groans of anguish suggested the anarchy of psychologi-
cal disorder.
This Lear in the 70 version was a performance of the body, which
was meant to express madness, chaos, and the incoherence of an
unjust world. According to the critic reviewing this production,
The current audience, electrocuted by the experiences of the twen-
tieth century, especially those of the past thirty years, can grasp
Shakespeares tragic meaning only through the vision of the gro-
tesque.
20
Excessive laughter was the symbolic theatrical signal in
this production. The audiences heard Regans hysterical and incited
chuckle when Gloucesters eyes were pulled out, Lears gruff cackle,
his autocratic resonant throaty sounds, and the desperate and soft
whisper of demented disintegration. The mortally wounded Ed-
mund groaned with insane laughter, rolling on the ground when he
announced that fortunes wheel had come full circle. This de-
mented laughter was appeased by the sad music of a ute, the Fools
main theme, which marked the end of the play. The bare brutality
of this spectacle raised questions about the inequitable world the au-
dience lived in, where all people were deemed equal, but some
placed in a privileged political position of power enjoyed the nice-
ties of life freely, grinning insolently at those whom they were sup-
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posed to represent. Visceral behavioral attitudes and booming
laughter seemed to be the only alternatives to the theatrical descrip-
tion of a disturbing world, in the attempt to express and/or adjust
to a kind of reality that offered no relief.
At the other end of the 1970s decade, in 1980, a slightly different
King Lear emerged at the Targu Mures National Theater, directed
by Kincses Elemer. The political commentary was transparent in this
play, produced at the section in the Hungarian language of this
prestigious Romanian theater. The audience was told from the start
that the production centered on the struggle for power. A huge sil-
very crown dominated the foggy stage, traversed intermittently by
indeterminate human forms. All events in this version of King Lear
revolved around the brutal race for the prerogatives of this domi-
neering crown, and all characters clashed for absolute power, be it
in the form of happiness, love, legitimacy, authority, or riches. As
they advanced along the all-consuming pursuit of hegemony, the
power-loving personalities declined into visible manifestations of in-
stinctual passion. The mute epilogue, a directorial innovation, re-
newed the initial theme. The majestic crown of omnipotence,
looming over throughout the events in the tragedy, descended at
stage level and was enclosed in gray opaque walls. The iron curtain
persisted, and it dominated all attempts at obtaining power. When
viewed from the outside of the gray wall of Communist dominance,
all these endeavors at obtaining jurisdiction within the connes of
the ideological prison became relative. The theater could place its
audience outside the leaden wall of Communist ideology and re-
striction, allowing them to question the legitimacy of the regime.
The theaters urgency to expose the corruption, attery, duplicity,
and inconsistency of the members of the Socialist oligarchy of the
period made certain directors determined to adopt a less-performed
play in the repertory. Timon of Athens had never been performed on
the Romanian stage when, in 1974, it was produced at the North
Theater in Satu Mare, directed by Mihai Raicu. The play was known
in the excellent translation by Leon Levitchi and Dan Dutescu, but
the theaters had avoided staging it, probably because of the author-
ship controversy around this play and the cynical note of its message.
However, the peoples social bitterness and the growing disappoint-
ment with the ineffectual and dishonest Communist party politi-
cians demanded a more abrupt Shakespeare approach. During his
diatribes against the corruption of the world, a mustached Stalinist-
looking Timon, dressed in a suit with a visible badge identifying him
as a member of a particular group, addressed the audience directly,
with his hands raised in prayer, like a modern preacher. The other
PAGE 174 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:35 PS
members of the group behind Timon adopted a passive and even
bored stance, as if nothing of what was said could be new to them.
They were dressed in saint-like white capes, and the position
adopted, with hands crossed over their chests, was meant to suggest
some angelic acolytes of an evangelist.
However, everybody in Romania knew that those who had power
were far from righteous, and the sets of abstract values preached by
the non-realistic Timon did not apply in the real world of Athens, as
elsewhere. Raicu deftly choreographed the semantic slippage that
resulted from all the denitions of political and human values in
theoretical terms, tying up the dialogic confusion with shortly con-
clusive and persuasive categories. While Timons apparent coher-
ence and force of exhortation eluded the audience, the director
suggested the slipperiness of transmission and of cognition. Values
were relative, Raicu seemed to conclude through his interpretation
of this Shakespearean character, but they could nonetheless be de-
ned quite precisely in context, once paradigm shifts had been rec-
ognized. In an attempt to address the issue of the meta-theatrical
interpretation of all Shakespearean plays, Mihai Raicu transferred
the prologue from Henry V to this production of Timon of Athens.
Thus, he invited the audiences to formulate opinions regarding the
up-to-date messages this theater succeeded in conveying. This 1974
production was the prelude to a new stage version of Timon of Athens
directed by Dinu Cernescu in 1978 at the Nottara Theater in Bucha-
rest. The plays tone was as harsh as its author had intended it to
be, and the political insinuation was evident, as it had been in all of
Cernescus productions of Shakespeares tragedies during the Com-
munist period.
A 1976 Macbeth at the Ploiesti Theater, directed by Aureliu Manea,
proposed a different version of the theatrical metamorphic sign, in-
uenced by the Japanese Kabuki theater. This was supposed to be
the play of fanatical pursuit of power in the symbolic key. The trag-
edy progressed in a wintry ambiance, where dark deeds and snowy,
foggy roads intersected in a cold sepulchral world. The stage was an
empty snow-covered eld, dominated by the royal throne, the sym-
bol of Macbeths power. This central wooden object was adorned
with furs and animal heads, which were trophies of earlier conquests
and omens of the death that was to come. According to the reviewer
of this production, the spectacle is seen as a cosmic duel between
Good and Evil, between Life and Death, between order and chaos,
or between nature and the human being as a representative of social
convulsion.
21
The elements were visualized as violent forces of na-
ture raised by and revolted at the evil unleashed by the humans. The
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backstage curtain, made of shiny metal strips, gured the overow
of furious waters. White columns representing trees bent in the
howling wind. Fire, lightning, and thunder gave the impression of
an enraged universe. At the end of the tragedy, when the nal order
was installed in Scotland, the white snow symbolized light and pu-
rity, covering peacefully the nal scene. The waters calmed down,
res ceased to traverse the stage, and cosmic peace was installed in
the former space of crime.
In this stage version of Macbeth directed by Aureliu Manea, the
weird sisters did not appear in a material way. They were the secret
inections of Macbeths haunted conscience, and the king hereaf-
ter (1.3.48) prophecy became one of his multiple inner voices.
This apparently realistic, non-magical approach might be interpre-
ted in accordance with the atheistic requirements of materialist ide-
ology, but audiences could also read in it the psychological collapse
of the individual mind in a dividing and incoherent society. More-
over, by annulling the importance of the occult denitions in the
characters comportments, the director emphasized the issue of in-
dividual moral responsibility. The driving force of ambition and self-
love propelled all the characters in this production. Everybody
looked like Macbeth in this evil world, and the king was different
only through the fact that he visualized his hallucinations. All spied
on each other, hunted, and killed. In order to suggest the barbarity
of all the people in Scotland, the actors performances were marked
by brusque action, grouchy timbre, and grunting sounds. A certain
stylized inuence of the Japanese theater was materialized through
the parallel with a warlike and wild culture, where all the actions
were driven and justied by ambition and merciless competition.
The indirect reference was to the peculiarity of the Communist
moral set of values. In an atheistic world that claimed the primacy
of materialism and objectivity, ethics was a void principle. Vocally
invoked in theory as Socialist morality, this was just an empty no-
tion with no actual resonance in the individual consciousness. Only
ambition and the ruthless wish to reach their egotistic ends by what-
ever means possible drove those in power in that period. Aureliu
Manea indirectly showed this social and psychological failure of the
Communist regime by augmenting the scope of the deviation and
extending the vice of moral transgression to every major character
in the play.
After the celebrated Hamlet (1974) and Timon of Athens (1978),
the director Dinu Cernescu staged another Shakespearean political
playCoriolanusat the Nottara Theater (1979). This time, how-
ever, the director partly avoided the political implications, insisting
PAGE 176 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:36 PS
on the social and civic resonance of the play. As the reviewer of this
production wrote, Cernescu starts from Jan Kotts opinions (which
he soon abandons, fortunately) and opposes the crowd, represent-
ing the crude, primitive form of Roman democracy, to the patri-
cians indomitable arrogance.
22
However, the critic complained
that in avoiding the political debate, which stimulates the dramatic
action, the director succeeded in marking the contours of the spec-
tacle, but he deprived it of its operative drive.
23
What could have
determined the director of formerly so intense political productions
to adopt a socializing view? Is it possible that the need for change
might have intervened, or were the social needs more obvious?
Whatever might be the reason, when the metaphor of the belly be-
came a powerful reality for the hungry populace in Rome, or in Ro-
mania, all claims of ideology began to fade. In this particular period,
the Communist ruler Ceausescu got the idea that he would cut a
better gure to the Western world if he paid all the countrys inter-
national debt. He chose to do that at the expense of his people, and
this was the approximate beginning of an unprecedented ten-year
interval of starvation and material humiliation for the Romanians,
which led to the political uprising of 1989.
Dinu Cernescu directed the same play again almost ten years later,
in a more politically combative tone. His Coriolanus at the Bucharest
Teatrul Mic (1987) came at a critical moment in Romanian history,
when the Communist ideology had ceased to mean anything for any-
one and the material and moral degradation had become so acute
that only a radical movement could change something. I would like
to quote the introductory paragraph of the review for this produc-
tion, which is particularly descriptive of the social and political situa-
tion in Romania at that time. In describing to the reader the
conguration of the plot and the motivation for action in Coriolanus,
the theater critic gave an accurate description of Romanias social
and political status under Communism in its last phase:
We are in the historic moment of consolidation of the Roman political
revolution, when, following the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus, the
last Etruscan king, the Roman patricians are forced to accept sharing the
power with the plebeian tribunes. Though the patricians had not given
up their political privileges, they give the plebeians the right to sanction
the public ofces by direct vote. The young republic functions and is
sustained by demagogues who allow themselves to be attered and
bought by those who want to accede to state ofces. The tension be-
tween the government and the governed induces acute class psychologi-
cal changes and leads to the division of the social organism by polarizing
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the citizens wills and allegiances. This situation may degenerate into
civil war.
24
These words were written two years before some sort of civil war
really broke in Romania, due exactly to the causes mentioned in this
theater review article. If we read Roman patricians as the Commu-
nist oligarchy, and the plebeians as the rest of the population, this
is an accurate description of Romania in the mid-eighties. The pe-
riod of consolidation of the Socialist revolution meant a disaster
for the people in Romania. In time, the governing Communist Party
clique became the patricians of Rome, and they only pretended
to give the plebeians, the people, the right to sanction the public
ofces by vote. In fact, the party in power did what they wanted, no-
body endorsed their self-centered practices, and the rulers irre-
sponsible actions led to the ruin of the country. By the end of the
eighties, the situation had become intolerable for the Romanian
plebeians.
Cernescus choice of play and directorial techniques, aimed at
outlining the political paradox, was meant to contribute to the audi-
ences tentative invigoration by making them question the immuta-
bility of authority. The director fashioned his own stage text out of
the excellent existing translation, in a visible audience-targeted tac-
tic. He meant his public to learn from this production of Coriolanus
that genuine authority implied moral inuence over a countrys citi-
zens, not merely bare words, attery, and hypocritical servitude. The
paradox was that out of an entire city, only one person could em-
body the nations urgency for the afrmation of truth. Coriolanus
advanced the tragic question of to be or not to be a citizen and a
leader. The heros vanity was so monstrously exaggerated that the
tragic characters representation slipped into grotesque farce. Cori-
olanuss death was depicted in a ritualistic fashion, and (alas!) the
director used red paint for blood. However, the facts that the hero
died on the long dining table that looked like an altar and in his fall
his head knocked down a row of cups full of red wine became visu-
ally signicant for an associated event of current international pol-
icy. Caius Marcius was ceremonially sacriced on the altar table of
democracy, and his fall entailed an important sequence of events.
In a similar way, the fall of Communism in one country at the end
of the eighties would entail, according to the domino principle,
the collapse of all the red dictatorships in Europe.
Dinu Cernescu conceived this spectacle of Coriolanus in the classic
monumental style. The sets consisted of four sliding panels suggest-
ing the city walls. By gliding frequently, these panels limited the
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stage space and gave an indeterminate impression of what was
within and what was outside. It became impossible to tell the
difference between the privileged and civilized Roman citizens, who
enjoyed all the rights of their citizenship, and the barbarous Volsci
outside the city walls. Similarly, on a political plane, the Romanians
in that period were puzzled by their possibility of afliation to a
larger Europe. While their geographic position and the aspiration
to the values of democracy and civility included the Romanians
among the community of peoples of Europe, their countrys margin-
alization and isolation were evident and disturbing. The problem of
national and political identity was very acute for every Romanian,
because people failed to see who they were in relation to their neigh-
bors, and were led to feel as if it was their fault that they were born
in a country kept out of the European circuit. Dinu Cernescus inter-
pretation of Coriolanus showed how a segment of Shakespeares the-
ater, ltered through the directors artistic option, could inuence
partly a segment of the public, possibly some of those who would
have a role to play in the subsequent popular uprising of 1989 in
Romania. It seemed that the theater not only represented but also
determined reality in secret and perplexing ways.
The decade 198090 seems to have been the period of King Lear
in point of productions of Shakespearean tragedies. Romanian the-
aters saw three productions of this tragedy, one in every year preced-
ing the 1989 social and political revolt. The 1987 King Lear, directed
by Ioan Ieremia, was produced at the Timisoara National Theater.
This city in the West of the country was the initiator and the motor
of the political uprising leading to Ceausescus removal from power.
Its citizens were nearer to the Western world and more easily in-
formed of, and inuenced by, capitalist values. This particular pro-
duction of King Lear had denite political connotations. Ioan
Ieremia suggested, in the Ian Kott spirit, that history could become
an uncontrollable articial mechanism, and political power was the
essence of history. A huge throne, which could be dismantled, like
Lears crown, into two halves, dominated the stage space. This
power division resulted into two royal capes, which loomed over the
main action of the play. The indenite but very real people were
those who, in the opening scenes, had cheered Lear while he was
still in power. The masses reappeared in the storm scene as an obses-
sive projection of a deranged mind.
Goneril and Regan emerged as a single ambition-driven person-
age, two hypostases of a cruel Lady Macbeth, easily identiable with
the Communist rulers wife, Elena Ceausescu. In the program, the
director admitted that he maintained only 50 percent of the plays
PAGE 179 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:37 PS
text. The rest was directorial innovation, a newly created text to suit
the needs of political commentary. The Fool was kept until the end
of the play, and he was a sensible raisoneur of the events, sporting a
slight regional accent. The director clearly intended to use the
Shakespeare authority to sow the seeds of sedition among the pub-
lic, the citizens of Timisoara, and to challenge the existing political
Communist hierarchy. The stimulating juxtapositions of directorial
intention, method-acting techniques, and the notion of authority
had suggestive implications. There was a nely lined tension be-
tween Romanian national and social identity and the artice of
Shakespeares theater, which led to the audiences nding the exter-
nal, historicized text in the internalized, specic psyche. The nal
suggestion appeared to be that Timisoara and the Western part of
the country could have an important role in reintegrating Romania
in the circuit of the Western values. The audiences became very at-
tentive to these messages, and some of them even demonstrated the
courage to die in the streets of this city in December 1989 in the
name of these European values and meanings.
Mircea Marin directed the 1988 King Lear at the Giulesti Theater
in Bucharest. According to the critical interpretations of the time,
this production, however, deviated from political readings. A select
group of Romanian theater critics, meeting in a panel to discuss this
particular production, agreed that, despite the audiences expecta-
tions of a political Ian Kottderived performance, Mircea Marin pro-
posed a psychological Shakespeare in the ethical key.
25
Lears drama
became an individual encounter with fate and self-knowledge. How-
ever, the theater could show aspects that critics might want to avoid
mentioning. The insinuation of power was manifested in the omni-
present symbol of the throne, which was once a royal privilege, and
could be metamorphosed into various symbolic objects and sites. It
was, in turn, a shelter for poor Tom, a seat of torture for Gloucester
and the stocks for Kent, a bed of rest and deathbed, and nally a
catafalque for Lear and Cordelia in the nal scene. The bare sets
and the simple costumes pointed to this productions inscription in
the canons of modernity, but they also left the audience plenty of
thinking space, allowing them to ponder on the austerity of their life
at that particular moment in history. The nal scene of Lear holding
Cordelias dead body in his arms had the quiet persuasion of Chris-
tian iconography, where the image of the Mater Dolorosa became that
of the bereaved father. This production of King Lear may have been
the tragedy of the self and a return to the simplicity of feeling, but
the harsh sounds of the contest for power could be clearly heard.
The director Andreea Vulpe proposed a different theatrical inter-
PAGE 180 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:38 PS
pretation of King Lear. In a 1989 production at the Theater Academy
Studio, she brought into focus a powerful Goneril gure, interpre-
ted by Maia Morgenstern. This feminist directorial reading typied
a willful, aggressive, and independent personality, raised to titanic
stature. Goneril became obsessed with power; she was the perfect
general leading the battle in a cold war, but she lacked diplomacy.
Andreea Vulpe made the audiences see Gonerils point of view in
the tragedy. She thought that her father had acted inconsistently,
confusing the convention of love with sentiment. While the kings
aberrant conduct transgressed the human potential for endurance,
Goneril was presented as the feminine version of the Renaissance
titanic gure, revolted against any form of patriarchal authority. If
the tone was serious or merely mock-heroic in this production, the
audiences could discern for themselves through the deationary
techniques of representation. In contrast with the offensive but
thoughtless gure of Goneril, the director projected Albany in the
role of the lucid observer, the intelligent tactician who stood to rea-
son and brought the civilizing note in the nal predication of chaos.
Using the full text of the Folio King Lear, the director transgured
Lear, Goneril, and Albany into emblems of historical epochs.
26
According to the reviewer, Lear symbolized the Middle Ages; he was
a faintly contradicting gure and observed aberrant fanatical rigors.
Goneril voiced the Renaissance personality dominated by instinct
and the energetic pursuit of power, like the gure of a Titan in
Greek mythology. Albany stood for the modern economical ef-
ciency, a man of facts, icy lucidity, and regard for appearances.
27
However, this original theatrical interpretation could not avoid po-
litical meanings, even when viewing the play from gender-pointed
angles.
In the eighties, under fully oppressive Communist authority, even
a tragedy like Othello could be read in the political key. The 1983
production directed by Dan Alecsandrescu at the Cluj National The-
ater showed clear allusions to Romanias political and economic iso-
lation from the Western world in those years, debating issues of
national and racial acceptability. The capitalist world of Venice ap-
peared as central in this Romanian version of the play, and the char-
acters of the Venetian senators were quite prominent. The emphasis
on the Venetian administration policy suggested that, in the present-
day relevance, there was a capitalist nation, America, who embraced
the same cosmopolitan values and had a similar senatorial system
of governance. Othello the Moor, the outsider, was opposed to the
Venetian community, and Lodovico was the spokesman for the West-
ern system of values. The game of political inuence and power was
PAGE 181 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:38 PS
very visible in this production. Iagos ambitious personal plans of as-
cension in Venices military hierarchy collided with the preference
of Cassio by the Republics signoria, the governing body of the Vene-
tian city-state. In this way, the director debated the present-day con-
currence of the political spheres of inuence in international
politics.
In this global East-West conict of power, Romania was under the
Eastern (Russian) inuence, just like in the early seventeenth cen-
tury, when it was under the Ottoman sphere of control. At the start
of the action on the eastern island of Cyprus, during the Venetian
conict with the Turks, the sets showed a ship in full sail. In the
background was a dark tunnel, at whose end ashlights illuminated
intermittently the abysmal obscurity. All the messengers coming
from Venice emerged from the depth of that long underground pas-
sage. The directorial implication was that Romania looked like an
isolated ship at the mercy of international political tempests, and
the aspiration to the prosperity existing in the Western world was
like the glimmering light of hope at the end of this nightmarish tun-
nel of hardship and loss. The light at the end of the tunnel was a
common metaphor among Romanians, signifying the hopeful end
of a long period of political oppression and material deprivation.
The audiences viewed everything from the ships end of this tunnel,
and they could only hope to see the resplendent world beyond it.
In the chess game of international politics, Iago was the instru-
ment of the Senators secret strategy. After having used Othello for
their hegemonic ends, the Western-power representatives felt that
the general might escape the seigniorial inuence and become an
independent agent. The fear of losing control over a powerful sub-
ject made the authorities adopt a deceitful strategy. According to
this political system, the stranger had to be annihilated, and the
practical Iago could serve a crucial political purpose of international
importance. The director signied racial difference and political de-
sign through a symbolic, though rhetorical, gesture. Othello spoke
the It is the cause soliloquy holding two chess pieces, a black king
and a white queen, in his outstretched arms. The grandiloquent
hand movement signied not only the racial divide (black-white),
political difference (East-West), and the chess game of international
politics, but also alluded to earlier theatrical representations of
Othello in the romantic key. Unlike these declamatory interpreta-
tions of the tragedy, as the director distinctly announced in the
wordless stage language, his production asserted the wish for an ac-
tive involvement of the theater in the international game of power,
PAGE 182 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:39 PS
and showed Romanias disenfranchised status in the world commu-
nity of nations.
The directorial taste for Macbeth as a vehicle for political message
was equally active during the eighties. In 1982, Mihai Maniutiu di-
rected Macbeth at the Cluj National Theater. In speaking about the
importance of producing Shakespeare in Romania, a critic writes
that it conrms the continual attraction of new generations of art-
ists toward our contemporary. Shakespeare has become a mode of
stylistic conguration, a central point of the aesthetic program of
those directors who are serious about their profession.
28
This pro-
duction was present-centered. The Shakespeare text was much
abridged and the nal was changed, but the play was a danse macabre
in the pursuit of power. The set was a wooden construction with a
rotten aspect, which looked like some sort of fortication. The dilap-
idated interiors and a kind of multi-functional throne-pulpit-lectern
suggested the moral degradation of the occupants. The decrepit
structure of the castle was surrounded with dirty pools of stagnant
water. There were certain symbolic objects pointing to capital sins,
such as the serpent of vainglory, the goblet of drunkenness, and the
crown of power. Macbeth and his Lady slipped into the grotesque
key, and, in this way, the director suggested the ephemerality of
power and the futility of crime. One of the witches echoed Grouchs
last demented monologue, and this mimicry of the queens agony
of conscience diminished the orbit of her tragic end. The ridicule
extended to other characters too, and the director modied the
ending by showing that Malcolm was much more dangerous for
Scotland than the murderous couple.
Invariably, all theatrical representations of Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth brought to mind the couple in power at that time, Ceause-
scu and his wife, who were no less callous, ridiculous, and ambition-
driven. As if in a trick of history, their end would be tragic too,
though their nal words before the execution seemed to have been
played in the tragicomic key. Like in a fatal omen of life imitating
art, the Communist tyrants were executed after a brief and gro-
tesque trial. However, those who snatched the power after their
deathwere no better thanthe pathetic and delusional elderly Ceause-
scu couple, who thought they owned the world, but learned very lit-
tle about its entrapments. Intending to address current issues
through the language of Shakespeare, Maniutiu could be said to
have had a premonitory vision. With the artistic experience derived
from decades of theatrical practice, the director emphasized the rel-
ativity of political values and ideologies once the opposing party
seized the power. By implying that the new generation of kings in
PAGE 183 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:39 PS
Scotland was no better than the Macbeth couple, the director antici-
pated a political situation that would settle in Romania after the fall
of the Communist regime. In this new reconguration of the power
structures, the former Communist members embraced various polit-
ical shades, all involving the term democratic in their political
agendas, but the deep-structure conguration revealed familial or
afnity afliations, or condence connections with the former Com-
munist leaders.
The ultimate political spectacle in the Macbeth series was the com-
posite Ubu Rex with Scenes from Macbeth, adapted from Alfred Jarry
and William Shakespeare. Silviu Purcarete directed this corrosively
political play in 1990 at the Craiova National Theater, with huge na-
tional and international success. This time, the spectacle was overtly
symbolic, because it was produced in the rst year of Romanian de-
mocracy and freedom from Communism. Director and critics ac-
knowledged the political connotations and references in the open,
stressing the grotesque allusion to the Ceausescu couple. The pre-
posterous Mr. and Mrs. Ubu viewed the representation of Macbeth,
and the theater-within-theater metaphor pointed to the increasing
self-reexivity of Romanian theater during the past decade and im-
mediately after 1990. As expected, these caricatures of characters
were the marionettes of the game for power. What I nd interesting
in the favorable reception of this production is the slight note of
criticism addressed to the fact that the theatrical representation of
the already-famous couple typifying Communist dictatorship be-
came a fashion among Romanian directors after 1989. According to
the theater critic Dan Predescu, before the fall of Communism the
parallel of the Ceausescu couple with the protagonists in Macbeth
was almost an obsession for directors. When the political censorship
was active no more, this allusion tended to become a form of politi-
cally semantic mania, or a fashion in the Romanian theaters reper-
tories. As Predescu writes, In Ceausescus time, it was easy to think
that the absurd and ridiculous Beloved Leader was, in many ways,
worse than Mr. Ubu was. It would have been more complicated, even
dangerous, to have tried to introduce the play in a theaters reper-
tory, especially in the last years. If, toward the end of the change of
regime, the Ubu character had been an obsession, lately the plays
by Jarry and Shakespeare tend to become a repertoire fashion.
29
National and international reviews did not cease to praise this Ro-
manian version of the Shakespearean story about crime and power,
which relied on expressionist visual and auditory effects to convey
viscerally the brutality and dehumanizing consequences of absolute
authority.
PAGE 184 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:40 PS
A different though not so famous Romanian production of Mac-
beth was directed by Andrei Mihalache at the Constanta Theater in
1990. The plays vivisection on the theme of power made this trag-
edy an excellent vehicle for handling the tender issue of the dra-
matic change of government that took place in the winter of 1989 in
Romania. Gradually, the notion of political power in the play glided
toward the meaning of theatrical authority, while directors enjoyed
elaborating on the idea that drama had a prominent role in the po-
litical and social changes in history. The memory of the pathetic
Ceausescu couple and their gory end was still very fresh in peoples
memories six months after their deaths, and the directors played
upon their audiences expectations of theatrical reassurance. This
time, the theater was no longer subversive in the dissemination of
anti-Communist ideas, but it responded to a still-fresh psychological
trauma of expiation on a national level. After having witnessed the
abominable and disruptive events of the 1989 revolution, which cul-
minated in the couples cursory trial and execution, the Romanian
public still needed a justication of the tragic political circum-
stances. They wanted an assurance coming from an artistic authority
that would tell them that all the waste was not in vain. Seeing on
stage how the delusion of grandeur metamorphosed the Macbeth
couple, the audiences were allowed to exorcise their own distur-
bance and confusion regarding the events in the immediate history.
Andrei Mihalaches version of Macbeth asserted denitely that the
ght for power knew no ethical constraints and included murder,
betrayal, and dissimulation among its tactical instruments. Focusing
entirely on the murderous couples public materialization of power,
however, the director did not show how the appearance of omnipo-
tence had a devastating effect on the individuals moral sense. The
mental specters of schizophrenia and paranoia, associated with the
destructive delirium of grandeur, did not have a central place in this
production. Instead of showing how the ambition for power gradu-
ally deteriorated the individual mind, the director amassed an exces-
sive quantity of theatrical signs to show the duplicity of the
supremacy game and the theater-like illusion. The director took his
artistic cue from an exceptional and original Romanian production
of Macbeth in the fties by Ion Sava, which used masks and rhythmic
incantations to suggest the dissimulation of the political strategy and
the individuals retrogression to instinctive impulses. This allusion
to a previous Romanian production of the play was part of the re-
cent directorial technique of self-referentiality to theater history.
Apart from the reiterated idea that life was a theater and people hid
behind the masks of their unclaimed actions and stimuli, Andrei Mi-
PAGE 185 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:40 PS
halache tried to suggest to the connoisseurs that the various forms
adopted in each production in the past were as many ways of convey-
ing a theatrical message. The acting was manifestly mannerist, mim-
icking various dramatic performance styles, and the black setting
and insufcient lighting emphasized the suggestion of murderous
possession, but also rephrased the predominant modes and colors
in which this play was performed in time.
This brief sketch of the stage history of Shakespearean tragedies
in Romania up to 1990 has considered the political resonance of
Communist productions, tracking how the change in the political
climate has affected the reception and performance of these plays.
In studying the role that the Shakespeare productions in Romania
in the period 194990 played in the cultural process of the time, it
is difcult to address the problematic issue of identifying subversion
in these productions. Apart from the general idea that certain sedi-
tion is expected on the part of the director and the audience might
look for political clues, it is hard to document exactly how particular
audiences interpreted the political indicator. As to the cultural poli-
tics of the theaters, we are faced with a paradox regarding the pro-
duction of Shakespeare in Romania in this period. Shakespeare
as a theatrical entity, which may be equaled with classical criteria
and values, was a matter of cultural policy for the Communist au-
thorities, and they promoted productions of the plays in the canon
at various theaters all over the country. This demonstrates how the
cultural politics of a theater, dictated by a central totalitarian govern-
ment, can communicate to an audience as much of a companys cul-
tural realities as that of a director or even the playwright. The
theaters choice of plays, however, remains a matter of subtle inter-
pretation. The fact that directors selected the Shakespearean trage-
dies as a vehicle for their in situ political commentary tells us a lot
about educated individual options.
The productions of the tragedies during the totalitarian regime
redened the Romanian Shakespeare from an anti-Communist per-
spective. In the initial phases (195970), productions were con-
cerned with interpretations of history and social order, plus the role
of the individual in shaping them, as required by the Ian Kott, Rob-
ert Weimann, and Bertold Brecht theatrical principles, featured in
many postwar foreign language productions of Shakespeare. In the
next, more maturated, phase (197089), theaters and directors were
concerned with exposing the limited possibilities of self-fulllment
in an increasingly rigid and restrictive society. This period yielded
the most corrosive productions of Shakespeares tragedies, respond-
ing to the directors and audiences needs to tell or to hear the truth
PAGE 186 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:41 PS
told by a politically correct and classic voice. The ultimate para-
dox in Romanian theater was that Shakespeare had been both the
accredited cultural favorite of Communist authority, in the best tra-
dition of bardolatry, and the multiple, often subversive and unsta-
ble, Shakespeares of individual performances, mainly of the
tragedies. In this particular kind of Shakesploitation, directors were
willing to speak in a language of their own, only for a special audi-
ence to hear.
After the Fall of the Red Curtain
Once the individual Romanian productions of Shakespeares trag-
edies fullled their role of triggering subversion and reviving the
peoples dormant political consciousness, the directors in the nine-
ties generally lost interest in producing plays belonging to this
genre, as compared with the Communist period. Tragedies drama-
tizing the spectacle of Roman excess, however, such as Titus Androni-
cus, Coriolanus, and Julius Caesar held the theaters and the publics
interest throughout the nineties. Titus Andronicus was directed by
Silviu Purcarete and produced at the Craiova National Theater in
1993, at the Festival de Theatre des Ameriques (Montreal, 28
May12 June 1993), at the Nottingham Playhouse (May 1997), and
on tour through 1997. The English tour brought favorable reviews
published in reputed journals, such as Observer, Theatre Journal, TLS:
The Times Literary Supplement, Cahiers elisabethains, The Independent,
and Shakespeare Bulletin. The production was dutifully based on the
Shakespeare text, but it focused on the tragedys visceral eccentricity
and the grotesque tragic components. A special taste for the culture
of violence in modern audiences made this play, and its Romanian
version, an attractive spectacle in which horrifying scenes of mutila-
tion spoke volumes about the appropriation of Roman stories in an
early modern European classical revival. Certain members of the au-
dience may have been aware that Tamoras Goths had roamed the
fourth-century territory of Moesia Inferior, the ancient name of a re-
gion in modern Romania (maybe even the area around the city of
Craiova, not far from the Danube), in which case, they were entitled
to wonder at the curious repercussions involved in the constant iter-
ation of ancient stories, regardless of locality and time limitation.
Purcaretes version of Titus Andronicus was an indisputable na-
tional and international success. The emblematic scene of Lavinias
dead body on stage, anked by her father and Marcus Andronicus,
had an eerie attraction for the audiences. No blood was visible, but
PAGE 187 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:41 PS
the three gures dressed in white robes, members of the same fam-
ily, constituted a stage composition of compelling dramatic effect.
This tragic triptych assumed a posture representing past and present
disaster. Lavinias body lay on the shiny black stage-ground, the long
white robe enveloping her but hardly hiding her mutilated hand.
Her head was completely covered with a white scarf, looking like the
kind of head wrapping used to cover the naked scalp of cancer pa-
tients after chemotherapy, or the white bonnets the inmates in nine-
teenth-century mental hospitals were made to wear. The single
candle burning by Lavinias side, a Christian symbol of the souls
passing to eternity, reinforced the image of vulnerability and tragic
death. Next to her stooped Titus, laying his hand on her head in
sign of reprieved benediction and regret. In contrast to these tragic
gures, Marcus Andronicus stood ready for action, aware of a mis-
sion of reconciliation and active restoration of order in Rome. The
Christian symbols were transparent in this emblematic scene from
Purcaretes production. Lavinia was the sacricial lamb who died by
the wish of the father, and the uncle was the symbol of the apostle
Paul who, with the walking staff in hand, was ready to spread the
word of love to the civilized nations and restore condence. The di-
rector could not resist inserting potent theatrical signiers in this
production, hoping to show that dramas manifold rules could apply
to various political circumstances and epochs. The tendency toward
creating emblematic images like the one described above derived
from the theaters competition with the lm iconicity and from a
wish to leave unforgettable impressions on the audiences.
Purcaretes Titus Andronicus enjoyed excellent reviews and was at
its ninety-third performance in 1997 when it went to Sweden. The
production represented Romania at the Festival of the European
Theater Convention (E.T.C.), held at the Municipal Theater in
Stockholm in the period 1020 September 1997. The theme of the
festival was North-South, and theaters from Spain, France, Greece,
Denmark, Austria, Finland, Germany, Slovenia, South Africa, and
Italy presented their best productions. On their way back to Roma-
nia, on the Lufthansa ight, while reading and enjoying the favor-
able Swedish reviews of this production, a critic recorded how the
actors were offended by the ight attendants attitude.
30
On hearing
that they were Romanians, therefore marginal and contemptible
people, she neglected them altogether, turning her professional at-
tention to other passengers. It mattered little to the ight hostess
that these were the actors and the director of a production of inter-
national repute returning from a prestigious theater festival. The
unfavorable reports about the Romanians and their ignominious ac-
PAGE 188 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:41 PS
tions had obscured all other superlative moments of excellence, the-
atrical or otherwise. Thus, the image of the reviled residents of an
Eastern European elsewhere had gained ground once more in one
Western European consciousness, obliterating all positive implica-
tions. In such a particular circumstance, not even the Shakespeare
theater could redeem the implications of a vilied peripheral na-
tion.
Two productions of classical plays during the nineties showed a
related interest of Romanian directors to concentrate classical im-
ages in modern signifying clusters. In the 1994 Coriolanus at the Cluj
Napoca National Theater, directed by Christian Theodor Popescu,
and Alexandru Daries Julius Caesar (1995), the directors adopted an
essential and conventional theatrical gure, like a pentagram, which
they followed and contextualized along the entire spectacle. Roma-
nian directors were aware, too much, perhaps, of the pivotal impor-
tance attached to symbolic signs, which focused on the theatrical
icon and left an indelible impression on the audiences. This em-
blematic theatrical sign had a radiant quality, orientating the entire
spectacles meaning to a certain direction. Reviewers called the pro-
duction of Julius Caesar directed by Alexandru Darie A Spectacle
for Export
31
because it was produced for a premiere in Tokyo and
was modeled on the previous verbally concise productions by Silviu
Purcarete. The text was a translation and adaptation by Ramona
Mitrica, revised by the director. The scenography and music were
important elements in this Romanian version, and the text re-
mained secondary, custom-tailored for the Japanese audiences. The
critic reviewing this play noted ironically that such productions were
not performed in Romania very much, probably because the Roma-
nian public did not deserve such niceties. Foreign audiences, how-
ever, who decoded the theatrical image across the linguistic barriers,
enthusiastically cheered these symbolic representations. The Shake-
speare text was disintegrated into disparate vocables, while the cho-
reographic, musical, and scenographic components came to the
forefront of the stage. Parhon deplored such icon-focused practices.
He considered that the Romanian public might have had differ-
ent exigencies, and that Daries Julius Caesar was merely shocking
at the level of the theatrical image.
32
The Romanian theaters urgency for reconsidering classical
themes in postmodern dramatic nuances and extravagant corporeal
modes could easily include a production of Timon of Athens within
the discussion of the post-Communist re-evaluation of the tragedies.
A director who had already demonstrated his preference for Shake-
speare, Mihai Maniutiu, produced Timon of Athens (1998) at the
PAGE 189 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:42 PS
Craiova National Theater, a cultural institution that had developed
a tradition in producing Shakespeare and organizing Shakespeare
festivals. In an interview about this play, Maniutiu declared, Timon
of Athens is the most radical testimony of my Shakespearean prefer-
ence.
33
The text was indeed radicalized to the extent that the pro-
duction was entitled Timon of Athens after W. Shakespeare. This
technique of directorial translation and adaptation of the script
made the original text almost unrecognizable, while the theatrical
motion and malleability became pivotal. Shifting away from the po-
litical spectacle, the director pondered on the heros inner reexiv-
ity and self-destruction. The hollow stucco statues being broken on
stage visualized the destruction of identity, and the director created
a spectral alter ego of Timon, interpreted by an actress. This female
projection of the heros schizophrenic division between animus and
anima, drawing on modern psychoanalytical theories, haunted the
heros existence, which was as hollow as the plaster statues adorning
the palace. Finally, these absurd forms suffocated Timon; in a state
of exasperation he killed the feminine phantom, and thus failed to
achieve a meaningful spiritual metamorphosis.
As one critic reviewing this production wrote, This understand-
ing of human existence as devoid of signicance is specic to the
modern-day world.
34
If this complex puzzle of aberrant images
might be generalized as the contemporary world, any theatrical at-
tempt at rendering its divergent modes could only be disruptive.
The music of this jarring show was a hybrid combination of classical
themes, percussion, and Hebrew rhythms, and was considered too
aggressive for a theater hall. Despite its radical questioning, obscu-
rity, and rugged edges, this production was inscribed in the tradition
of the spasmodic iconicity characterizing most Romanian produc-
tions of Shakespeare at the end of the twentieth century. These
strange productions reveal the troubling composite nature of drama
at the end of the millennium. While the nineteenth century had cre-
ated an inconclusive or bardolatric debate in the separate elds of
performance and text in relation to Shakespeare, the late twentieth-
century directors seemed to be little concerned with the written
script, and their concept of performance acquired inconceivable
dimensions. Hybridization can be seen as the ruling concept for
these productions, and the question is inevitably raised as to why
Shakespeare was needed at all, since in these productions any
kind of disembodied theatrical practice might have served the same
end.
King Lear directed by Dragos Galgotiu at the Bulandra Theater in
Bucharest (1999) was among the productions of the tragedies char-
PAGE 190 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:42 PS
acterized as too aggressive
35
by Romanian critics. The director
provided the musical illustration to the play, and the harsh reso-
nance was meant to sustain a state of tension among the audience,
together with the dissonant costumes, which combined the fashions
from various epochs with amboyant modernity. The show started
in the hall, where the sets were made of an agglomeration of rough
wooden panels, insinuating an atmosphere of strangeness. On the
stage, a table made of the same unpolished material was the center
of the action, being put to multiple uses as a royal throne, a shelter
during the storm, or funeral dais in Lears death scene. Rather than
give a presentation of this particular production, I prefer to look at
the way in which a critic of the late nineties perceived the Romanian
reception of this King Lear. Ileana Berlogea felt that this production
was a King Lear we greatly needed, especially at this end of century
and millennium, a King Lear that reminds us of the truth that a per-
son with no money and power means nothing to the world when
faced with egotism and desire for dominance.
36
By highlighting the
plays relevance for present-day Romanians, Berlogea documented
the Romanian theaters repeated shift from slavish commitment to
authentic Shakespeare toward a Brechtian historicizing model of
performance. Alternatively, the Romanian critic voiced, rather, what
W. B. Worthen called the post-Brechtian compromise between re-
alistic and theatrical characterization typical of the RSC since the
mid-1960s.
37
Locked on the margins of what was still a discriminatory and di-
vided Europe, everybody in Romania could see how the values of
civility and integrity were being suffocated in the whirlpool of the
pursuit of power and money, then as before. Whether they saw a
Shakespeare play or witnessed an event in real life, people were
tempted to extrapolate and make connections that would respond
to their psychological and social tensions. In this dangerously hope-
less social and political context, a Shakespearean tragedy like King
Lear reminded people that issues of inequality had always existed,
and that it was how one dealt with them that made the difference.
Lear might be right in saying, Nothing can be made out of noth-
ing (The History of King Lear, 1.4.116), but the people of Romania
had learnt what it means to be an O without a gure(1.4.171).
By taking off the Communist emblem from the Romanian ag, the
enthusiasts of December 1989 hoped to have made a statement
against dictatorship by this symbolic absence. However, no unitary
value was added to this zero. Hence, like in Lears tragedy, very
many people were tempted to say that all their efforts had been in
vain, and that all amounted to nothing. Ten years after the change
PAGE 191 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:43 PS
to democracy in Romania, Lears specter still raged among the the-
ater audiences, making directors respond to the publics feeling in
signicant modes. Thus, a particular production of the play, though
not politically subversive, could still communicate a disquieting
sense of waste.
Apart from these grave tones of desolation, all was well and merry
in the world of Romanian Shakespeare productions. Directors took
up the American fashions of the early nineties, when the Reduced
Shakespeare Company (RSC) played in London an abridged version
of the Complete Works. The youthful London audience at the Apollo
Theatre watched in ecstasy how the presenter, in the role of the pro-
logue and coordinator of the sequences, would take the bulky Book
out of his large pants, remarking nonchalantly, Nobody can say I
dont like my Willy! The Complete Works of WLM SXPR (Abridged) is
a text by Jess Borgeson, Adam Long, and Daniel Singer. This was
translated and adapted by the director Petre Bokor, who provided
the music as well. The 2001 production at the Nottara Theater was
well received by young audiences, though critics were either re-
served or ironic, saying that at least people could save the money
spent on going to see thirty-seven Shakespeare productions. Three
actors interpreted thirty-eight Shakespearean major or minor char-
acters, but there were some additions, like a modern sports com-
mentator or a cook. The abridged text was based on the individual
sense of humor in each member of the audience, and this was prob-
ably the reason for the plays mixed reception. Seeing Othello synthe-
sized in tattered rap verse or Titus Andronicus introduced like a
disgusting TV cookery show might seem shocking to some. The au-
diences were involved in live workshops analyzing Ophelias psycho-
logical trauma, for instance, but the effect could be rather awkward
when some sections of the spectators or some individuals did not
respond readily to the challenge on the stage. In any case, the pro-
duction was an entertaining escape from the tediousness of prosaic
life.
A critic reviewing this production noted that the audience felt
obliged to adopt a denite stance concerning the abbreviated
Shakespeare at the Nottara Theater. One might either like it or not;
there was no middle way.
38
Readers of the program found out very
soon through the directors voice that this production should not
be seen as a parody of the illustrious Brit. The spectators were
asked to understand that this was only a pretext to deride the trans-
formation of the art consumer into a fast-food client. Since this vul-
gar tendency had become an aggravating fact, the actors and the
audiences pretended to laugh not at Shakespeare, but with him.
PAGE 192 ................. 11420$ $CH5 10-20-05 11:13:43 PS
Thus, far from being considered a blasphemy or a profanation,
the text by the three American authors was supposed to address the
sensitive issue of the perception of high culture in the US. The di-
rectors need for justication regarding this eccentric production
and text may lead some to think that the bardolatrous criteria of
Shakespeares reception in Romania did not fade away. After all
these years of incessant use and abuse of Shakespeare for political,
cultural, or merely entertainment purposes, many Romanian actors,
directors, and theatergoers still felt that they were accomplishing a
majestic act of culture by interpreting or attending a Shakespeare
play. Any other form of approach, like the tongue-in-cheek mode,
for instance, would mean a sacrilege to the Bards memory. Fortu-
nately, though, some among us still go to the theater just for plea-
sure, and enjoy Shakespeare with innocent simplicity and tender
love.
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6
Staging Revenge and Power from the Margins:
Masks of Romanian Hamlets
THE PERFORMATIVITY
1
OF HAMLET ASSAULTS THE OBSERVER FROM THE
inside of the play, and this feature has made directors and theaters
the world over select it whenever they wanted to convey a special
dramatic message. In Romanias particular theatrical climate, there
are three distinct ways of approaching this play. In the early period
of the Romanian theater, the hero Hamlet, acted in the customary
romantic and grandiloquent mode, was used as an occasion for
great actors to show their artistic skills. In Communist Romania, just
after the war, the play was not performed so frequently because the-
aters and directors tried to avoid the possible political readings
intrinsic in this plays dramatic texture, so the Shakespearean come-
dies were the preferences of the theaters repertoires. During the
seventies and eighties, however, when directors became increasingly
aware of this tragedys politically subversive potential, they used the
productions of Hamlet as a public theatrical platform for expressing
their anti-Communist position. In this period, the Shakespearean
tragedy modeled on a revenge play, but in which no revenge really
happens, was used as a form of theatrical revenge against an un-
wanted Communist regime. Theaters staged Hamlet professedly be-
cause it is the prized pearl in the Shakespearean crown of jewels.
Actually, they had a specic political agenda. During the 1990s, after
the fall of Communism, Hamlet became the epitome of theatrical
practice, and Romanian directors saw themselves as so many invisi-
ble Hamlets who could conduct and inuence the destiny of the Ro-
manian stage from the height of this accredited Shakespearean
control panel. The productions of Hamlet became very sophisticated
thespian affairs, which spoke about the self-referential attribute of
the theater.
Actually, the rst production ever of this special revenge drama
can be viewed at the plays ending, with Horatio as a director and
Fortinbras calling in the noblest of the audience (5.2.331). Hora-
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194
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6: STAGING REVENGE AND POWER: MASKS OF ROMANIAN HAMLETS 195
tio instructs that the bodies be placed High on a stage (5.2.332),
warning the spectators they were about to hear tales of bloody
events. Horatio looks back on a trail of intrigue and violence that
gives an accurate description of an entire genre named revenge trag-
edy. He emphasizes the educational and morally corrective effect of
the events being performed (5.2.347), which would prevent oth-
ers from being in error again. In fact, Horatios story is a silent one
and it involves showing and viewing rather than telling.
2
The audi-
ence is expected to redress and make amends only by seeing the
mute gory picture on stage. In Shakespeares hands, the revenge
play tradition becomes a marker of Hamlets meta-theatricality. In
discussing the soliloquies in Hamlet, Alex Newell addresses the ques-
tion of Shakespeares ambivalent handling of the revenge issue.
Newell argues that the plays view of revenge is rendered not by
explicit reections on the ethics of revenge by Hamlet the thinker,
but rather by what happens to him, what he undergoes in becoming
a revenger.
3
It is visible, therefore, how this theater achieves a deli-
cate balance between showing and telling, with a clear propensity
toward the visual effect. Although we are dealing with Shakespeares
most wordy play, containing the largest number of soliloquies, ac-
tion comes rst.
In mapping out briey the numerous theatrical rewritings of Ham-
let
4
on the Romanian stage, I intend to address a number of ques-
tions. Were the explicit dramatizations of revenge central concerns
for Romanian directors and actors interpreting Hamlet? Did they
consider this aspect as being more relevant to Romanian audiences
than other ramications of the play? During the century and a half
of successfully staging the play, did Romanian directors have an eye
for the meta-theatrical and parodic implications of violence? Did the
generic discourse on the ideological legitimization of revenge have
any inuence on this theater? Alternatively, was the issue of theatri-
cal violence a rather marginal component of various productions,
an ingredient that came with the packaging, but was to be discarded
as minimal in comparison to other crucial directions? If Elizabethan
misconceptions about Italy and Spain accounted for the predictable
setting of the revenge play in a Mediterranean milieu by Shake-
speares contemporaries,
5
does the Northern location in Denmark
change anything in the production of Hamlet by Romanian direc-
tors? Is the reception by Romanian audiences altered through the
collision with the plays integration in the revenge heritage? By ex-
ploring the dramatic performativity of Hamlet as realized in histori-
cal performance in Romania through the alternative variants of the
theme of revenge, it is easier to assess how other determinants of
PAGE 195 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:50 PS
performance, besides the author-function paradigm, can help us
nd our way among todays multiple Shakespeares.
Romania was a traditionally Christian Orthodox nation in the
nineteenth century, when Shakespeare penetrated effectively on the
stage. Like Shakespeares England, the Romanian cultural order in-
corporated the same general tension between two conicting atti-
tudes centered on the notion of revenge. On the one hand, the law
and Christianity were unequivocal in condemning private revenge
as a human attempt to usurp the prerogatives of God. On the other
hand, the tradition of private revenge, dating from an earlier and
more turbulent time, was still very much alive. After all, the local
population was descended from the ancient Scythians and Thra-
cians, with some later addition of Goth, Hun, Tartar, and Vizigoth
material. However, the stage did not cogently reect this conict in
the public consciousness until much later and with more sophisti-
cated audiences. The German, Italian, and Viennese theatrical
troupes mounted the rst productions of Hamlet during the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
6
They ltered the vision
of the play according to their ages expectations, in general tributary
to the Romantic image of Shakespeare created by Lessing, Herder,
and Goethe, but also by Coleridge and Keats, Hugo, Taine, and
Pushkin. Apart from the distorted conceptual interpolations, these
foreign companies staged the play in their respective languages.
They effected serious changes in the text by dropping entire scenes
or Germanizing character names. When a Romanian translation was
available, it was often heavily tributary to these foreign implants.
The rst local productions of Hamlet were rather timid and spo-
radic, no less inuenced by the paradigm of romantic drama and
the eccentricities of heavily Germanized prose translations. Mihai
Pascally was the rst Romanian actor to interpret Hamlet, during
186162. The text follows the romanticized French translation by
Alexandre Dumas (pe`re) and Paul Meurice. An equally famous pro-
duction by Grigore Manolescu was presented in 1884 at the Bucha-
rest National Theater. This exemplary actor translated the French
version of Hamlet by Montegut and Le Tourneur, being the sole di-
rector, translator, and leading-role performer of Hamlet. As Odette
Blumenfeld points out, the 1884 production established a lasting
tradition in the Romanian theater: any performance of Hamlet
should display a rich style of acting, usually the classic one . . . it
should considerably reveal the greatness of the tragic actor.
7
Ma-
nolescu had viewed prestigious European interpretations of Hamlet
by Mounet-Sully, Salvini, and Ernesto Rossi, yet his Hamlet was mel-
ancholic, sentimental, and overstrained. The Romanian troupe pre-
PAGE 196 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:50 PS
sented this production before the Viennese audience during the
rst European tour of Romanian professional actors.
The actor and director of a theatrical company, Constantin Not-
tara, offered a similar Byronic perspective on Hamlet in 1895 at the
Bucharest National Theater. This Hamlet looked as if marked by
deep psychological trauma, which he assumed in a lucid manner.
Nottaras diction was ample, cadenced, and musical, attracting the
audiences attention by copious acoustic accolades. Considering the
Shakespeare text literally, Nottara played a Hamlet with abundant
facial hair. In the same year (1895), the Iasi National Theater fea-
tured the actor State Dragomir as the leading hero in Hamlet. This
actor-centered and romantically biased concert of productions typi-
ed the territory of Romanian productions of Hamlet during the en-
tire latter half of the nineteenth century and the rst half of the
twentieth. In 1906, Petre Sturdza interpreted Hamlet for the rst
time at the Craiova National Theater, and two years later Constantin
Marculescu played the Prince on the same Craiova stage, followed
by a third Hamlet in 1909 by Al. Dem. Dan, who left an impressing
notebook containing his theatrical comments. In February 1912, a
noteworthy year in the history of the Romanian National Theater,
Tony Bulandra presented a majestic Hamlet during the sixty-ninth
representation of the play on the stage of the Bucharest National
Theater. Aristide Demetriade interpreted Hamlet in December the
same year, and the tremendous success obtained by this delicate and
impassioned actor made many critics compare him with Mounet-
Sully, De Max, and Moissi. When he became the director of the Iasi
National Theater, the poet-actor Mihail Codreanu encouraged an-
other actor, S tefan Barborescu, to recite his original translation of
Hamlet forged in sonorous rhymed verse. Zaharia Barsan was an-
other poet who interpreted the young prince in 1922 at the Cluj Na-
tional Theater. All these actors, poets, and translators contributed to
constructing a tradition of lead-role performance history of Ham-
let, a canon of exemplary Romanian productions against which sub-
sequent attempts at interpreting the play must give us pause.
The 1925 production at the Craiova National Theater, with Ion
Manolescu impersonating Hamlet, was the rst Romanian full-text
representation. Only sixty years later, in 1985, another integral ver-
sion of Hamlet was to be produced at the Bulandra Theater. The
actor translated the play after the French version by Georges Duval.
Manolescu noted in his memoirs that he tried to render the Prince
of Denmark in a humane mode, the way he understood him, as a
noble, tormented, and revolted soul.
8
In 1926, at the Theater Com-
pany owned by Bulandra-Manolescu-Maximilian-Storin, Tony Bulan-
PAGE 197 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:51 PS
dra and Ion Manolescu interpreted alternatively the leading role in
Hamlet. This postmodern view avant la lettre according to which there
is no integrally valid and authoritative formula of interpreting this
role and alternative readings are recommended was something to
be noted as a curiosity at that time. In 1937, the distinguished direc-
tor Ion Sava produced Hamlet at the Iasi National Theater with
Tudor Calin as the prince, in the translation by the remarkable Ro-
manian prose writer Mihail Sadoveanu. Sava used cinematic tech-
niques in this version and he advised the actor to blend irony and
sarcasm with subdued inner reection in his interpretation of Ham-
let. The director visualized Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius in the
grotesque mode, as masks of perdy, weakness, and stupid servility.
Another remarkable series of productions was recorded in 1941.
Liviu Rebreanu, a prominent Romanian writer, was the director of
the Bucharest National Theater at that time. He initiated what was
called the challenge of the three Hamlets, three simultaneous
competitive productions introducing George Vraca, George Calbor-
eanu, and Valeriu Valentineanu in the role of Hamlet.
9
At the begin-
ning of the 1941 theater season, the director of the Bucharest
National Theater informed a large audience in the entire country
from the microphone of the Romanian National Radio Broadcast-
ing Company that the theater initiated a competitive project of in-
terpreting Hamlet by three prominent actors of the period. In an
interview, Rebreanu said that he would like to believe that one of
them, at least, would attain the elevated standards of interpretation
set by Demetriade or Grigore Manolescu. The poet Tudor Arghezi
noted that George Vraca seemed to him sprightly, alert, and yet
focused and substantial,
10
while Calboreanu interpreted Hamlet as
a self-made philosopher forged by abnormal circumstances.
11
Val-
eriu Valentineanu struck the Romanian poet as a man destructively
obsessed with his own indecision, sunk in shady thoughts, tor-
mented by doubt, and at times mufed in pale resignation.
12
This
actor did his own translation (from French) of the Hamlet part, and
tried to produce a compelling hero in the lyrical mode.
In the rst half of the twentieth century, Romanian productions
of Hamlet adjusted the play to suit a leading actor, usually an out-
standing theatrical gure. This protagonist styled the Shakespear-
ean hero according to his histrionic exigencies, generally fostered
at the French and German declamatory schools. The plays revenge
dimension was tributary to the need of creating an essentially noble
hero, in accordance with the periods romanticized perception of
Shakespeare. Reminiscing over some prestigious impersonations of
Hamlet on the European
13
and Romanian
14
stage, the playwright
PAGE 198 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:52 PS
Victor Eftimiu noticed a special kind of magic
15
in connection
with the great actors performances (with or without the celebrated
beard). Coming from such a culturally rened member of the Ro-
manian audience, Eftimius description of the particular fascination
created by the great actors interpretations of Hamlet tells us a lot
about the psychological and historic inuence a certain acting style
can have on the cultural constellation of a star hero. Such essential-
ist strategies of interpretation of Hamlet in the romantic mode draw
on the stage-centered theatrical practices that approached the
Shakespearean character as a universal and as a given. Leading
actors were usually also the directors of Hamlet, and their acting nat-
uralized particular kinds of performance practice as somehow cos-
mically endorsed by the bard himself. Focusing on performers
rather than on the increasingly nebulous subject Shakespeare, the
Romanian criticism of the time did not address the tension between
text and performance, but rather contributed to the institutionaliza-
tion of a certain form of canonicity based on the authority of the
actor.
An unusual production of Hamlet, however, took place not on the
professional stage, but in a Romanian court-martial political prison
during 194243. Records of this version are very volatile. There are
only some sketches by a talented prisoner and the testimonies of cer-
tain members of the audience to vouch for it. During the war, classi-
cal texts were produced in prison with a view to raising the morale
of the inmates and in order to give them condence in the end of
the war. This unique production of Hamlet was mounted in a politi-
cal court-martial prison in Timisoara, and later in Arad. A parody of
the To be or not to be . . . soliloquy paraphrased one of Hitlers
discourses, in an intertextual fusion where levels of signicance
were suspended above the ideological void and around the censor-
ship functioning in a wartime political penitentiary. Nowhere could
the relevance of Denmarks prison be more actual and politically re-
sponsive to an audience. There was a pun on to be and the Ger-
man people, and not to be and the fascist regime. The scene
where Polonius and Hamlet discuss the cloud as a camel satirized
allegorically Hitlers acolytes. The play was used subversively against
the Nazi regime, and the theme of revenge could be altered signi-
cantly to suit the expectations of political anti-Nazi prisoners. An in-
mate designed the sketches displayed in a 1973 article by Theodor
Manescu recording this performance in prison. There are no re-
views of this amateur production, just the actors testimonies and
the sketches.
16
In the Communist period that followed the war, the theater in-
PAGE 199 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:52 PS
creasingly capitalized on Shakespeare as a subversive weapon to un-
dermine the unwanted but much feared Russian cultural
domination and the alien ideology the Communist ofcials wanted
to impose. The repressed fear of being imprisoned for the only mo-
tive of existing in this country, having more property than others, or
having an enemy who could denounce one to the authorities at any
time made people see the frailty of their existence. The Romanians
at that time were psychologically prepared to understand Hamlets
dilemma and the veiled and ambivalent hope for revenge. In those
depressing years, Shakespeare was a shelter and a collective place of
refuge from the implacable adversities of life and politics. The the-
ater responded to the nations need for the truth being told, even
if covertly, in a Hamlet-like manner. Reviewing the rst production
of Hamlet in twenty years (1958) at the Craiova Theater, the critic
Mircea Alexandrescu explained the directors former lack of enthu-
siasm in approaching this play as a kind of fear-dominated hesi-
tance.
17
The critics obvious and ofcial meaning is that the fear
was caused by the large number of excellent previous productions
and interpretations of this role, against which all actors must nd a
restatement rising to a compatible measure. The reader who deci-
phers the secret cultural codes, however, may conclude that fear
was the prevailing feeling in the Romania of those spy-infested Sta-
linist years. In this new light, the directors reluctance in approach-
ing Hamlet might spring from the general anxiety that dominated
the nation under the political aggressiveness of the Russian inu-
ence. Being unable to approach the play in the political mode, di-
rectors chose not to produce Hamlet at all for a while.
The rst post-World War II Hamlet in Romania, directed by Vlad
Mugur at the Craiova National Theater in 1958, offered the young
actor Gheorghe Cozorici the chance to perform a lucid Danish
prince, different from the earlier romantic interpretations. The
critic reviewing the production at that time was at no liberty to de-
scribe the performance exactly as it was. Rather, Mircea Alexan-
drescu noted that Vlad Mugurs interpretation was rather formal,
inuenced by Lawrence Oliviers Hamlet, and that the director in-
sisted too much on scenic movement instead of focusing on social
conict.
18
In a 1989 historical presentation of Hamlet on the Roma-
nian stage, however, the theater historian Ionut Niculescu quoted
the actor Gheorghe Cozorici regarding his interpretative intentions,
thirty years after the production. The actor said that he saw and
played Hamlet as a resolute man, who looked uncertain only when
he estimated the ne balance between right and wrong, not when
he moved to action.
19
We learn indirectly from the actors statement,
PAGE 200 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:52 PS
issued in a period of relative liberty from censorship, that the 1958
production was covertly subversive, in the sense that the plays ambi-
guity was restricted to the domain of ethics. The problem of the
heros determination to act against murder and injustice was not
overtly debated in this Communist production of Hamlet. In a 2000
historical overview of Romanian productions of Hamlet, a critic
quoted the director Vlad Mugur about his 1958 interpretation of
Hamlet. Forty years later, when there was no censorship to be feared,
the director said that he saw the hero as someone who needs to
know the fault of those who must be punished, and who intends to
secure good and strict justice.
20
The perception of revenge as an
act of justice within the Christian boundaries might provide a clan-
destine allusion to the unwelcome Russian military, political, and
cultural inuence.
In 1960, the actor Fory Etterle played Hamlet in a production di-
rected by Ion Olteanu at the Bucharest Municipal Theater. The
actor noted later that he was forty-seven at the time, and only the
preparation for the famous soliloquy took him months of intense
labor. Constantin Anatol acted under the direction of Miron Ni-
colescu at the Cluj National Theater, and this version of Hamlet per-
sisted on stage for three years consecutively. A year later, Dan Nasta
directed the play and interpreted Hamlets role at the National The-
ater of Timisoara. This production focused on the convergence of
philosophy, politics, and art in the heros personality, reminding the
audience that the Danish prince studied at Wittenberg, the great
university of the medieval world. Considering the plays popularity
in postwar Romania, we see that theaters from four major cities in
the country produced Hamlet successfully in the period 195861.
Moreover, the radio, the most popular of all media at the time, made
Hamlet known and appreciated throughout Romania, accessible to
all social groups, in a production directed by Mihai Zirra, with Con-
stantin Codrescu in the leading role. It is as if directors thought that
the sequence of dramatic events in this play could have some bear-
ing on Romanias political situation. This subversive undercurrent is
visible in the directors choice of authors (mostly Shakespeare) and
plays (preferably Hamlet). Such a statement cannot be backed by ma-
terial evidence drawing on the theatrical reviews of the time because
the theaters, directors, and critics executed a complicated form of
diplomatic ballet in order to avoid censorship.
However, the 1961 production of Hamlet at the Timisoara Theater
showed that there was some directorial subversive intention behind
the mask of the spectacle, regardless of what the reviewers of the
production could say at that particular time. An initial indication is
PAGE 201 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:53 PS
that the director, Dan Nasta, played the role of Hamlet. Thus, the
audiences were warned to be attentive to special cryptic meanings
under the theatrical guise. Moreover, Nasta designed the sets and
the costumes, and thus he announced that there were certain im-
plied meanings in the decor arrangement. The process of the heros
inner consciousness was clearly distinguished from the action of the
play. The soliloquies were set out through Hamlets advance to the
front of the stage. While he addressed the audience alone, a gray
wall divided him from the rest of the stage space, where all the ac-
tion was taking place. This wall had always been a sign of Romanias
isolation from the rest of the world, after the implacable descent of
the Communist iron curtain. Thus, the subversive character of this
production was visible at the level of the eeting life of stage short-
hand such as sets, gestures, and the physicality of some drama-
training techniques that speak in dumb language. On the other
hand, the critic reviewing Dan Nastas production in 1961 focused
on the social commentary and wrote that the director intended to
give a message of humanistic condence. Alexandrescu afrmed
that Nasta showed a play that was tragic on the individual level, but
profoundly optimistic in the historical sphere.
21
While Hamlets in-
dividual tragic stature was expressed in the soliloquies, the critic ar-
gued, on a historic plane he embodied the Renaissance hero, who
raised against the feudal social order. Such critical statements show
just how reliable Romanian performance criticism was in those
days.
By the seventies and the early eighties, the Communist regime
had ceased to control individuals by means of direct and steady po-
litical persecution. A form of subtler control emerged, and the
method was similar to Poloniuss way of nding directions out by
treacherous indirections, such as spying, thought manipulation, and
watchful insinuation. The audiences relation to Shakespeare in this
period was one of secret complicity and friendship. Shakespeare
gave a local habitation and a name to all the hidden fears, political
apprehensions, and motivations that people could not express
overtly. The stage was the halfway point where the audiences expec-
tations of hearing the truth clearly stated met the actors and direc-
tors secret wish of saying things that would elude the political
censorship. Thus, a Shakespeare play became a special location
where many wishes converged. The 1974 production of Hamlet di-
rected by Dinu Cernescu at the Nottara Theater in Bucharest took
the theatrical world by storm. It was for the rst time when the direc-
torial focus shifted visibly from the capable actor interpreting the
princes pale cast of thought to the Denmark arena, where politics
PAGE 202 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:53 PS
was the big game. As a theater critic pointed out, Hamlet is a cul-
tural and political production . . . It is political because an entire
system of directorial conception is built on rm political attitude
toward the truths in the text.
22
It was for the rst time in the stage
history of Romanian productions of Hamlet when the play was mani-
festly seen as a tragedy of the ght for powerobtained by blood-
shed, maintained as such, and lost in the same way.
Dinu Cernescus Hamlet was a sequence of crimes, like in the royal
tragedies. The right to rule was obtained through violence, cunning,
and intrigues, and it was lost in a similar manner. Claudius (Alexan-
dru Repan) murdered his elder brother for political reasons. Noth-
ing entitled us to believe he did it only for love of Gertrude. The
royal couples complicity to murder increased their passion patho-
logically, in a Freud-like mode. This emotion bonded them and
made them extremely cautious. The Danish kings court swarmed
with guards and spies. A perfectly coordinated repressive system pro-
tected the king, who knew he could have the same end as his brother
at any time. Moreover, in the secret chambers of the castle there was
another plot. Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio devised Claudiuss
murder. Horatio was not Hamlets friend; he was the current kings
enemy. Horatio saw in Hamlet the scourge of revenge and, for a
time, Claudiuss successor. Horatio unveiled the secret of Claudiuss
murder to Hamlet by pretending to be the ghost of the murdered
king. He might have acted in accordance with the text, if we accept
that King Hamlets ghost was the scenic image of the rumors about
the kings unnatural death. Horatio wanted to make Hamlet rebel
against Claudius and to help the young prince become king himself.
When they understood that Hamlet was unable to act, the conspira-
tors looked for another solution. They abandoned Hamlet. One
night, another name presented itself: Fortinbras. The king of Nor-
way would be Claudiuss successor. The power struggle went on.
Some were plotting, others were watching, protecting themselves.
The conspiracy was gaining ground gradually. Yet, was it the only
one? Polonius (S tefan Radoff ), the kings counselor, sent his son to
France in order to remove him from the surveillance at court. To
what end? Moreover, why was Polonius so much against Hamlet? Was
it because the prince was the legal successor to a throne he wanted
for his own son? We were reminded that, after Poloniuss death,
Laertes came back to Elsinore leading the rebel Danes, who were
determined to take over the power. He refrained from doing it for
the moment because Hamlet was still alive. Laertes accepted deceit-
fully the game proposed by Claudius. And so on. Why not? This
hard-hearted strife for power attained gigantic proportions under
PAGE 203 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:54 PS
Cernescus directorial guidance. Hamlet acquired a new and unex-
pected prole. Fortinbras, the possible successor, came to the fore-
front. Hamlet was removed. Why? Because Hamlet did not want to
get the throne, he only wanted to avenge his fathers death. Hamlet
knew the time was out of joint and he could not set it right. His com-
ing to power would not change anything. The great mechanism
would go on grinding and the world distribution of power would
remain the same. This was not a time for the moral order to be in-
stalled. Hamlet was merely an insignicant gear in the mechanism
of power.
Cernescus Hamlet (S tefan Iordache) was not mad. He did not
even feign madness. He was no longer taken for a madman. Hamlet
had seen too much, understood too many secrets, and told too many
unpleasant truths. Unpleasant, that is, for the king and his followers.
It was convened that Hamlet was mad and that he had to be
thoroughly guarded, so that he could not leave the court or the
kingdom. In this way, the directors allusion to the Romanian intel-
lectuals who were prevented from leaving Communist Romania was
very powerful. At one point, Hamlet ceased to exist. Fortinbras took
over the throne and, for a while, there was an ominous silence in
Denmark. Only the ute was allowed to sound faintly. Dinu Cern-
escu addressed only a part of the plays complexity. He gave the pro-
duction a reasonable duration. However, did he achieve the
necessary amplitude? By clearing its meaning, did he not oversim-
plify the tragedy? Denmark was an authentic political prison, with
iron bars and heavy metal doors slammed brutally, but was it also a
nutshell from where Hamlet could contemplate innity? The stage
designer, Helmut Stu
rmer, translated the prison metaphor into an

actual penitentiary with black iron bars at the windows and the
leaden atmosphere of such a place. The audience saw clearly that
the phrase Denmark is a prison was a tautology. The lateral walls
were long and dark, and there were crooked corridors full of whis-
pers ending in iron doors. The stage was like the inner court of a
prison, with many dark galleries whose walls were covered with
blurred foggy mirrors, multiplying the guardian, the spy, imminent
danger.
The arrangement of the hall-like stage was designed mainly for
the whispers of those in the shadows rather than for the dramatic
exchange in the text. Consequently, the setting did not express what
had already been said, or was being said by Hamlet, but it visualized
what no one in Cernescus Denmark/Romania dared to voice. No-
body ventured to say that the new kings throne was placed on his
subjects dead bodies, even if these subjects, as in Poloniuss case,
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had been fanatical partisans of the regime. The throne, a perma-
nently moving object, was in turn a deathbed, wedding-feast table,
and wedding bed. Cernescus production was denitely political and
director-centered. It impressed the audience with the effective im-
ages of the throne-casket-tomb-bed-table, the crimson capes in the
color of old crimes, the leaden-shining mirrors, and the sharp glis-
ten of daggers, the tools of blood revenge. This kind of assertive di-
rectorial vision in the political mode opened the way for a large
number of subsequent Romanian Hamlets in the political style and
spoke for an alternative model of theatrical investigations of Shake-
speare which would resist the authoritative theater practices pro-
moted so convincingly in earlier periods. For the rst time in the
history of Hamlet productions, the rhetoric of Shakespeare perform-
ance engaged in a dialogue not only between author, text, and direc-
tor or actor, but involved a subversive dimension intended to
challenge the structures of authority in the Communist state.
In 1975, there was a production of an original opera, Hamlet, by
the Romanian composer Pascal Bentoiu at the National Opera
House of Bucharest. The reviews of the time
23
mentioned the impor-
tance accorded by the director, George Teodorescu, to pantomime
and body language, combined with suggestive lighting. This lyrical
rewriting of Shakespeares tragedy focused on the conceptual frame-
work of Hamlet rather than on dramatic action. There were ten
scenes representing ten key moments of the tragedy. The immobil-
ity of the setting suggested a still-life painting or the suspended
movement of the lm camera. This symbolic paralysis on stage re-
ected the undercurrent of speculative thought, where Hamlets
mind reigned supreme. Action and movement were expressed only
in pantomime and body language, at times stylized in ballet scenes,
like in the Mousetrap section. Pantomime summoned powerful im-
ages, and the expert lighting intensied them expressively. The play
on light and color was the chief merit of the production because it
emphasized the abstract ideational process. The director intended
to separate the truth from errors and lies by allotting them symbolic
status. All the lie-conducing actions were depicted in cold, somber
shades, while what is taken to be the truth was ooded in warm, nat-
ural colors. The setting gave Pascal Bentoius music the status of an
absolute abstraction in relation to Shakespeares tragedy. Revenge,
murder, power, and politics were marginal issues in this Romanian
musical Hamlet. The opera version became primarily a drama of
knowledge, of conscience, and of the heros candidly confronting
the mutations of providence. As a theater critic concluded, Shake-
speares personality emerges more potently than Bentoius, who
PAGE 205 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:54 PS
tries to rise at the level of the model by non-specic means.
24
The
result of this opera adaptation was a musical abstraction, which ques-
tioned marginally the absolute directives of the predominant Com-
munist ideology of the time.
In 1983, the director Nicolae Scarlat proposed to the Romanian
audiences of Targu Mures a minor stage version of Hamlet, when
compared with Cernescus interpretation. It was no less director-
centered, in the sense that Scarlat tried to explore too many of the
plays dimensions and, at times, the audience got confused. When
the director wanted to show the demonic conscience at work, he ac-
tually made devils and imps walk on stage. When he wanted to reveal
the troubles of this too too solid esh, a feathered Ophelia would y
into Hamlets arms. In trying to emphasize the plays metatheatrical
component, the director extended the theater-within-theater scene
too much. In order to show that a corrupted society was an easy prey
for the ambitious enemy from the outside, the director brought For-
tinbras in full regalia and mounting his live horse on the stage. The
rich Elizabethan costumes were used to emphasize the contrast be-
tween appearance and reality. Particularly, the royal personages
were wearing impressive ruff collars and jewelry, while Hamlets
ironic and self-critical pose was suggested by his plain white cos-
tume. The sets were constructed of a composite mass consisting of
rags, nets, and ropes, which in the semi-obscurity of the intermittent
lighting suggested gothic arches and columns, or bay windows and
secret recesses. The rotating stage constantly modied this volatile
space, giving the impression that nothing was stable and all commu-
nication took place in a labyrinth. Despite its many imperfections,
this production was inscribed in a consistent series of Romanian the-
atrical rewritings of Hamlet that read the tragedy in a political key.
Many Romanian directors intended to voice truths about current is-
sues through Hamlet, as they saw it, in a period when truth was
tongue-tied. This disruptive component of the theater in the Com-
munist period might be interpreted as a form of camouaged re-
venge against the unpopular regime.
A remarkable 1985 full-text production of Hamlet at the Bulandra
Theater (Bucharest), directed by Alexandru Tocilescu, had kept the
Romanian publics interest for more than ve years, and provided
appreciated material for theatrical export, with excellent reviews,
through the entire latter half of the eighties and especially in 1990.
Critics have penalized, however, Tocilescus ambitious and rather
confusing design to say everything about Hamlet.
25
In the precari-
ous existing circumstances, when every member of the audience
may have had a different opinion about this play, and it may not
PAGE 206 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:55 PS
have been coherent with the directors intentions or the actors in-
terpretation, such an attempt at saying it all could seem hazardous.
During the almost ve hours, with only one intermission, Tocilescu
bombarded the spectators with complex issues of power and the po-
litical theater, the moral condition, thought and action, conscience,
revenge, life as theater, life and death, love and hatred, and the am-
bivalence of to be and to have. Tocilescu entered Elsinore
through three important gates, namely, Philosophy (Ethics), Poli-
tics, and Art. Hamlets dilemma of action and revenge was given a
tangible resolution through the suggestion that the hero had no
doubt that Claudius was the perpetrator of the crime. The fathers
immaterial Ghost was just a disembodied voice. A complex play of
lighting obscured the specter, suggesting that it might be the heros
inner consciousness. In the truest Bakhtinian spirit, two clowns pre-
ceded the ghostly apparition and intensied the carnivalesque
image of life as theater, or art holding the mirror up to nature.
In Tocilescus version of Hamlet, art reected lifes confusion and
came in opposition with power through its divergent tendencies.
While power tended to subject reality and impose an ideological
monologue that would reduce life to being subservient to the des-
potic order, art invited to dialogue contradiction and diversity. This
production was an assertion of the theaters subversive potential, in
a period when only subtle allusions could suggest dialogical action
as an alternative to the totalitarian opacity and self-assertiveness.
Apart from the theater-within-theater aspect, the production sug-
gested other forms of art as viable dissident forms of action. The play
began with a pantomime of the nal fencing scene, on a black-
mirror stage designed as a chessboard. The ght was interrupted by
a silhouette in black, which took a seat at the piano and provided
the musical background during the key scenes of the play. The pian-
ist (Dan Grigore) was a silent gure who intervened in the encoun-
ters with the Ghost, and at times became an unnatural apparition
himself. Hamlet (Ion Caramitru) joined this ghostly appearance in
playing the piano while he received Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
On other occasions, the hero was playing the ute. Besides music,
the play on mirrors and the frequent emergence of clowns
prompted related allusions to the dissident power of art. The direc-
tors disruptive theatrical statement had an overreaching signi-
cance, since it included all the other arts, besides theater, in the
challenging dialogue with the self-serving Communist authority.
Politics and power gave a third dimension to Tocilescus version
of Hamlet. The abstract attributes of the relations within the corri-
dors of power admitted material representations through the direc-
PAGE 207 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:55 PS
tors description of the characters that possessed authority. Claudius
was a vulgar and aggressive tyrant, capable of primitive hatred and
conniving action. He was the image of the political opportunist,
whose only assets were cunning and venality. The King wore a mili-
tary uniform, a signal of the zealous need for dominance and power
represented by martial rule. He was short and insignicant-looking,
but he had the grand taste for ceremony, descending majestic stairs,
usually in the accompaniment of patriotic music. The veiled allusion
to the existing Romanian counterpart of such a gure, the unedu-
cated but scheming and power-driven president of the Communist
Party, Ceausescu, could not escape an audience that was eager to
read topical meanings in complex plays such as Hamlet. Ceausescu
was a vengeful peasant whom circumstances had placed in a top po-
sition of power. His wifes personality lay behind the scene of the
contest for power, but she was represented as a vain and jealous
woman. The director created an entire scene in which he showed
the Queens dressing room, the vanity of her mirrors, and her jeal-
ousy toward a younger and a prettier lady in waiting. The Romanian
audience knew that Ceausescus wife was just as vain, and she used
all the power she could wield to adorn herself with unearned aca-
demic titles and elaborate hairstyles.
Polonius was the militia representative in a police state. He was
limited and suspicious, but very proud of his knowledge and life ex-
perience. He thought he could achieve the position next to the sum-
mit of power by attery, deception, and psychological torture. The
directors reading invested him with all the characteristics of a mem-
ber of the collective instrument of repression represented by the se-
cret police in the Communist state. Poloniuss modern black suit
designated the uniform of the obscure individuals who were the in-
struments of the repressive system. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
were the plain and analogous instruments of power, the ordinary
party members of the Communist regime, while Laertes became in-
volved in the mechanism of authority without being aware of it. For-
tinbras was not a redeeming gure of hope. He was the rapacious
harvester of the disastrous consequences of evil and tyranny. The
Norse king rushed on stage wearing a long red robe. He attacked
everyone and caused the murder of Horatio by the now-revived aco-
lytes of the old regime, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Fortinbrass
takeover signaled the cyclical continuity of terror and blood re-
venge, just as the stylized fencing scene initiating the play ended it
in a circular mode. The attending pianist exited thoughtfully, offer-
ing the redeeming hope of meaning by art.
Tocilescus elaborate production was considered the heaviest
26
PAGE 208 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:57 PS
Romanian Hamlet in the last quarter century. Its successful staging
had anticipated the historic events of 1989, the disintegration of
Communism in Romania. In an interview with Richard Eyre, the di-
rector of the London National Theater, taken in early 1990 when he
came to Bucharest to see the play, the British man of theater indi-
cated the relevance of this political play to Romanian audiences. Ac-
cording to Eyre, the public could read the end of the Romanian
oppressive Communist regime in the play about Elsinore even be-
fore the events in real life started. As Richard Eyre said, A play like
Hamlet could speak distinctly to people, and the authorities were un-
able to prohibit staging this play just because it was Shakespeares.
27
Thus, Tocilescus Hamlet became a subtle form of revenge that the
theater took over life. Like a theater-within-life play, it was the
thing which activated the Romanians moral sense and rectitude,
helping them to take decisive action and pull apart the fty-year
Communist rule. In 1990, the memorable production of Hamlet
went on tour through Britain, where it enjoyed many favorable re-
views. Analysts mentioned the specically Romanian connotations
of this particular Hamlet. As Michael Billington said in The Guardian,
This is, in fact, Romanias Hamlet, fashioned according to this coun-
trys political circumstances and this version is impregnated with
the atmosphere and politics of Ceausescus Romania.
28
We have
reasons to believe that there is more to various theatrical rewritings
of Hamlet than actually meets the eye. In addition, this particular Ro-
manian production of the play made a signicant point.
The increasingly sophisticated and self-referential theater of the
nineties democratic Romania staged Hamlet in idiosyncratic modes.
The rhetorical grandiloquence of earlier interpretations was there
no more, nor was the need for politically subversive meanings. In-
stead, directors focused on Hamlet as the ultimate director of an art-
ful and expressive spectacle. Eight long years after the 1989 events
that turned Romania from a marginalized country governed by a to-
talitarian Communist regime into a democratically regulated else-
where, two Romanian theaters staged Hamlet during 199798. The
lesser variant at the Mihai Eminescu Theater in Botosani, directed
by Ion Sapdaru, offered a directorial reading based on the theater-
within-theater scheme. The mise en abyme effect established the prior-
ities of the spectacle, and the tale of the making of a play by William
Shakespeare took precedence over the revenge story. The major
themes of life as a stage and men and women as merely actors, the
theater as holding the mirror up to nature, and the actor as the
chronicler of times came to the forefront of this production. After
the nal fencing scene, when the spectators expected the end of the
PAGE 209 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:57 PS
spectacle, the actors came back on stage and sat down to talk with
the audience. Then, Hamlet slowly lit a cigarette and raised the
question of to be or not to be. This production was clearly inscribed
in the present-day trend of Romanian theatrical versions of Hamlet
in which the director and his spectacle were all that counted.
The 1997 production of Hamlet directed by Tompa Gabor at the
Craiova National Theater focused on the directors belief in the val-
ues of the spectacle and in Hamlet as a man of theater. This was the
rst production of Hamlet ten years after the same directors attempt
with this play at the Cluj Hungarian Theater, with Heija Sandor as
Hamlet. In an interview the director said, In producing Hamlet, I
saw the possibility of meditating on the meaning of theater, of ask-
ing ourselves why we are involved in the theater. Why do we need
the theater?
29
The play began with two clowns coming on stage.
While they were playing for the audience, an iron curtain descended
behind them. The clowns tried in vain to go under, above, or beside
the blind wall. Finally, they sought refuge behind the theater cur-
tain, because this was a play after all. The iron curtain of reality, or
a heavy prison door, rose to uncover the main setting of Tompas
production. In the middle of the main stage, there was a smaller
stage. Its reective surface and lateral walls mirrored the actors and
the audience. In the directors vision, the theater was not a single
reecting looking glass but a system of parallel mirroring surfaces.
Signicant doubling became a major technique in this confusing
combination of images. Hamlets identication with the Mousetrap
scenes was subtly paralleled in the casting of the same actor as both
the Player King and King Hamlets ghost,
30
a gure made up to look
like the familiar Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare. The author was
writing his play while seeing his characters in action. Meanwhile, he
was a character-actor, guided by Hamlet-character-director. Hamlet
sported the black outt and long scarf that had come to be associ-
ated with the modern directors garb. He was not only the director
of the players on the stage within the stage, but also a director of
conscience. Hamlets presence dened the modern authors condi-
tion. He tried to enclose his meanings within determined bound-
aries, in order to protect his work from ulterior political
manipulation.
Tompa Gabors Hamlet was a production organized around con-
centric circles, or concentric spectacles, whose starting point and
end of game was the theater, its protagonist, the author, and the au-
dience. Hamlet embodied three basic dimensions of theatricality,
namely, director, actor, and audience. The actor and his theater
emerged as the only viable ways of telling the truth as Hamlet, or
PAGE 210 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:58 PS
Shakespeare, or Tompa, or the audience saw it. As a critic declared,
The production is a homage to the theater as mirror of the world,
and to the actor who . . . places his soul into the directors capable
hands.
31
Hamlet (Adrian Pintea) and the other characters played
in a dramatic key, over-emphasizing the theatricality of the interpre-
tation, in order to indicate that they were only characters of drama,
interpreting a part that had been played many times before. More-
over, this particular protagonist showed he was a reection of all the
past dramatic illustrations of this role, emerging from all the roman-
ticized, cynical, melancholy, or idealized interpretations of the
Shakespearean hero. His costume reminded us of the well-known
pictures showing Grigore Manolescu as Hamlet in the renowned
1884 production. What was the place of the revenge-play tradition
in this complicated entanglement of self-reexivity and meta-theatri-
cality? Had the Romanian theater become so self-absorbed within
its own artistic boundaries that it came to neglect this Elizabethan
convention? The evidence of the spectacle showed us this was the
case. The show counted most, after all. The wise and knowledgeable
directors drew forceful guiding lines for the audience and the critics
to follow and decipher. As a theater critic pointed out, Tompa Gabor
wants to display not so much a tragedy of revenge as one of exposing
the mechanism that moves political and individual destinies in times
of transition.
32
The stage director of Hamlet had become the magi-
cian Prospero, in control of his spectacle.
In June 2000, the Bulandra Theater in Bucharest staged the sev-
enth Hamlet in its history, directed by the Prospero of the Romanian
stage, Liviu Ciulei. The director could boast notable versions of A
Midsummer Nights Dream and The Tempest. The plays focus was once
more on the actor and his stage, the theater-as-life paradigm, and
Hamlet as an active hero-actor. Marcel Iures created an everyday-life
character, a man who thought, spoke, and died naturally. He voiced
the to be soliloquy sitting on a bench in different locations on the
stage. The right side was the part of reason and the left was the seat
of emotion. The middle-stage visualized inner doubt. The director
drew clearly on recent psychological and medical research concern-
ing the physiological processes related to the two halves of the
human brain, just as Shakespeare did in his time by staging melan-
choly according to popular studies in psychology, such as Burtons
Anatomy of Melancholy. Moreover, the stage space acquired symbolic
signication in a theatrically concentric production. Ciuleis version
was classical in the sense that the director resorted sparingly to
postmodern theatrical techniques. His aim was to uncover the essen-
tial meta-theatricality of Hamlet. Seen from this direction, Hamlets
PAGE 211 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:58 PS
problem became personal, rather than philosophical. What hap-
pened in Denmark was primarily a personal drama, which came to
attain universal dimensions through recurrent use and, often, mis-
use. By this artice, the director tried to recover the original rele-
vance of the plays themes, including the revenge dimension. Before
being a common Elizabethan theatrical convention and an ethical
concern, revenge was a personal problem certain individuals had to
deal with as part of their lives. Ciuleis anti-rhetorical eloquence
aimed at showing his audience the simplicity of truth.
In the Mousetrap scene, however, the director showed us the
usual play upon mirrors, but his Hamlet cut a different gure. Un-
like the ubiquitous and all-powerful producer of previous variants of
the play, Ciuleis Hamlet suited the action to his word; he was happy
with being a simple actor in the play he intended to direct. This lat-
est Romanian production centered neither on the hero as an epit-
ome of romantic ideals or histrionic rhetorical skills, as was the case
in very early Romanian Hamlets, nor on the director as the omnipo-
tent maker on stage, such as many of the postwar and more recent
productions indicated. Nor was it concerned with the ethical prob-
lems of revenge, or its complex refashioning by Shakespeare. Critics
noticed a certain lack of dramatic focus in this production, which
was surprising when coming from a director who had come back to
the Romanian stage after a long period abroad, directing Shake-
speare and other plays on foreign shores. As Magdalena Boiangiu
pointed out, the production at the Bulandra Theater must confront
one of the most terrible ghosts that can haunt a theater: the ghost
of youth, of beauty, of success. In the year 2000, Liviu Ciulei could
not nd the theater he had left in the seventies, not even the theater
revisited in the nineties. For the young generation, the legend was
stronger than the man was. And maybe Prospero is getting tired of
showing, as Hamlet requires, the form of the very age and body of
the time.
33
Liviu Ciulei, however, was much more satised with this
version of Hamlet than with those he had produced in 1977 in Wash-
ington, or in 1984 in New York.
The 2001 production of Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur at the Cluj
National Theater focused on the director rather than on the increas-
ingly nebulous subject, Shakespeare, or the even more problematic
Hamlet. As Worthen states, the director is perceived as anchoring the
slippery text somewhere between delity and creativity.
34
Since
it is a common fact that the directors appreciation of the plays
meaning is hermeneutically shifting on a continual basis, it is re-
warding to follow the virtual adoption of this particular play on a
personal level by a Romanian director. The appropriation of Hamlet
PAGE 212 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:59 PS
for subversive ideological purposes under Communism and after
was a common practice among Romanian directors. Similarly, direc-
tors of the nineties and the 2000s refused to replicate the romantic
nineteenth-century interpretations of the hero, except for contrast-
ive theatrical practices. However, Hamlet has never meant so much
and so personally to a director as in this production directed by Vlad
Mugur at the Cluj National Theater in 2001.
Mugur knew that he was dying, and he chose to direct Hamlet as a
nal celebration of his artistic activity and a theatrical statement of
continuance. Unusual for Romanian directors and theaters, this par-
ticular production is exceptionally documented. There is a docu-
mentary book
35
edited by Marta Petreu and Ion Vartic, the manager
of the Cluj National Theater, and a video recording of the rehears-
als. In a discussion with his assistant director Roxana Croitoru,
which is recorded in the book, Vlad Mugur says, When you have
reached my age, you will have known that nothing is for ever! You
are not allowed to by-pass Hamlet; it is a chance in a lifetime for you.
It is a challenge for me too. I had to do this production.
36
In this
particular case, we see that Shakespeare was needed, not as a ban-
ner to legitimize current cultural or political debate, but as an onto-
logical support to justify a directors life dedicated to the theater.
Mugur perceived Hamlet as a self-identifying concept and the exis-
tential marker of an aporetical limit. Thus, in this particular case,
the true Shakespeare exists, not as an ideal form, as an accepted but
ultimately arbitrary hypothesis of no xed residence, and not even
as an example of what others think Shakespeare is. In Mugurs case,
Hamlet comes to represent the vehicle for an individuals intimate
relationship with his selfhood, his private existence, and his immedi-
ate death. It is as if Hamlet knew he would be dying and he staged
the Mousetrap as a symbolic theatrical ceremony of his own death.
Who can say it might not be so?
Vlad Mugurs career as a director started in the fties. During his
professional years, he directed at the Bucharest, Craiova, and Cluj
National Theaters. In 1971, when he wanted to direct Hamlet at the
Cluj National Theater, the Communist authorities proscribed the re-
hearsals because the production was too politically revealing and
subversively critical of the regime. In a seditious phase, Mugur immi-
grated to Italy and then to Germany, directing plays produced at the
theaters of Mu
nich, Konstanz, Hanover, Esslingen, Mu
nster, and
Bern (Switzerland). After the fall of Communism, he returned to
Romania and directed plays in Bucharest (The Odeon Theater),
Craiova, and Cluj. In March 2001, at the Cluj National Theater, in
an attempt to bridge a thirty-year gap, Mugur decided to approach
PAGE 213 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:13:59 PS
Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur at the Cluj National Theater (2001). With Sorin
Leoveanu as Hamlet. Courtesy of the Cluj National Theater. Foto: RE
EL/Nicu
Cherciu.
PAGE 214 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:14:41 PS
Hamlet once more, in a symbolic gesture of theatrical self-referential-
ity. The avant-premie`re of this production was on June 22, 2001, his
seventy-fourth birthday. Mugur died exactly one month after that,
on July 22, 2001, at his home in Mu
nich. When, in October 2001,

the Cluj National Theater inaugurated the ofcial opening night,
the directors presence was only symbolic, a disembodied spirit hov-
ering over an empty seat. He might have appeared as a ghost haunt-
ing the theater together with Old Hamlets Ghost, and joined by the
ghosts of all the diverse Hamlets produced at this theater and else-
where, viewed by this director or others.
Considering that there is no stable text for his Hamlet, Mugur cre-
ated a conglomerate script, combining the seven extant Romanian
translations and even forging some phrases in his own version.
When his assistant director presented him with a revised translation
combination from Nina Cassian, Ion Vinea, Vladimir Streinu, Leon
Levitchi, and Dan Dutescu, Mugur was not completely satised with
it. Roxana Croitoru admitted she had viewed the Shakespeare text
from the philological perspective, focusing on grammatical and lexi-
cal accuracy, while the director looked at the scenic script, which
needed to be decontaminated of all the heavy metaphors, leaving
space for the direct theatrical expression and the texts dramatic
nerve.
37
Mugur said he was in need of a very recent translation,
because the latest one dated from the seventies and was done by
Alexandru Pop especially for Mugurs Hamlet of that time. However,
according to the director, that was a romantic Romanian version,
and romantic productions do not work for audiences these days.
Therefore, though the script revised by Mugur is an accurate transla-
tion in blank verse, the parts were severely cut and concentrated, so
that, at some points, the dramatic exchange takes the form of light
repartee. For instance, Polonius line For this defect effective
comes by cause (2.2.103)
38
becomes, in Mugurs script, just Efect
defect.
39
The script is composed of two parts; part 1 has eight scenes, and
part 2, seven scenes. The To be soliloquy, for instance, is a multiple
dialogue initiated by a contemplative character, Lucianus, the Pro-
logue, who acts as Hamlets alter ego. Positioned at part 1, scene 6,
after Hamlets Hecuba speech, the To be dialogue was a lesson
in reection and endurance served to a disconcerted Hamlet by Lu-
cianus, Second Player, First Player, Horatio, Guildenstern and Ro-
sencrantz, and, ultimately, Polonius. Like in a sophisticated golf
gameand golf was another hidden theme suggesting psychologi-
cal tension and releasethese characters took over the stroke play
in turn. They informed Hamlet of the potentially lethal dimension
PAGE 215 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:14:42 PS
of human existence, of the dangers of to die, to sleep, and the undis-
coverd country from whose bourn no traveller returns. The Players
intimations about death were friendly, almost parental, and they
were read from the theater script, the shufed pages suggesting the
transition from text and script to actor, director, and performance.
Moreover, the First Player who spoke these weighty verses (Melania
Ursu, an actress) was wearing a nondescript raincoat, like most char-
acters associated with Hamlet did, but this one sported the long
white scarf that had come to symbolize the directors distinctive cos-
tume and theatrical prop. While the actor-director substitute in the
play lectured Hamlet about death, sustained by a variety of actors
interpreting other characters in the play, and while Hamlet played
the director in staging the Mousetrap, the real-life director, Vlad
Mugur, staged a representative play that anticipated symbolically his
own death.
The sets were a construction site, a world that was being built and
rebuilt continuously before the audiences eyes. This was the only
symbolic section in the production that might be interpreted as hav-
ing a current cultural and political connotation, since Romania in
the economic transition phase is a place where old institutions have
been demolished and many are under construction. At the begin-
ning of the play, the curtain was up, and some actors were among
the audience. The rst scenes were played against a white screen,
and the actors were sitting at a long table on stage, reading their
parts from the plays script. The Shakespeare text was conceived ini-
tially as the blank reading of a script, and the director saw this activ-
ity as a form of therapy with the audience, to whom an important
message was being communicated.
40
At one moment, however, after
the ghost scene, the script matured into performance, the written
text became theater. Before this crucial moment, the actors had
been on stage or among the audience as actors interpreting a script.
The reading came alive gradually, as the actors became characters
in performance, an action triggered by the Ghosts entrance. The
apparition was the ghoulish image of a semi-decomposed cadaver,
whose head exposed a strange system of pipes, revealing an outland-
ish human anatomy. Old Hamlets ghost appeared from some con-
struction scaffolding on the left of the stage, emerging in a cloud
of plaster debris, cement dust, and fumes, and exiting through an
improvised workers elevator within the same structure. Cement
dust and lime were the main symbols in this production, and Mugur
said that the white powder was almost as dramatically suggestive as
blood, because it aggressed on the audiences senses, irritating their
PAGE 216 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:14:43 PS
nostrils and throats and making them feel empathy with Hamlets
drama.
In the rehearsal notes, Mugur said he would not focus on the phil-
osophical aspect of the play because, in any case, the tragedy
breathed metaphysically and the contemplative area was evident.
41
Moreover, Mugur wanted to avoid the temptation of producing the
play in the romantic-philosophical mode, and thus he focused on
the situations.
42
As regards the text, this situation-oriented form
of acting needed to preserve the rhythm of the verse, its cadence,
and not its uency. Therefore, the actors were instructed to act the
script by breaking the verse into short utterable units, thus depart-
ing from the mighty line of iambic pentameter. By avoiding the
cadence of the original verse-form, Mugur said, the actors would
learn to circumvent the text and evade the risk of giving the impres-
sion that they were dramatizing an obsolete spectacle in the roman-
ticized mode. This running away from the traditional verse-form
43
was, in Mugurs perception, a valid means of asserting the specta-
cles modernity, by showing a break with the convention of the ro-
mantic-mode interpretation of Hamlet. Mugur coined the traditional
declamatory interpretation of former times as tairist,
44
a term that
suggests the notion of larger-than-life acting meant to impress the
audience with emphatic tones. By contrast, his Hamlet (Sorin Leove-
anu) spoke with the intimacy of normal conversational ow, but had
the effect of hitting the audience in the solar plexus.
In distinguishing between text and performance and in showing
how the script was turned into theater, Mugur warned us about the
hybrid nature of drama, which since the nineteenth century had cre-
ated inconclusive debate in the separate elds of performance and
text. Through this production, he indirectly commented on how
Shakespeare was evoked to authorize the critic, or the director, or
received notions of theatrical practice. According to his notes,
Mugur wanted people to infer from this spectacle the state of alien-
ating insanity we all reached, meeting the border between normality
and the pathological. Mugur discriminated between page and stage
views of the play, each claiming a unique delity to the elusive
Shakespeare. He exploded the na vete of both views, which were
misleading for both readers and audience. There is no clear answer
as to Mugurs response regarding the validity of one view or another,
but the explanation lies in the directors choice of the author and
play. In choosing Shakespeare and Hamlet as the ultimate theatrical
statement of a lifetime dedicated to the stage, Mugur adroitly ma-
neuvered the semantic lapses that resulted from all these redeni-
tions of what others thought Shakespeare was. He tied up the
PAGE 217 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:14:44 PS
dialogic dilemma with a nal conclusive category: death, his own.
This directorial attitude to Hamlet
45
might be interpreted as an ex-
treme form of presentist implication in negotiating Shakespeares
play.
A memorable comment by a Romanian critic about Ciuleis pro-
duction of Hamlet helps us admit the idea that it is next to impossible
for any stage production, however exhaustive its director may want
it to be, to encompass the plays complexity. As Cristina Modreanu
says, Liviu Ciuleis re-visitation of Hamlet on the Romanian stage
looks like a family doctors visit to a patient whom nobody can diag-
nose correctly.
46
Could Shakespeare have envisaged such an effect
of his theater? We know what we are, but we cannot know what we
may be, or what may become of our actions. The eminent Romanian
poet Marin Sorescu wrote an essay entitled Monologue about Ham-
let, in which he wondered about the delicate psychological mech-
anism of Hamlet. The poet could not nd a satisfactory answer
regarding the heros complexity, and he even speculated on Shake-
speares ever having been aware of what he had created. The abys-
mal profundity of the soul is released, Sorescu wrote, and by and
by, step by step, look where we are. I think Shakespeare himself was
astonished at what had come out of his pen.
47
The Romanian
poets artistic mind intuited the eccentricity of creation and the bi-
zarre ways in which conscience makes cowards of us all. In a con-
densed paragraph, Sorescu abridged the plot in Hamlet and gave his
version of the reasons for the plays extraordinary popularity:
A bloody ghost comes up front and says Boo! Bernardo is startled.
Francisco is scared, Horatio is appalled. Hamlet is called on the scene
and is not frightened. He takes the phantom seriously, he thinks it is his
fathers, disappeared in mysterious circumstances . . . Once he believes
this, it is the end for him! The ghost annexes Hamlet and drags him
through ve acts like a slave. The spirit deprives Hamlet of his story. The
phantom comes out of the prompters trap door and drips into his ear
a poison that does not put to sleep or kill, but which has a much more
dramatic effect: it releases a form of ontological delirium for justice. A
paroxysmal commotion of the ego.
48
This extreme state of psychological excitement in the fashioning of
the self, observed by the Romanian poet concerning Hamlet, may
be the cause of the audiences deep involvement in the issues raised
by the play. Such an almost supernatural fascination with the multi-
faceted parallels of truth and the puzzles of personality shown in
performance is offered as an explanation for the plays popularity
with directors and audiences.
PAGE 218 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:14:44 PS
In a lecture on Hamlet published in Romania, Stephen Greenblatt
argues that the plays corrosive interiority resides in the move-
ment from revenge to remembrance. He infers that Shakespeare
was inuenced by the dispute between Catholics and Protestants re-
garding the burial of the dead and life after death. The revenge
theme became a play of remembrance in Shakespeares hands as a
result of the Catholic rites concerning the memorial of the dead and
purgatory, challenged in the writings of Simon Fish and abolished
by later Protestant practices. Greenblatt concludes that the space
of the Purgatory becomes the stage space, which Old Hamlets ghost
will continue to haunt.
49
This repeated remembrance on stage, I
reckon, has transformed the ghosts of old and young Hamlet into
perpetual haunters of consciences. It is said that every actors dream
is to interpret Hamlet and producing it suits every directors wish. It
is not my intention here to construct a series of greatestsfrom
Shakespeare as greatest playwright through Hamlet as the greatest
play to Hamlet as the greatest acting challenge. However, my belief
is that our fascination with this play sustains a form of revenge that
the ubiquitous ghost of Hamlet takes on us all. We cannot escape
being haunted by its remembrance and we try to revisit it in every
possible artistic conguration. However, by replaying the sanguinary
scenes in cultures and accents yet unknown we carry out exactly
what Shakespeare may have wanted us to do: we show more than we
can tell.
PAGE 219 ................. 11420$ $CH6 10-20-05 11:14:45 PS
7
Romanian Mental and
Theatrical Maps: Romances
THIS FRAGMENTED WORLD, ONLY APPARENTLY UNITED BY ADMINISTRATIVE
measures or sophisticated means of communication, seems to allow
less room for words and a greater need for factual and visual repre-
sentation. We might assume for a moment that a dramaturgical ver-
sion of the ancient, eccentric geographic economy related to
faraway places and the new geography based on scientic facts
and coherent mapping of the world are to be found in Shakespeare.
How, then, are these two conceptual modes related in the theater
world? In addition, what signicance would such a nding have for
our understanding of his theater? More particularly, how do the ro-
mances address and paraphrase the English Renaissance dramas in-
terpretation of the world beyond English shores, and of the
foreigners who inhabited those spaces? If the romances emphasize
nal union through initial dislocation and dissension, do they typify
a particular interpretation of territory and stage world? I will try to
answer such questions by viewing the theatrical representations of
Shakespeares romances in Romania. According to all the data avail-
able to Jacobean authors and audiences, this European country lay
at the margins of a well-charted but uninteresting elsewhere, in a
land that, though not totally alien, was rather eccentric and unin-
spiring. Shakespeare and his contemporaries had few notions about
the Balkans and the Eastern European area, and they did not refer
much to these places, except for the tangential contact through clas-
sical mythology. Conversely, when Shakespeare was appropriated by
Eastern European nations, he became a revered site of authority,
displaying a cultural centrality that could only be appreciated in re-
lation to these marginal spaces.
As if in unpremeditated response to the early modern English
lack of knowledge regarding the values and customs of this Eastern
European country, Romania has taken over in an internalized man-
ner the many forms of the Shakespearean interpretations. Transla-
PAGE 220
220
................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:36 PS
7: ROMANIAN MENTAL AND THEATRICAL MAPS: ROMANCES 221
tions, productions, and literary adaptations and criticism of Shake-
speares plays have become cornerstones for the development of the
Romanian national culture. When the international interpretations
of the plays expanded to the marginal areas of Europe in the nine-
teenth century, productions and translations of Shakespeare in Ro-
mania contributed to the redenition of the local language and
national theater. Unlike the other plays in the canon, however, the
romances were less abundantly represented in a theater that, against
all odds, had learnt the language of performance at the school of
Shakespeare. Dragos Protopopescu rst translated The Tempest in
1940, followed by a translation by Petre Solomon in 1958, which was
sponsored by the Communist regime and published at the State
Publishing House for Literature and Art. A translation of The Win-
ters Tale appeared in 1942 by the same prolic translator Dragos
Protopopescu, while Florian Nicolau translated Cymbeline as late as
1971. Not until the elaborate and scholarly edition of Shakespeares
Complete Works in nine volumes (198895), supervised by Leon Levit-
chi, did we have a published translation of the vexing Pericles.
Like the history of literary translations, the production record of
the romances is far from comparable with the other Shakespeare
plays. Those productions that have been mounted, however, remain
as landmarks in Romanian theater history. The 1979 production of
The Tempest directed by Liviu Ciulei at the Bulandra Theater in Bu-
charest, for instance, won the National Prize for the Theater in the
same year. Ciulei signed the scenography as well, and the Epilogue
scene showed Prospero as Ciulei reciting the farewell lines. The di-
rector stood in the middle of an unearthly Renaissance decor com-
posed of the scattered debris of odd pieces. There was a medieval
armor on the oor looking like a dead soldier, a sextant, a telescope,
numerous mantles and curtains hanging on illusory walls, and a
huge replica of the Da Vinci sketch that had come to symbolize the
human inscription in the universe. Amid this eerie collection of an-
cient, medieval, and Renaissance paraphernalia of knowledge and
empowerment, the artist begged the audience to be released from
the bonds of his own creation with the help of their good hands.
So ample was the general applause for this remarkable produc-
tion of The Tempest in Liviu Ciuleis interpretation
1
that the Bulandra
Theater replayed it on 21 October 1983 with a different cast. Five
years after the initial representation, the critic reviewing this one
commented that the Romanian audiences for this exceptional spec-
tacle fall into two categories: those who saw Ciuleis version of The
Tempest for the rst time, and those who came to see it again and
again.
2
The production sustained the message of Renaissance ap-
PAGE 221 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:37 PS
preciation of reason, civility, and urbane regeneration. The transla-
tion by Nichita Rapaport and Nina Cassian spoke in clear rhymed
verse to those present. In the crude light ooding the stage, the pro-
tagonist addressed each member of the audience, asking each to
lay aside the veil of illusion and walk on the clear path of self-
condence. By showing them that all humans depended on their
fellows, the artist made the case of lucid intelligence, which should
oppose conicting hostility. This message was conveyed in the pe-
riod of full-force Communist dominance during the Ceausescu re-
gime, when the laws of reason had no connection with everyday life,
and where fear, treachery, and aggressiveness were the prevalent
psychological modes. Prosperos ctitious island was the refuge of
deviant members of humanity, coming from a dissolute external
world where the rules of destruction and treachery of brother
against brother prevailed.
The characters in this enchanted isle were symbolic gures repre-
senting the social structure in the resembling island of the imagi-
nary country of Romania, lost in the Red Sea of Communist power.
Ariel (Florian Pittis) represented the restless intellectual, torn be-
tween the sense of allegiance as a citizen and his aspiration for indi-
vidual freedom. All those intellectuals whose minds resembled an
airy spirit in Communist Romania could only feel prisoners in that
world, caught in the pine clove of Marxist ideology, or playing the
game of the overpowering Russian dominance. Miranda (Mariana
Mihut) still wondered at her brave new world, which, in her inno-
cence, she had not come to know in all its ugliness yet. Caliban (Vic-
tor Rebengiuc) looked like the upstart Communist Party leader, a
hybrid creature limited in his obtuse aggressiveness, showing signs
of a primitive but hard-hearted cunning in pursuing his selsh ends.
Prospero (Petre Gheorghiu) was pathetic in his tolerant approach
toward the faults of his fellow beings. He might have represented
the tragic resignation of the Romanian artist, who felt alienated and
out of touch with his creative will. Antonio (Marcel Iures) was the
malec character, whose intrigues obscured all sense of justice in
the imaginary world of the play. He was dutifully attended by a
stately but self-effacing Alonso (Mircea Basta) and an intrigue-loving
Sebastian (Ion Cocieru). These Shakespearean characters mapped
out the social conguration of Romania at the beginning of the
1980s, when the theaters subversive potential was used extensively.
Ciulei seemed dissatised with what the Communist regime claimed
to be a splendid and respectable world based on the model of the
new human being. His version of The Tempest showed the moral
insecurity characterizing each individual in those times.
PAGE 222 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:37 PS
Eight years after this remarkable production by Liviu Ciulei, the
Targu Mures National Theater produced The Tempest directed by
Kincses Elemer (1987). The theater critic Victor Parhon made a sig-
nicant introduction to his review of this version, emphasizing meta-
phorically the reiteration of this last Shakespearean play along the
centuries and in various national interpretations:
A testament play, The Tempest carries on its specic distancing from the
real circumstances of the initial production, a fact that is probably more
important than all the parables and allegories it contains. It seems that
Shakespeares genius has been tempted to look once more into the mir-
ror. The face reected does not matter any more because, in any case, it
seems alien to him, yet he recognizes his own smile. It belongs to him,
enigmatic but denitely representative. Should this be the reason why
this play attracts, in an almost magical way, all the makers of spectacles,
even though very few dare reect themselves, in their turn, in The Tem-
pests mirror?
3
The critic explains the scarcity of productions of The Tempest on the
Romanian artistic scene by the high quality of directorial expertise
and actors talent involved in such a project. In addition, Parhon
gives a visually specic representation of the theatrical recurrence
and renewal reaching the audiences with each individual produc-
tion of the play. Different as these productions of The Tempest may
be, they are all aesthetic reections of the same creative personality.
Shakespeares self-irony and quizzical mood have become an essen-
tial part of our understanding and liking of him.
Elemers personal reection in this plays mirror was one that
showed a younger and more boisterous artistic personality. Not yet
at the age of needing an introverted perspective, this directors spec-
tacle was less interiorized and self-analytical than Ciuleis previous
representation of The Tempest. The directors motivations in this
1987 production lay somewhere in the terrestrial zones of how the
play dealt with the real world, than in the fate of the artist and his
inscription in an antagonistic universe. Therefore, this production
had a clear, mundane message, with political reverberations ad-
dressed to this contemptible end of the Communist period. The
plays idea of the interchangeability and reversibility of the real and
fantastic spaces was still there, but the director chose to give the real
dimension politically signicant undertones. Prospero was a rather
authoritative and self-centered ruler who had a special relationship
with the denitely female spirit Ariel, interpreted by an actress. The
magus was aware that, without this spirits help, he could no longer
maintain his magic attributes, and would be forced to revert to the
PAGE 223 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:38 PS
real world of a mercenary and contaminated Milan. The rhetorically
grandiloquent passages in Prosperos speeches signify differently
when viewed in the context of the diverse previous productions of
this play in the declamatory mode. Ariels relationship with her mas-
ter was very ambiguous, suggesting a potentially sexual and obscure
initiatory transguration of the spirit.
Shakespeare has made it possible that the performative fate of The
Tempest be dependent on Caliban as much as on Prospero and his
magic universe. It seems that in Shakespeares world, like in ours,
the presence of such creatures is necessary for the denition of the
elusive self. He knew enough of the way this life works in order to
make his created globe look like it. All we can do is see this evidence
and believe it, admitting that Shakespeare is always right. Calibans
character in Elemers vision functions in a different semantic code,
as opposed to the general mode of the spectacle. While Prospero,
Ariel, Ferdinand, and Miranda evolved in a decor of dream-like
white gossamer curtains typifying an illusory realm, Caliban entered
the stage in a greasy overall, wearing a funny beret. Those who saw
him would know this was the representative uniform of the Roma-
nian working class hero. This illustrative member of the proletar-
iat, whom the Communist authorities wanted to present in
hyperbolic images, spoke in coarse language and was very amusing.
In fact, this Caliban had a kind of slapstick humor every time he was
on stage, but the menace implied by his presence was very physical.
In a nal dumb show, the director presented an aftermath of Cali-
bans reinstatement as the sovereign of the island. After Prosperos
departure to Milan, Caliban destroyed mercilessly everything that
represented civilization in the land. In his frantic search of the
magic wand, which he thought would make him the omnipotent
master of a deserted world, Caliban demolished all the symbols of
Prosperos artifacts by tearing down the vulnerable, white, imsy
fabrics of life.
In destroying the emblems of civility and deference, this ruthless
Caliban felt indeed lord of the island, even to the point of nding
and trying to use Prosperos magic rod. The audiences of 1987,
when Elemers version of The Tempest was rst performed, lived in a
period when the Communist regime, after having destroyed for
forty years all the signs of previous civility in Romania, including
every shred of private property, seemed very certain of their unlim-
ited authority. Like as many Calibans on the abandoned island of
Romania, they had shown what it meant to destroy all values in the
name of unlimited power, disregarding everything but self-sufcient
personal ends. This production of The Tempest showed the countrys
PAGE 224 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:38 PS
oppressive state of destruction and sent a warning against the totali-
tarian regime. Two years after this initial production of The Tempest,
in 1989, those who were in favor of democracy chose to dismiss Cali-
bans rule and return the island back to the honest benet of civility.
After fourteen years, however, the current political and social situa-
tion in Romania shows us that Shakespeare is invariably right. Cali-
bans will always exist, but at least now fewer of them can boast
exclusive prerogatives of power, though blessed with substantial
bank accounts.
Pericles is an odd play, and Dinu Cernescu chose to produce it at
the Giulesti Theater, maybe thinking it would have an extravagant
meaning in the theatrical panorama of 1981 Romania. In reviewing
this production, a Romanian critic admits the fact that this may not
be an exemplary play in the canon, and its insufciencies have led
to its exclusion form the First Folio, but this is still Shakespeare. As
Ghitulescu puts it, It is self-evident that all titans, be they Homer,
Shakespeare, or Goethe, even though dormant, are still surrounded
with an ever-attractive aura of grandeur and poesy. Admitting that
Cerimon is not Prospero, nor Dionyza Lady Macbeth, nor Marina
Miranda or Imogen, these are characters who bear the imprint of
the lions claw.
4
If the selection for performance of any Shake-
speare play needs any justication, the critic argues, the reasons for
Cernescus option lie in Marinas attractive personality and the
plays hopeful, even robust, ending. However, the director modied
the text radically by eliminating Gower as narrator and, thus, alter-
ing the mise en abyme effect created by the presence of the medieval
poet. It is true that Romanian audiences of the eighties would not
have had much background literary information about Gower to ap-
preciate his presence, but the plays narrative weight was lost. More-
over, this chorus gure could communicate more lively the offstage
events of a naval battle, a shipwreck, or the report of Antiochuss
death by re from heaven. Instead, Cernescu insisted on the deux-
ex-machina solutions of the conict in the play, when the goddess
Diana tells Pericles to go to her temple in Ephesus and narrate his
experiences.
Another innovation brought by Cernescu in this production of
Pericles was the replacement of the tournament scene with a panto-
mime of doubtful taste. Though the need to highlight the theater
metaphor may have caused this directorial intervention, the abrupt
and condensed belligerent ballet seemed out of place in the serene
Pentapolis. The swarming low-world of the Mytilene brothels was
also grotesquely emphasized, to the extent that one gets the idea
that such kinds of immoderate and vicious exchanges were the only
PAGE 225 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:39 PS
characteristic of society in this part of the world. Cernescu offered a
Brechtian view of cripples, beggars, prostitutes, and pimps teeming
on this small island, probably intending to make a parallel with his
present-day Romania. Actually, the director created three distinct lo-
cations in the play. There was the ideal world of Pentapolis, with its
opulent and uncontaminated classical atmosphere. Here, the good
king Simonides looked like a silver-robed Plato reigning in his per-
fect Republic and Thaisa was like a white caryatid supporting a col-
onnaded Erechteum, emerging from a column-like white curtain.
Then, there was the world of Tharsus, practical and mercantile, but
also raided by famine and pirates. At the lowest end of this illustra-
tive human comedy, there was the corrupted Mytilene, which suffo-
cated all hope. Cernescus contrastive message did not end here.
The initial and nal verses, borrowed from sonnets 129 (Thex-
pense of spirit in a waste of shame) and 50 (My grief lies onward
and my joy behind) respectively, left an open-ended note of dis-
couragement and suffering. This was in total contrast with the plays
formal happy ending, and led the audiences to think about the cur-
rent state of affairs in present-day Romania, when state ofcial cor-
ruption was at its highest, while ordinary honest citizens had no
hope left.
After the 1989 democratic mutation in Romania, the peoples
hopes were too high indeed, and in times of excess the taste for ex-
travagant productions surfaced again. This time, Romanian direc-
tors played on the contradictions and anachronisms in the
romances, probably wishing to highlight the intemperance and
overindulgence of the modern world. The 1994 production of The
Winters Tale at the Bulandra Theater in Bucharest, translated and
adapted by the director Alexandru Darie, played freely with the no-
tions of space and character in the play. Starting from the title, the
entire plot was constructed as a premonitory vision that Mamillus
recounted to his mother, in the form of a tale or like a dream on a
cold winter night. This strategy opened the possibility of productive
implications in terms of the relation between real and imaginary
spaces. The fantastic, the improbable, the implausible became natu-
rally accepted in these unusual locations. Leontess ery and illogi-
cal passion developed in a supposedly cold Sicilia, an image that was
totally inadequate in terms of the stereotypical construction of Sicily
in Jacobean and in modern times as a warm and richly fruitful coun-
try. The pictorial sets evoked discreetly a number of famous wintry
paintings, such as Breugels Winter. The music by Henry Purcell was
part of the structural unity of the spectacle, marking the moments
of dramatic intensity. The stage space was locked in these two forms
PAGE 226 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:40 PS
of artistic representation, music and painting, in order to highlight
the quality of artifact manifested by drama itself, suspended midway
between an imagined narrative of a dream, and a ctive reality of
representation.
Mamilluss transitory scenic presence was assimilated to that of
Time, an equally ephemeral truth-seeker of the play. The transloca-
tion of imaginary spaces was harmonized with variable alterations in
time, in order to synthesize the vacuum of the theatrical representa-
tion, which absorbed any attempt at denite determinations or real-
istic geography. The fact that the same actress who played Mamillus
narrating the story was cast in the role of Perdita closed the circle
of signication. The director emphasized that, like any individual
conception of time or space, our notions of identity were equally
elusive. The dream-like quality of this particular production and the
blank images of frozen spaces tended to slow the motions of the
spectacle. Dynamism was suppressed, giving way to the inert confu-
sion of dreams. By contrast, the lively Bohemia at the sheep-shearing
feast disclosed a different dramatic space, punctuated with distinctly
warmer music and an altered pictorial setting. Shakespeare rewrote
the story of Robert Greenes Pandosto by reversing the positions of
the two kingdoms, making Sicily rather than Bohemia the locus of
the initiating action, and by changing the names of the characters.
In the same way, the director of this Romanian production altered
the audiences expectations of a warm and summery Sicilia, in con-
trast to a wintry northern Bohemia. Space, duration, and individual-
ity were never what the audience might have expected them to be.
A radically innovative Romanian production of Pericles, at the
Odeon Theater (Bucharest 1995) admitted no boundaries to the
geographic and ethical space on stage. The title announced pru-
dently Pericles after William Shakespeare. The director, Alexandru
Hausvater, played on the intervention of the everyday irrational situ-
ations in the workings of individual destiny. When confronted with
incest and moral dissolution, Pericles was not amazed and he did
not try to ght evil according to the common moral expectations of
a hero. He thought he could devise a stratagem of retreat and sub-
versive containment, but the audience saw that he was not the au-
thor of his own plan. This particular Pericles was the actor of a
multifaceted cosmic scenario, according to which all individual ac-
tions and projects were clearly dened. Gower was the tyrannical
Commanditore, a cruel and fantasizing director, who ordered actions
and emotions according to his own hallucinatory games of evil. The
stage space and audience space became one, and all were forced to
obey the compelling script. In an authoritarian voice, Gower or-
PAGE 227 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:40 PS
dered the audience to enter and take their seats. He directed blasts
of noisy music toward them and ordered the movement of the num-
bered bodies on stage, selecting the numbers that were allowed to
become names. More or less like a god, Gower confused the time
scheme and changed the sex of his characters as he pleased. He
showed that he belonged to an eternity of violence that could not
be hindered by individual details.
Number 5, Pericles, was a betrayed king, an exiled vagrant, and a
hopeful pilgrim in search of happiness. He toured an eternally am-
bivalent European space where nothing was stable. The cheering
crowds of carefree tourists around the Eiffel Tower alternated with
lm sequences showing the ruins in Sarajevo. The signicant sets
and the rapidly moving succession of lm images gave surprising
amplitude to the scenic space. Pericles traveled almost incessantly,
and he stopped to rest only in certain anonymous places, where he
would nd a wife or distribute humanitarian aid. Tyrants were the
same everywhere in his peregrinations, whether they were heads of
state like Cleon, the governor of Tarsus, or brothel masters. Ordi-
nary people were visibly similar in cowardice and moral degrada-
tion; they were mere interchangeable numbers, objects animated by
the imperious voice that determined their fragmented existence. Ul-
timately, these theatrical slaves freed themselves from Gowers irra-
tional authorial tyranny, but this was done in such a frenzy of jarring
music and noise that the moment of supposed emancipation could
only increase the general discord and irritation.
Hausvater aimed to disturb the audiences passive condition of
viewers of the spectacle from their comfortable velvet seats. He ex-
tended the stage space aggressively by shocking the spectators with
the grating intensity of the noise, the harsh and turbulent scenic
movement, and the pinching difculty of the riddles. However, by
invading the viewers personal space through the assault on their
senses, little was accomplished in point of intense participation. Ag-
gressed on all sides, the spectator experienced the rejection of the
whole. After seeing productions such as this, one needed to be re-
minded of the distance between stage and audience. In truth, this is
only a play, as Shakespeare invariably helps us to understand. Some-
times, he used the limited space of his stage to show that this is a
small world after all. Particularly in the erring geography of the ro-
mances, the signicance of the stage space in visualizing dramatic
locations became especially relevant. However, Hausvaters produc-
tion of Pericles made too much use of new and innovative stage inven-
tions and onstage activities to suggest active movement and shifts of
location. Instead of paying attention to Shakespeares use of the
PAGE 228 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:41 PS
stage and realization of character through performance, the direc-
tor took too many liberties with Shakespeare, falling into the trap of
contra-textual interpretation. Apart from the fact that the romance
genre in itself allowed a number of authorial liberties, which Shake-
speare exploited copiously, the Romanian director transgressed
even these permeable boundaries and created a theatrical hybrid.
A multicultural 1997 production of The Tempest at the National
Theater Bucharest,
5
directed by Karin Beier, was an attempt at do-
mesticating the Babel language anarchy through the theater. The
twelve actors spoke eight languages (French, English, Croat, Polish,
Romanian, Finnish, Italian, and German), and they seemed to com-
municate excellently through the Shakespearean common language
of theatrical space and rhythm. Prospero and Miranda were the only
characters who spoke the same languageRomanianthroughout
the spectacle. Their identity was unaltered by formal topographical
and linguistic conventions. The shipwrecked politicians disputed
their useless and ephemeral power in various languages. Regardless
of sex, they were wearing modern suits and ties, parading the sterile
political hypocrisy. When they were starving, Alonso, Sebastian, and
the lot auctioned the few tomatoes one of them kept in her brief-
case. They held grandiloquent speeches, engineered obscure coups
detat, and in general were arguing constantly.
Beiers The Tempest started with a European summit. Antonio,
Alonso, Sebastian, Gonzalo, and Francisco discussed a tomato, the
symbol of a united Europe. Their verbose orations included several
European languages in a single utterance. The parody applied to
the pretentious rhetoric used on such ofcial occasions, and the
actors employed signicant gestures relating to national and rela-
tional specicity. For instance, Alonso embraced Ferdinand, a Polish
actor, according to the Slav fashion, and Sebastian kissed Alonsos
hands in the manner of the Sicilian Maa. During the convivial ban-
quet offered by Ariel, hidden resentments and nationalistic preju-
dices became open outrageous verbal assaults, directed at the
former allies. Alonso, a Finnish actor, was told that the Finns were
no better than the Russians were, and that they drank too much.
Sebastian, an Italian actor, told Antonio, an English actress, that En-
glishwomen were sexually inhibited. Antonio and Gonzalo, a French
actress, told Sebastian that Italian men were said to think only with
what they had below their belts. The affronted Sebastian got back at
Gonzalo with the malicious observation that French women used
too much perfume because they did not like to wash. This was Karin
Beiers version of a united Europe. As for Shakespeare . . .
Caliban spoke the twelfth-century Upper Middle German, an ar-
PAGE 229 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:41 PS
chaic form of modern German, and this linguistic individuality
placed him in the space of myth and legend. The primitive and de-
posed former king of the island inhabited a territory that was no
more, and the only idiom he had learned from the colonizing Pros-
pero was the abusive language. We know this from Shakespeare, but
Karin Beiers Caliban cursed loudly and clearly, using the richest Ro-
manian oaths. His abusive and aggressive attitude jolted the audi-
ence out of their snug and precarious conceptions about master and
slave, questioning Prosperos right to invade his land and personal-
ity. With Ferdinand and Miranda, however, words did not matter,
but it was not certain how the self-absorbed space of their love was
going to change when they were transported into the real world.
The symbolic game of chess paraphrasing the love venture was made
of much giving and taking, insolent cheating, and it was eloquently
open-ended. Prospero, the apparent master and all-powerful magus,
was exiled in his own utopia, like the other characters. He was nei-
ther the victorious hero nor the director-conquistador of a magical
theater-island. In the end, life appeared to be accepted for what it
wasbe it a deceptive dream or an absurd conict of power.
Ariel was the authentic hero in Karin Beiers conception. He was
the master of the universal language of music, and the only source
of peaceful harmony in the discordant multilingual insanity. Only
seraphic sounds emerged from this airy spirit, the voice of pure art.
He remained free to roam the island, away from the expropriating
and polluting presence of humans. The abstract space of music con-
ferred a necessary refuge of peace and truth. The director of this
multinational production in Romania shrunk the illusory spatial co-
ordinates of the stage-island to an abstraction. From the incoherent
cacophony of political power and ambiguous rhetoric that domi-
nated the initial scenes, the imaginative space on stage diminished
drastically, no longer an inadequate dream, but a melodious form
of perfect art. However, by overexposing the issues of national and
cultural difference to signify European diversity and potential dis-
sension, Beier created a visible discord between text and enactment
in the performance. Too much display of cultural diversity at the
expense of the text involves the risk of having us see a uniquely rele-
vant interrogation of the status quo, while betraying an implicit im-
position of directorial authority upon Shakespeare.
The Romanian productions of the Shakespearean romances men-
tioned above dealt with the concept of space and movement from
their directors perspectives. What they had in common, however,
was the assumption that this theater was concerned with doing
things not only with words, but also with people and their under-
PAGE 230 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:42 PS
standing of the spaces they inhabited, or imagined that the others
lived in. In some instances, the audiences were aggressed and forced
to accept that there was a conicting world out there, like in Haus-
vaters offensive production of Pericles. In other productions, they
were lulled into a nal acceptance of harmony after the harsh move-
ment of power, like in Beiers interpretation of The Tempest. In all
situations, however, the directors wanted their audiences to create
their own emotional images of the real world beyond stage, which
Shakespeares theater only triggered into being. Thus, Shakespeare
ceased to represent the original authoritative dramatic text and he
entered a dialogue of diversity, in which text, director, actor, and
audience played with the increasingly volatile notion of meaning in
a ludic multiplicity. While the true Shakespeare was implicitly
assumed to exist, like an epitomized item or an accepted but ulti-
mately arbitrary postulation of no xed occupancy, current Roma-
nian productions of Shakespeare in general, and the romances in
particular, approached the plays surreptitiously, in a gypsy-like man-
ner. Although they partly used the traditional text as a basis of their
extravagant productions, Romanian directors were no longer inter-
ested in achieving a denition of this ideal Platonic Shakespeare
any more than Romanian-origin gypsies of that period were willing
to relate to Western constraints of social behavior. Directors just
used the system, regardless of what others thought Shakespeare was,
and were more concerned with what they thought Shakespeare was.
Writing about two productions of Twelfth Night presented at the
Madrid Festival during the 199697 season, Graham Keith Gregor
mentions the Spanish Shakespeare-man a, which is a phrase
coined in the Spanish national daily El Pa s.
6
In suggesting some pos-
sible reasons for the Shakespeare boom in Spain, Gregor draws a
convincing image of the appropriation of the English playwright by
the Spanish culture in the latter third of the twentieth century. This
thriving of Shakespeare on the Spanish stage and page was fostered
by the spread of English as a second language in the late 1970s,
which led to the publics better acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon cul-
ture and its most hallowed icon. In addition, a burgeoning academic
Shakespeare industry resulted in a large number of excellent
translations published by scholars such as A
ngel-Luis Pujante and

M. A. Conejero. Gregor brings a broadly social and political argu-
ment in support of the widespread appreciation of Shakespeare in
Spain. Since 1975, when Spain re-emerged from its historic isola-
tion, the return to democracy has brought political recognition and
economic prosperity. Producing the plays of authors whose dra-
matic discourse seemed best to reect the aspirations of the modern
PAGE 231 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:42 PS
European democratic state necessarily enhanced the prevalence of
Shakespeare among many other playwrights. A third and equally
pertinent reason for Shakespeares popularity is found in the facility
with which Shakespeares blank verse, in the best modern transla-
tions, had been adopted by Spanish actors because it seemed less
taxing than the recitation of rhyme-based Spanish classical drama.
After listing all these reasons conducing to Shakespeares unprece-
dented popularity in Spain after 1975, Gregor afrms that Shake-
speare has thus not only become the best-known and most successful
of the foreign dramatists but has even supplanted native authors
(both modern and classical) as one of the most performable play-
wrights.
7
The justications listed by Gregor in speaking of the reception of
Shakespeare in Spain can be successfully extrapolated when refer-
ring to the integration of Shakespeare in Romanian culture after
1975, when the appropriation of the British bard embraced all areas
of the national theater and literature. There are few similarities and
direct inuences between Romanian and Spanish cultures in point
of Shakespeare reception, except for one deriving from the com-
mon origin of the two romance languages. Spanish theatrical
troupes in the nineteenth century did not venture as far to the east
as Romania, and the dominating inuence of the French and Ger-
man appropriations of Shakespeare in the period precluded any
Spanish-Romanian connection in this direction. However, it seems
that most European cultures in the late twentieth century have been
united by the adoption of Shakespeare as a standard-bearer of Euro-
pean ideals of independent thinking and civility. All the insecurities,
fears, and aspirations toward the modern European constitutional
state could nd an outlet and were more easily conveyed through
the international and democratic language of Shakespeares the-
ater. As Rafael Portillo and Manuel Gomez Lara have pointed out,
the result of the popularity of Shakespeare in modern Spain was a
form of identication, through Shakespeare, with some of the issues
(both aesthetic and moral) that affected other citizens of the Euro-
pean Community.
8
Though different from Spain in point of social and political cir-
cumstances, Romania naturally, and probably fortuitously, repli-
cated the cultural redemption achieved through Shakespeare by the
other European states. In 1975, Spain was emerging from a state of
political and cultural isolation, while Romania was at the highest
point of segregation from the rest of Europe because of the Commu-
nist regime. Although the dictator Ceausescu pretended to adopt a
liberalized stance in international policy, the internal economic and
PAGE 232 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:43 PS
political situation was worse than ever, since the Communist govern-
ment was adamant in trying to pay Romanias international debt en-
tirely at the expense of the people. However, in this decade, the
absorption of Shakespeare by the national culture was at its highest,
equaled only by the ourishing of productions during the nineties.
Offering the perspective of an East European who explains Shake-
speare popularity, Boika Sokolova explores the importance of the
Bard in Eastern Europe during the second half of the twentieth cen-
tury. Sokolova explains this prevalence of the British playwright
through the dialogical nature of drama and the position of the the-
atrical institution in European society.
9
While discussing signicant
productions of Hamlet in the former Communist countries (among
which the Romanian Cernescus Hamlet), Sokolova afrms that Ham-
let had been an instrument of self-analysis across Europe, repre-
senting national concernsbe they German, Russian, Polish, or
othersat moments of crisis.
10
It is difcult to produce a viable
generalization when speaking of Shakespeares lives as given by vari-
ous nations and periods. Notwithstanding, at least in Romania,
things cultural were, as in most countries of Central and Eastern Eu-
rope, directed toward the values of the Western world, despite the
political isolation under the Communist regimes.
In examining the health situation of the live body named Shake-
speare as transplanted into the dynamic being of Romanian cul-
ture, this study is far from being able to give denite proclamations.
Writing of the historical factors that inuence, condition, and some-
times control the production of any Shakespeare script, H. R.
Coursen favors the subjective answer to the question of how the his-
toricist critic can determine the relevant historical context of a par-
ticular production of Shakespeare.
11
Seeing theater historians and
critics as individuals who discern the ow of history as it moves each
of them personally, not as it may move others, or cultures, or coun-
tries, Coursen takes a position of relativity regarding critical judg-
ment. He places a series of scripts and performances, including
movie, television, and stage productions, in certain historical con-
texts, but he sees them as my history
12
actually Coursens. It is
history seen by him (or possibly others) from the historical present,
and his vision of the historical past will change as the historical pres-
ent becomes history. A similar relativity of perception, or present-
ism
13
as it has come to be called in current critical practice, informs
this account of Shakespeares reception by the Romanian culture.
However, some critical statements could not escape the devil of gen-
eralizations, especially when trying to give a coherent expose of the
chronological integration of Shakespeares translations in nine-
PAGE 233 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:44 PS
teenth-century Romania, or the appropriation of the comedies or
tragedies by the early twentieth-century national theater. Trying to
confront the issue of what happens to Shakespeares script in partic-
ular productions, my analyses of the Romanian directors choices
and their rewards in performance have been permanently informed
by this kind of intellectual and emotional subjectivity.
The critiques of certain productions happening in my mature life-
time, and which I could get to see, are the result of a specic reply
belonging to a particular spectator and auditor who has the ability to
respond creatively to a range of theatrical choices. As for the earlier
productions, especially those from the Communist fties and sixties,
my only recorded sources were the theatrical reviews of the respec-
tive period, badly marred by the heavily ideologizing Marxist models
required at the time from any kind of cultural response. However,
my knowledge of the social and political circumstances in that time
has been improved by later readings and by the general understand-
ing ltered through personal experience. Therefore, I have been
able to discern between the critics diplomatic attempts of going
below and around the Communist censorship and convey more
than the written text would imply. Thus, the original Shakespeare
text of a certain production in the Communist period has been
subjected to a process of triple interpretation. First, the directors
authorial intent, according to which almost each production, partic-
ularly Shakespeares, was meant as a dissident response to the un-
wanted Communist regime. Then, my analysis took into account
some pictures of the productions and the reviewers interpretations,
which described the productions general theatrical coordinates
without pointing out its seditious aspect. Moreover, the critics of the
Communist period tried to cloak anti-government meanings under
the guise of generalizing and at commentary. Finally, I have sub-
mitted critical interpretations to an attentive examination, in order
to discern all the traps and pitfalls laid before the heedless censor-
ship reader, but visible to the observant commentator.
In anatomizing the transmutation process of Shakespeares script
into performance, Robert Weimann makes the distinction between
the contents of the script and the elements of performance. Wei-
mann describes locus and platea as modes of authorizing dramatic
discourse on what he calls the Elizabethan platform stage: locus
is associated with . . . what and who was represented in the dramatic
world and platea with what and who was representing that world.
14
In its simplest form, from the point of view of performance criticism,
the distinction might be between locusthe script as received, and
platea the script as might be interpreted. Although critics are likely
PAGE 234 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:44 PS
to nd this interpretation somewhat reductive, the central contrast
seems to be between the authors script and the director and actors
interpretation of that script. However, considering the Latin terms
literally, locus also means locality, region, country, while platea is the
marketplace or the public space of performance. Therefore, these
terms can be interpreted differently when examining the manner in
which Shakespeare was localized in Romanian early translations or
productions in the past forty years.
The integration of this study in the Shakespeare and/in variety
seems to be inevitable up to a point. Examining the relatively large
number of studies concerned with Shakespeare and Italy, Manfred
Pster sees this conjunctive genre of critical approach as limited
to a contextual interpretation, remaining arrested in the indenite
limbo of background.
15
Pster considers the Shakespeare-and-Italy
line of research as a case of the law of diminishing returns, ac-
cording to which the more information scholars gather concerning
Renaissance Italy and the Elizabethans understanding of this coun-
try, the less insight is offered into the plays of Shakespeare and his
contemporaries.
16
Discussing the rather limiting contributions ana-
lyzing Shakespeare and Italy from the perspective of the history of
ideas, the monograph sort of approach, Pster advocates for a line
of research that would observe aesthetic considerations of the theat-
rical medium or of genre. Considering the tension implied in Rob-
ert Weimanns spatial dialectic of locus and platea, any critical
approach should look for the underlying opposition of England and
Italy in Shakespeares plays as inscribed into the disruptive hetero-
geneity of the theatrical space.
17
Keeping Psters notes among the
intellectual and methodological antecedents of my approach, this
study considers Shakespeares heterogeneous integration in the Ro-
manian culture, particularly at the point of contact with the dra-
matic world.
It is visible that the volatility of the romances could better encom-
pass the amplitude and irregularity of foreign dramatic spaces: the
here, there, and nowhere of performance locality necessary for the
dramatization of a liminal Eastern European space. It is by no means
incidental that the actual naming of a (already dead) Transylvanian,
the Panonians and the Dalmatians, or of Bohemia and Russia
18
for
that matter appears in Shakespeares romances, which display a
strong a-topical and atemporal dramatic relevance. Thus, it is safe to
assume that for the Jacobean audiences attending the performance
of one of Shakespeares romances, the mentioning of these names
sounded exotic, triggering connotations of a vilied geographic and
ethnic space. This myth-making process is similar to the later accep-
PAGE 235 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:45 PS
tance of Draculas name, associated with Transylvania and Romania
in the Anglo-Saxon Western world.
19
Regardless of the historical,
ethnic, and social reality of the region allegedly harboring the Dra-
cula myth, the Western culture has assimilated the geographic re-
gion encompassing most of Romanias territory with the literary
parable created by a nineteenth-century Irish writer
20
of a gothic
novel.
Interestingly enough, the people of this area are not seeing them-
selves through the mirror of the Dracula cultural prototype. For
commercial reasons, aware that this is what Western tourists want to
see in Romania, the Dracula story is being reiterated at the appro-
priate sites. However, when a symbolic cultural identication is re-
quired, Romanians look at themselves rather through the reecting
paradigm of Western cultural values, best represented in the popu-
lar consciousness by the Shakespeare tradition. Paradoxically
enough, in what most of the Western world thinks to be Dracula
land, people feel inclined to adhere to the social and cultural values
of civility and democracy by adopting the Shakespeare model, trans-
ferred from the stage at various levels of social and cultural life. In
the past twenty years, Shakespeare has become a paradigm of the
theater and of culture in Romania as well as a vehicle for exporting
Romanian theatrical expertise abroad, through the international-
ized language of Shakespeare in performance. In a country more
than twice the size of Hungary, and double in population, surpassed
only by Poland of the Eastern European countries as regards surface
and inhabitants, the prevalence of Shakespeare over many national
and international playwrights has led to the existence of many
events related to his theater. Besides the frequent current produc-
tions, there is an international Shakespeare Theater Festival every
two years, a yearly Shakespeare conference for students, and several
academic events related to Shakespeare studies. It appears that, fol-
lowing the existing globalization of culture, what used to be con-
strued as the remote Dracula land of vampires and bloody deeds has
turned into the Shakespeare land of Western civility and human
concern, whose people are willing to learn the lesson of modernity
through Shakespeares theater mainly, among other cultural mat-
ters.
PAGE 236 ................. 11420$ $CH7 10-20-05 11:14:46 PS
Notes
Chapter 1. Mapping Shakespeares Globe
in a Global World
1. Stanley Wells, foreword to Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe, ed. A.
Luis Pujante and Ton Hoenselaars, 79 (Newark: University of Delaware Press,
2003), 7.
2. Wells, foreword, 9. See also Balz Engler, Constructing Shakespeare in Eu-
rope, in Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe, 2639. Engler proposes the
term re-production (28) instead of Brian Vickerss controversial appropria-
tion when discussing the European inscriptions of Shakespeare.
3. Andrew Gordon and Bernhard Klein, eds., Literature, Mapping, and the Politics
of Space in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3.
4. Ibid.
5. K. Feig, Richness and Poverty, Landlords and Peasants: the Magnicence
and Misery of Ethnic Diversity, in Eastern Europe: A Multicultural Arena, http://
www.omnibusol.com/easteurope.html, Internet Book Copyright, K. Feig, last full
upgrade August 2001 (accessed February 28, 2005).
6. John Gillies, The scene of cartography in King Lear, in Literature, Mapping,
and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain, ed. Andrew Gordon and Bernhard
Klein, 10937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 122.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 123.
9. An image of Dacia, appearing in Orteliuss 1595 Latin edition, entitled Daci-
arum, Moesiarumque, Vetus Descriptio, can be viewed at the Romanian Academy Library
Web page http://www.bar.acad.ro/www_rom/ortelius.html (accessed March 12,
2005). This page represents one of the seventy maps and fty-seven plates of Orteli-
uss atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
10. Balz Engler, Constructing Shakespeare in Europe, in Four Hundred Years of
Shakespeare in Europe, 31.
11. Ibid., 32.
12. Dennis Kennedy, Shakespeare and the Cold War, in Four Hundred Years of
Chapter 2. Early Translations
of Shakespeare in Romania
1. Janet Adelman, Iagos Alter Ego: Race as Projection in Othello, Shakespeare
Quarterly 48 (1997): 136.
2. Daniel J. Vitkus, Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation
PAGE 237
237
................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:44 PS
238 NOTES
of the Moor, Shakespeare Quarterly 48 (1997): 147. For a summary of early modern
texts that include English accounts of Turkish culture, see Samuel C. Chew, The
Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1937), 100186. Another study is A. J. Hoenselaars, The Elizabe-
thans and the Turk at Constantinople, Cahiers E
lisabethains 47 (1995): 2942.

Hoenselaars argues that the negative references to the Turk in English Renaissance
drama derive not from militant Christian discourse but from the inadequacy arising
from the conict between the desire to subdue Islam and to engage in lucrative
trade with the Orient.
3. G. K. Hunter, Elizabethans and foreigners, in Shakespeare and Race, ed.
Catherine M. S. Alexander and Stanley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 41.
4. Ibid., 47.
5. Ibid., 58.
6. A. J. Hoenselaars, Shakespeare, Foreigners, and National Ideologies, in
Shakespeare: Varied Perspectives, ed. Vikram Chopra, 1133, New World Literature Se-
ries 90 (Delhi: B. R. Publishing, 1996).
7. Arthur F. Kinney, Imagining England: The Chorographical Glass, in
Soundings of Things Done. Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of S. K. Heiniger
Jr., ed. Peter E. Medine and Joseph Wittreich, 181214 (Newark: University of Dela-
ware Press, 1997), 209.
8. Jonathan Bate, Shakespeares Islands, in Shakespeare and the Mediterranean:
The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association World Congress (Va-
lencia, 2001), ed. Tom Clayton, Susan Brock, Vicente Fores, 289307 (Newark: Uni-
versity of Delaware Press, 2004), 290.
9. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, Oeuvres Comple`tes (Paris: Hachette, 1858), 246.
10. Susan Bassnett, ed., Studying British Cultures: An Introduction (London:
Routledge, 1997), xxvii.
11. John Drakakis, Shakespeare in quotations, in Studying British Cultures: An
Introduction, ed. Susan Bassnett, 15272 (London: Routledge, 1997), 170.
12. Joseph G. Price, The Cultural Phenomenon of Shakespeare, in William
Shakespeare: His World, His Work, His Inuence, ed. John F. Andrews (New York: Scrib-
ners, 1985), 3:83138.
13. Dennis Kennedy, ed., Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
14. Michael Hattaway, Boika Sokolova, and Derek Roper, eds., Shakespeare in the
New Europe (Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1994).
15. John J. Joughin, ed., Shakespeare and National Culture (Manchester: Manches-
ter University Press, 1997).
16. Thomas Healy, Past and Present Shakespeares: Shakespearean Appropria-
tions in Europe, in Shakespeare and National Culture, 20632. Healy explores Euro-
pean political appropriations and considers the implications of promoting either
one dominant reading of Shakespeare or embracing all readings. I subscribe to
Healys argument that studying a Shakespeare of the past (228) can help to un-
derstand how Shakespeare is used for present political purposes.
17. Francis Barker, Nationalism, Nomadism, and Belonging in Europe: Coriola-
nus, in Shakespeare and National Culture, 23365. Barker uses his interpretation of
Coriolanus to reveal the internal ssures in the ideal of a nation at an early stage of
its formulation. Extrapolating Barkers argument, we could explain the excellent
popularity of Shakespeare at an early stage of the formation of the national Roma-
nian state in the late nineteenth century.
PAGE 238 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:44 PS
NOTES 239
18. Robert Weimann, A Divided Heritage: Conicting Appropriations of Shake-
speare in (East) Germany, in Shakespeare and National Culture, 173205.
19. Healy, Past and Present Shakespeares, 208.
20. Ibid., 227.
21. A. T. Parfenov and Joseph G. Price, eds., Russian Essays on Shakespeare and His
Contemporaries (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998).
22. A. V. Bartoshevitch, From Tragedy to Grotesque: On the Typology of Con-
temporary Shakespearean Production, in Russian Essays on Shakespeare and His Con-
temporaries, ed. A. T. Parfenov and Joseph G. Price, 12732, (Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 1998).
23. Ibid., 12829.
24. Ibid., 132.
25. Zdenek Str brny, Shakespeare and Eastern Europe, Oxford Shakespeare Topics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
26. Zdenek Str brny, Eastern Europe in Shakespeare, Acta Universitatis Caroli-
nae Philologica 5: Prague Studies in English 22 (1997): 18592.
27. Alexander Shrubanov and Boika Sokolova, Painting Shakespeare Red: An East-
European Appropriation (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001).
28. Krystyna Kujawin ska Courtney and John M. Mercer, eds., The Globalization of
Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003).
29. Peter Holland, foreword to The Globalization of Shakespeare in the Nineteenth
Century, ed. Krystyna Kujawin ska Courtney and John M. Mercer, iv (Lewiston:
Edwin Mellen Press, 2003), iv.
30. Krystyna Kujawin ska Courtney and John M. Mercer, eds., introduction to The
Globalization of Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century, xvi.
31. Marcu Berza, Shakespeare in Roumania (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1931).
32. Alexandru Dutu, Shakespeare in Romania: A bibliographical essay (Bucharest:
Meridiane Publishing House, 1964).
33. Aurel Curtui, Hamlet n Romania (Bucharest: Minerva, 1977).
34. Dan Grigorescu, Shakespeare n cultura romana moderna [Shakespeare in mod-
ern Romanian culture] (Bucharest: Minerva, 1971).
35. Leon D. Levitchi, Studii Shakespeariene [Shakespearean studies] (Cluj-Napoca:
Dacia, 1976).
36. Leon D. Levitchi, The First Romanian Critical Edition of Shakespeares
Complete Works, Shakespeare Worldwide 13 (1991): 1321. In this study, Levitchi de-
scribes his Romanian-language edition of Shakespeare (198290), with comments
on difculties faced by translators and the nature of the commentary accompany-
ing individual works.
37. Leon D. Levitchi, ed., Shakespeare: Opere Complete, 9 vols. (Bucharest: Editura
Univers, 198895).
38. Dirk Delabastita, More Alternative Shakespeares, in Four Hundred Years of
39. Ibid., 125.
40. Ibid., 126.
41. The information on European Shakespeare translations is based on the
Shakespeare in Translation section of the excellent site Sh:in:E. Shakespeare in Europe ,
University of Basel, Switzerland, updated December 2002, http://www.unibas.ch/
shine/translators (accessed March 14, 2005).
42. Maria Del Sapio Garbero, ed., La Traduzione di Amleto nella cultura Europea
(Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2002), 8.
43. For an account of the Danish critics interpretation of Shakespeare see Niels
PAGE 239 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:44 PS
240 NOTES
B. Hansen, In Search of a Mastermind: Georg Brandess William Shakespeare, in
The Globalization of Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century, 16174.
44. For an account of early productions of Shakespeare on the Polish stage (late
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century) see Marta Gibin ska, Enter Shakespeare:
The Contexts of Early Polish Appropriations, in Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare
in Europe, 5469.
45. Martin Hilsky presents four Czech translations of Shakespeares Sonnets in
the 1990s in Telling What is Told: Original, Translation, and the Third Text
Shakespeares Sonnets in Czech, in Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe,
13444.
46. Str brny, Shakespeare and Eastern Europe, 6061.
47. Michael Mullin, Shakespeare across Cultures: Parallel Evolution in Ger-
many, Japan, and Korea (paper, Shakespeare in Translation Seminar, Interna-
tional Shakespeare Conference: Shakespeare and Religions, Stratford-upon-Avon,
2000), 2.
48. Berza, Shakespeare in Roumania, 3.
49. Ibid., 31.
50. Cezar Bolliac, Teatrul Bucuresti: Othello [Bucharest Theater: Othello], Cu-
rierul romanesc 1845, 79.
51. Petre Grimm, Romanian Translations and Imitations from English Litera-
ture, Study of Comparative Literature, 1923, 284377. This study is devoted mainly to
Shakespeare.
52. Ion Horia Radulescu, in the study Les intermediares francais de W. Shake-
speare en Roumanie, Revue de litterature comparee 1938, 25271, offers an intro-
spection of the early Romanian translations of Shakespeare based on French
intermediaries.
53. C. S. Checkley, Rumanian Interpretations of Hamlet, The Slavonic and East
European Review, 1959, 41329.
54. Alexandru Dutu, Shakespeare in Romania, 1.
55. Mihai Eminescu, Repertoriul nostru teatral, in Shakespeare si opera lui: Cu-
legere de texte critice cu o prefata de Tudor Vianu (Bucharest: Editura pentru literatura
universala, 1964), 466.
56. Ibid.
57. Leon D. Levitchi, Eminescu traducator al lui Shakespeare [Eminescu,
translator of Shakespeare], Secolul XX 6 (1976): 1624.
58. Eminescu, Cartile, in Shakespeare si opera lui, 467.
59. Cezar Bolliac, S akspear, in Shakespeare si opera lui, 461.
60. Ibid., 462.
61. Kenneth Muir, The Advantages and Disadvantages of Secularity, in Parallel
Lives: Spanish and English National Drama, 15801680, ed. Louise Fothergill-Payne
and Peter Fothergill-Payne, 21123 (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1991).
62. Peter Milward discusses the issue of Shakespeares supposed Catholic inu-
ences, though he nds no compelling evidence of his religious afliation, in
Shakespeares Catholicism, Shakespeare Yearbook 1 (1990): 13340. In a more re-
cent study, Shakespeares Apocalypse (Tokyo: Renaissance Institute, Sophia University,
2000), Milward analyzes the theme of doomsday in Shakespeare. Ian Wilson at-
tempts to look dispassionately at all the diverse theories and approaches to histori-
cal Shakespeare, including his religion, in Shakespeare: The Evidence: Unlocking the
Mysteries of the Man and His Work (London: Headline, 1993). For other studies on
Shakespeare and the Bible see Naseeb Shaheen, Shakespeares Knowledge of the
BibleHow Acquired, Shakespeare Studies 20 (1988): 20114; Rowland Cotterill,
PAGE 240 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:45 PS
NOTES 241
Shakespeare and Christianity, in The Discerning Reader: Christian Perspectives on Lit-
erature and Theory, ed. David Barratt, Roger Pooley, and Leland Ryken, 15575
(Leicester, England: Apollos-Inter-Varsity Press, 1995).
63. George Barit, Mila dupa Shakespeare [Mercy, after Shakespeare], Foaie
pentru minte, inima si literatura, 1840, 118.
64. George Barit, Foaie pentru minte, inima si literatura, 31619.
65. Ibid., 319.
66. Vladimir Streinu, ed., William Shakespeare: Tragedia lui Hamlet, print al Danem-
arcei (Bucharest: EPL, 1965), xixii.
67. Toma Alexandru Bagdat, trans., Biograa lui Viliam G. Sekspir dupe Le Tour-
neur: Urmata de Romeo si Julieta si Otello, sau Maurul din Venetia (Bucharest: Typo-
graphia Ios Copainig, 1848).
68. George Calinescu, Istoria literaturii romane de la origini pana n prezent (Bucha-
rest: Editura Minerva, 1982), 910.
69. Jacqueline Risset, Mallarme, Amleto e il vento, in La Traduzione di Amleto
nella cultura Europea, ed. Maria Del Sapio Garbero, 1742 (Venice: Marsilio Editori,
2002).
70. Cesare G. De Michelis, LAmletto nella cultura Russa, in La Traduzione di
Amleto nella cultura Europea, 4350.
71. Ibid., 45.
72. Adolph Stern, trans., Hamlet printul Danemarcei: Tragedie n 5 acte de William
Shakespeare [Hamlet the prince of Denmark: Tragedy in ve acts by William Shake-
speare] (Bucharest: Typographia Dorotea P. Cucu, 1877), i.
73. Ibid., iiiii.
74. Ibid., xxii.
75. Unless specied otherwise, the references to the Shakespeare text are keyed
to William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (1988;
repr., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
76. For Hamlet and the Bible see Maurice Charney, Shakespeares Hamlet in the
Context of the Hebrew Bible, JDT: Journal of Theatre and Drama 2 (1996): 93100;
William Rossky, Hamlet as Jeremiah, Hamlet Studies 1 (1979): 1018; Cherrell
Gulfoyle, King Hamlets Two Successors, Comparative Drama 15 (198182):
12038; Nona Feinberg, Jephthahs Daughter: The Parts Ophelia Plays, in Old
Testament Women in Western Literature, ed. Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik,
12843 (Conway, AR: UCA Press, 1991); Peter Milward, Biblical Inuences in Shake-
speares Great Tragedies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
77. For the scriptural implications of revenge in Hamlet see R. W. Desai, Hamlet
as the minister of God to take vengeance, English Language Notes 31, no. 2 (1993):
2227; Peter R. Moore, Hamlet and the Two Witness Rule, Notes and Queries 44
(1997): 498503; Gene Edward Veith Jr., Wait upon the Lord: David, Hamlet, and
the Problem of Revenge, in The David Myth in Western Literature, ed. Raymond-Jean
Frontain and Jan Wojcik, 7083 (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1980).
78. R.A.L. Burnet, in Shakespeare and the First Seven Chapters of the Genevan
Job, Notes and Queries 29 (1982): 12728, reviews previously noted echoes of the
rst seven chapters of the Book of Job in the Geneva Bible and discusses the cluster
of parallels between Hamlets To be, or not to be soliloquy and Job 67.
79. For biblical allusions in King Lear see Michael G. Brennan, Now gods, stand
up for bastards (King Lear, I.ii.22) and the Epistle to the Hebrews 12:58, Notes
and Queries 37 (1990): 18688; William Marling, The Parable of the Prodigal Son:
An Economic Reading, Style 26 (1992): 41936; Peter Milward, The Biblical Lan-
guage of King Lear, Shakespeare Yearbook 2 (1991): 21215; Arthur Dale Barnes,
PAGE 241 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:45 PS
242 NOTES
Kents Holy Cords: A Biblical Allusion in King Lear II.ii.7476, English Language
Notes 22, no. 2 (1984): 2022; Rodney Delasanta, I stumbled when I saw and John
11:910, Christianity and Literature 36, no. 2 (1987): 2730.
80. For the book of Job and other biblical analogues in King Lear see D. Auer-
bach, The Job Motif in King Lear, Notes and Queries 26 (1979): 12932; Joseph
Candido, Lears Yeas and Nays, English Language Notes 23, no. 4 (1986): 1618;
J. S. Gill, A Source of Nothing in King Lear? Notes and Queries 31 (1984): 210;
L. M. Storozynsky, King Lear and Chaos, Critical Survey 3 (1991): 16369.
81. P. Grimm, Traduceri si imitatiuni romanesti dupa literatura engleza [Ro-
manian translations and imitations from English literature], Daco-romania 3 (1924):
33335.
82. Scarlat Ion Ghica, trans., Regele Ioan. Regele Richard III. Negut atorul din Venetia
(Bucharest: Tipograa Gutenberg, 1892), 1.
83. Ibid., vi.
84. Ibid., 3.
85. Ibid., 14.
86. Dan Botta, trans., Regele Ioan (Bucharest: E.S.P.L.A., 1955).
87. Ghica, trans., Regele Ioan, 33.
88. References to cousin in the Shakespeare text are the following: 3.1.265;
3.3.2; 4.2.137, 159, 249; 5.7.51.
89. Gen. 18:27 has Abraham referring to himself as I am but dust and ashes,
and Job 42:6 repents in dust and ashes. Other biblical allusions to death are to
the dust of death (Psalms 22:15), all are of the dust and all turn to dust again
(Eccles. 3:20), and for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Gen. 3:19).
The Bible: A Multimedia Experience (Cambridge, MA: The Learning Company, Inc.,
1995) CD-ROM.
90. For biblical issues in The Merchant of Venice see Arthur G. Ross, Literary Jews
and the Breakdown of the Medieval Testamental Pattern, in Jewish Presences in En-
glish Literature, ed. Derek Cohen and Deborah Heller, 11327 (Montreal: McGill-
Queens University Press, 1990); Patrick Grant, The Bible and The Merchant of Ven-
ice : Hermeneutics, Ideology, and Displaced Persons, English Studies in Canada 16
(1990): 24762.
91. The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition (Madison: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 1969), AA.ii.
92. Ibid., AA.ii.
Chapter 3. Shakespeares Decalogue:
English Histories in Romania
1. William M. Hawley, Critical Hermeneutics and Shakespeares History Plays (New
York: Peter Lang, 1992), 11.
2. Ibid., 14.
3. Donald G. Watson, Shakespeares Early History Plays: Politics at Play on the Elizabe-
than Stage (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1990), 26.
4. Aurel Baranga, Repertoriul: ntre exigente si concesii [The Repertoire:
Between Exigency and Concession], Contemporanul 36 (1975): 9.
5. Ibid.
6. Julia Briggs, This Stage-Play World: Texts and Contexts, 15801625, rev. ed.
(1983; repr., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 254.
PAGE 242 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:46 PS
NOTES 243
7. According to Brecht, the distancing effect of the epic theater corresponds
to a mode of placing the events in historical perspective. This technique is actual-
ized through songs, sets, lm selections, and epic commentary. See Bertold Brecht,
Efectul de distantare n arta teatrala chineza, Scrieri despre teatru, trans. Corina
Jiva (Bucharest: Univers, 1977), 148.
8. Bertold Brecht, Teatru, introduction by V. Moglescu (Bucharest: E.S.P.L.A.,
1958).
9. Ian Kott. Shakespeare contemporanul nostru, trans. Anca Livescu and Teol Roll
(Bucharest: Editura pentru literatura universala, 1969).
10. See Dan Grigorescu, Shakespeare n cultura romana moderna [Shakespeare in
modern Romanian culture] (Bucharest: Minerva, 1971); Dan Lazarescu, Introducere
n shakespeareologie [Introduction to Shakespeare studies] (Bucharest: Univers,
1974); Leon Levitchi, Studii shakespeariene [Shakespearean studies] (Cluj-Napoca:
Dacia, 1976); Aureliu Manea, Comentarii pe marginea teatrului lui Shakespeare si confesi-
uni [Commentary on Shakespeares theater and confessions] (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia,
1986).
11. See John Elsom, Mai este Shakespeare contemporanul nostru? [Is Shakespeare
our contemporary?], trans. Dan Dutescu (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1994).
12. Ian Kott, Insemnari despre Shakespeare, in Shakespeare si opera lui: Culegere
de texte critice, ed. Ana Cartianu et al. (Bucharest: Editura pentru Literatura Univer-
sala, 1964), 456. This particular collection of critical texts, Shakespeare si opera lui,
published in the year of the Shakespeare jubilee, is a remarkable example of Roma-
nian scholarly interest in Shakespeare. In its 763 folio pages it assembles signicant
Shakespeare criticism from Europe (as well as Romanian scholarship), USA, South
America, and China, including such names as John Dryden, Nicholas Rowe, S. T.
Coleridge, J. Dover Wilson, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, G. Brandes, Anatole France,
Goethe, Francesco de Sanctis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc.
13. Alexandru Dutu, Pe scenele romanesti [On the Romanian stages], Teatrul
4 (1964): 4853.
14. Ana Maria Narti, Pe scenele romanesti [On the Romanian stages], Teatrul
4 (1964): 5564.
15. Ibid., 57.
16. Ibid.
17. Nicolae Manolescu, Realismul modern al lui Shakespeare [Shakespeares
modern realism], Teatrul 3 (1970): 33.
18. Florin Tornea, Richard al III-lea, Teatrul 3 (1964): 15.
19. Ana Maria Narti, Richard al III-lea de Shakespeare, Teatrul 4 (1964): 11.
20. Richard II, produced at Teatrul Mic, Bucharest, 1966, was directed by Radu
Penciulescu, sets Toni Gheorghiu, Traian Nitescu, costume Dan Nemteanu.
21. Mira Iosif, Shakespeare: Richard II la Teatrul Mic [Shakespeare: Richard II
at the Mic Theater], Teatrul 10 (1966): 74.
22. Ibid., 75.
23. Ibid.
24. Ana Maria Narti, Richard II: prima montare [Richard II: the rst staging],
Teatrul 1 (1967): 16.
25. Henric al VI-lea, Partea a III a was produced at the Timisoara National The-
ater, October 20, 1976, directed by Ioan Ieremia, translated by Barbu Solacolu, sets
by Emilia Jivanov. Review by Virgil Munteanu, Henric al VI-lea de Shakespeare,
Teatrul 12 (1976): 2830.
26. Henric al IV-lea was produced at the Nottara Theater, Bucharest, directed by
Lucian Giurchescu, sets by Ion Popescu-Udriste, translation and adaptation from 1
PAGE 243 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:47 PS
244 NOTES
Henry IV and 2 Henry IV by Dorin Moga, Sorin Arghir, and Lucian Giurchescu. Re-
view: Virgil Munteanu, Henric al IV-lea de Shakespeare, Teatrul 12 (1976): 3032.
27. Jean E. Howard, introduction to 1 Henry IV, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Ste-
phen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus,
114756 (New York: Norton, 1997). Howard argues that the chorographical aspect
of the play accounts for the illusion of complex temporal simultaneity and social
and geographical heterogeneity (1149).
28. Richard II was produced at the Craiova National Theater, 1981, directed by
Mircea Cornisteanu, sets by Tudor Ghimes, translation by Mihnea Gheorghiu. Re-
views: Petrel Berceanu, Richard II, Ramuri 5 (1982): 7; Paul Tutungiu, Richard
al II-lea de Shakespeare, Teatrul 10 (1981): 4547; Ion Zamrescu, Richard II de
Shakespeare, Romania Literara 47 (1981): 15.
29. Paul Tutungiu, Richard al II-lea de Shakespeare, 46.
30. C. W. R. D. Moseley, Shakespeares History Plays (London: Penguin, 1988), 127.
31. Richard III was produced at Teatrul Mic, 1983, directed by Silviu Purcarete,
sets Adriana Leonescu, music Vasile S irli, translated by Anda Teodorescu and An-
drei Bantas. Reviews: Justin Ceuca, Richard III la Teatrul Mic, Steaua (Cluj-
Napoca) 7 (1983): 60; Constantin Maciuca, Richard al III-lea, Teatrul 6 (1983):
2022; Monica Ghiuta, ElisabetaRichard al III-lea, Teatrul 4 (1983): 72.
32. Maciuca, Richard al III-lea, 20.
33. Ibid., 21.
34. Paul Cornel Chitic, Spatiu Shakespeare [Shakespeare space], Teatrul 8
(1988): 86.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. King John, directed by Grigore Gonta, was produced at Teatrul de comedie
Bucharest, 1988, sets by Ion Popescu Udriste. Reviews: Dinu Kivu, Regele Ioan,
Contemporanul 18 (1988): 12; Valentin Silvestru, Regele Ioan de Shakespeare la Tea-
trul de comedie, Tribuna Romaniei 17 (1988): 12; Irina Coroiu, Regele Ioan, Ro-
manian Review 44 (1990): 11025.
38. Chitic, Spatiu Shakespeare, 87.
39. Richard III, directed by Mihai Maniutiu, was produced in Romanian by the
Odeon Theater, Bucharest, and in English at the Dancehouse, Manchester, 1114
May 1994, costumes by Doina Levintza, music by Marius Pop.
40. Henric al VI-lea [1, 2, and 3 Henry VI], directed by Ioan Ieremia, was produced
at the Timisoara National Theater, Romania (1995) and at Novi Sad, Yugoslavia
(June 1995).
41. Falstaff dupa Shakespeare [Falstaff after Shakespeare], directed by Victor Ioan
Frunza, was adapted from 1 and 2 Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor, sets by
Adriana Grand, produced at the National Theater Cluj-Napoca (December 1996).
42. Mircea Morariu, Falstaff dupa Shakespeare [Falstaff after Shakespeare],
Teatrul azi 3 (1997): 13.
43. Falstaff Story was produced at the Fantasio Theater Constanta (1996), di-
rected by Alexandru Darian, music by Nicu Alifantis, sets by Alexandru Radu, cho-
reography by Fanica Lupu. Review: Mihai Sorin, Starea actuala a revistei [The
current state in musical production], Teatrul Azi 45 (1996): 42.
44. Richard II, directed by Mihai Maniutiu, was produced at the National Theater
Bucharest, April 1998. Review: Cristina Modreanu, Richard II, Adevarul Literar si
Artistic 417 (1998): 6.
45. Watson, Shakespeares Early History Plays, 147.
46. Joseph de Vos, Shakespeares History Plays in Belgium: Taken Apart and Re-
constructed as Grand Narrative, in Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe,
21122.
PAGE 244 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:47 PS
NOTES 245
47. Ibid., 213.
48. Ibid.
49. Dennis Kennedy, Foreign Shakespeare (lecture at the conference Four
Centuries of Shakespeare in Europe, Murcia, Spain, 1820 November 1999).
50. Pauline Kiernan, Shakespeares Theory of Drama, rev. ed. (1996; repr., Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3.
51. Ibid., 51.
Chapter 4. Romanian Metamorphoses: Comedies
1. Russell Jackson, Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon: Summer and Fall,
2000, Shakespeare Quarterly 52 (2001): 110.
2. Ibid.
3. Dennis Kennedy, in Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century
Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), analyzes how scenog-
raphy (including stage and costume design, lighting, the arrangement of the acting
ground, the movement of the actors within it) affects audience reception and is
related to changes in our understanding of Shakespeare and his place in the the-
ater. Similarly, in The Language of the Spectator, Shakespeare Survey 50 (1997):
2940, Dennis Kennedy associates the recent popularity of Shakespeare on stage to
the intercultural, interlingual adaptability of the plays.
4. For a survey of the reception of Shakespeares comedies in Bulgaria during
the Communist period, for example, in order to highlight the similarities, see Alex-
ander Shrubanov and Boika Sokolova, The Smile and the Bite: East European Ne-
gotiations of Shakespeares Comedy, Folio: ShakespeareGenootschap van Nederland
en Vlaandren 6, no. 1 (1999): 1731.
5. In 1959, the Targu-Mures Theater produced The Taming of the Shrew, directed
by Komusvez Lajos, and the CFR Labour Theater Giulesti produced The Merry Wives
of Windsor, directed by George Dem Loghin. In 1960, the same Labour Theater pro-
duced Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Lucian Giurchescu.
6. Ion Cazaban, De ce numai comedia? [Why only comedy?] Teatrul 2
(1960): 71.
7. David Willbern, What Is Shakespeare? in Shakespeares Personality, ed. Nor-
man Holland et al., 22643 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 232; 235.
8. I. Flavius, Ce fel de Shakespeare jucam? [What kind of Shakespeare are
we playing?], Teatrul 6 (1958): 65.
9. Ibid.
10. W. B. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1997), 40.
11. Mihnea Gheorghiu, Shakespeare la el acasa si la noi [Shakespeare at his
home and ours], Teatrul 5 (1959): 94.
12. Mircea Alexandrescu, Regie n slujba textului sau demonstratie de regie?
[Directorial action for the text or demonstration of directorial action?], Teatrul 8
(1961): 7478, esp. 77.
13. Ileana Popovici, Spectacole Shakespeare [Shakespeare productions], Tea-
trul 9 (1964): 89.
14. Bogdan Ulmu, Cum va place de Shakespeare [As You Like It by Shake-
speare], Teatrul 4 (1979): 42.
15. Mira Iosif, Carnet I. A. T. C.: Cum va place de Shakespeare [Theater-school
notebook: As You Like It by Shakespeare], Teatrul 3 (1976): 37.
PAGE 245 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:47 PS
246 NOTES
16. Myriam Marbe belongs to the so-called Golden Generation of Romanian
composers. In a modern musical language their work reects an exploration of
contemporary compositional techniques as well as early Romanian musical tradi-
tion. Myriam Marbe was born in 1931 in Bucharest, where she resided despite all
the problems until her death in 1997. Together with the colleagues of her genera-
tion she took large steps in the direction of a new, unknown musical language. A
typical mark of her music is its peaceful character. This has its roots in traditional
music, in the vocal Doina, or long song (cantec lung).
17. Florian Potra, A douasprezecea noapte de Shakespeare [Twelfth Night by
Shakespeare], Teatrul 2 (1975): 64.
18. Ulmu, Cum va place de Shakespeare, 42.
19. Mira Iosif, Nevestele vesele din Windsor de Shakespeare [The Merry Wives of
Windsor by Shakespeare], Teatrul 6 (1978): 29.
20. Ibid., 30.
21. Ibid., 29.
22. Virgil Munteanu, I
mbl nzirea scorpiei de Shakespeare [The Taming of the

Shrew by Shakespeare], Teatrul 12 (1980): 55.
23. Ibid., 54.
24. Constantin Paraschivescu, Negutatorul din Venetia de Shakespeare [The
Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare], Teatrul 12 (1981): 37.
25. Alexandra Calinescu, Cum va place de Shakespeare [As You Like It by
Shakespeare], Teatrul 4 (1982): 48.
26. Ibid., 49.
27. Constantin Radu-Maria, A douasprezecea noapte de Shakespeare [Twelfth
Night by Shakespeare], Teatrul 1011 (1984): 89.
28. Ibid., 90.
29. Constantin Radu-Maria, Cum va place [As You Like It], Teatrul 6 (1985): 56.
30. Ermil Radulescu, Spectacol Shakespearean la Cluj-Napoca [Shakespeare
spectacle in Cluj-Napoca], Contemporanul 48 (1986): 13.
31. Victor Parhon, Primatul teatralitatii [Theatricality comes rst], Teatrul 8
(1988): 75.
32. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, eds., William Shakespeare: The Complete Works,
rev. ed. (1988; repr., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 541.
33. Marian Popescu, Alexandru Darie: Noi nu mai traim ntr-o lume a simpli-
tatii [Alexandru Darie: We no longer live in a world of simplicity], Teatrul Azi 11
(1991): 14.
34. Ibid., 13.
35. Ibid., 14.
36. A Midsummer Nights Dream was directed and translated by Alexandru Darie,
using the existing translations, and produced at the Comedy Theater Bucharest in
1990 and on tour to the International Theatre Festival in London, 1991; directed
by Liviu Ciulei, it was produced at the Bulandra Theater, Bucharest, in 1991; di-
rected by Vasile Nedelcu, it was produced at the Toma Caragiu Theater, Ploiesti, in
1995; directed by Ion Sapdaru, it was produced by the Iasi National Theater in
1998; directed by Victor Ioan Frunza, it was produced at the Cluj National Theater
in 1999; directed by Tudor Marascu, it was produced at the Ovidiu Theater Con-
stanta, in 2000. Practically, theaters in most major cities in Romania produced this
play at one time or other during the decade 19902000.
37. Dennis Kennedy, Shakespeare without his Language, in Shakespeare, Theory
and Performance, edited by James C. Bulman, 13348 (London: Routledge, 1996).
Kennedy argues that while directors whose native language is English continue to
PAGE 246 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:48 PS
NOTES 247
be tyrannized by the Shakespearean text, other directors explore the plays more
freely, focusing on physical over verbal expression.
38. Leah Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Readings and Its Discontents (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988).
39. Marian Popescu, Visul unei nopt i de vara de Shakespeare [A Midsummer
Nights Dream by Shakespeare], Teatrul azi 910 (1990): 48.
40. Dan Micu, Liviu Ciulei da forma unui vis shakespearean [Liviu Ciulei gives
shape to a Shakespearean dream], Romania Literara 22 (1991): 16.
41. Cristina Dumitrescu, Dialog: Andrei S erban [Dialogue: Andrei S erban],
Teatrul azi 78 (1991): 9.
42. Valentin Silvestru, Masura pentru masura ntr-o dimensiune incomensura-
bila [Measure for Measure in an unaccountable measure], Teatrul azi 56 (1995):
14.
43. Margareta Barbuta, Visul ca teatru [The dream as theater], Teatrul azi 78
(1995): 27.
44. Adrian Mihalache, Pasiunea analitica [Analytical passion], Teatrul azi 3
(1997): 14.
45. Alice Georgescu, Comedie n albastru [Comedy in blue], Teatrul azi 12
(1997): 27.
46. Ibid.
47. Alice Georgescu, Masura comediei [The measure of comedy], Teatrul azi
3 (1997): 15.
48. S tefan Oprea, Visul unei nopti de vara?? [A Midsummer Nights
Dream??], Teatrul azi 78910 (1998): 80.
49. Victor Ioan Frunza, Visul unei nopt i de vara de Shakespeare [A Midsummer
Nights Dream by Shakespeare], Teatrul azi 12 (1999): 14.
50. Lawrence Levine, William Shakespeare and the American people, in Re-
thinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, ed. Chandra
Mukerji and Michael Schudson, 15797 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991), 186.
51. Doina Modola, Decupaj defectuos [Defective decoupage], Teatrul azi
1011 (2000): 83.
52. Delia Voicu, Bufonul noptii de armindeni [The Midsummers fool], Tea-
trul azi 79 (2000): 107.
53. This term was coined by Michael Billington in Was Shakespeare English?
in Shakespeare outside England (Program of the Australian and New Zealand Shake-
speare Association Conference, 2427 February 1992, University of Adelaide), 1.
Chapter 5. Shakespeare, Communism,
and After: Tragedies
1. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance, 57.
2. This is the title of a play by the Romanian writer D. R. Popescu, directed by
Alexa Visarion and produced at the Giulesti Theater in 1975. This symbolic play
debates issues related to the relativity of truth and moral responsibility.
3. For studies examining how productions of Shakespeare were used in Com-
munist Eastern Europe for ideological purposes, particularly to criticize totalitarian
regimes, see Alexander Shrubanov, Politicized with a Vengeance: East European
Uses of Shakespeares tragedies, in Shakespeare in the Twentieth Century: The Selected
PAGE 247 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:48 PS
248 NOTES
Proceedings of the ISA World Congress, Los Angeles, 1996, ed. Jonathan Bate, Jill L. Lev-
enson, and Dieter Mehl, 13747 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998);
Boika Sokolova, A Clockwork Brick in the Wall: Shakespeare and Communist Aes-
thetics, SEDERI (Sociedad Espan
ola de Estudios Renascentistas Ingleses) 8 (1997):

191201; Robert Weimann, A Divided Heritage: Conicting Appropriations of
Shakespeare in East Germany, in Shakespeare and National Culture, 173205; Maik
Hamburger, Are you a party in this business? Consolidation and Subversion in
East German Shakespeare Productions, Shakespeare Survey 48 (1996): 17184; Zde-
nek Str brny, Shakespearean Rates of Exchange in Czechoslovakia, 19451989,
Shakespeare Survey 48 (1996): 16369.
4. Dennis Kennedy, in The Language of the Spectator, Shakespeare Survey 50
(1997): 2940, relates the recent popularity of Shakespeare to the intercultural,
interlingual adaptability of the plays. I would add that in the former Communist
countries, Shakespeare is frequently evoked to authorize the director, or the
critic, or received notions of theatrical practice.
5. See Paul Langfelder, Ce e neobisnuit in dramaturgia lui Brecht? [What is
unusual in Brechts theater criticism?], Teatrul 10 (1957): 814.
6. t., Teatru Shakespeare [Shakespeare theater], Teatrul 7 (1958): 16.
7. Val Munteanu, Variatiuni grace pe o tema de Akimov [Graphics on a
theme by Akimov], Teatrul 4 (1961): 89.
8. Florin Tornea, Printre noi [Among us], Teatrul 4 (1964): 3969.
9. Ana Maria Narti, Pe scenele romanesti [On the Romanian stages], Teatrul
4 (1964): 4864.
10. Dana Crivat, Shakespeare la lucru [Shakespeare at work], Teatrul 4 (1964):
6669.
11. Florian Nicolau, Macbeth de W. Shakespeare [Macbeth by Shakespeare],
Teatrul 5 (1962): 67.
12. Ibid., 63.
13. Ibid., 64.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 67.
16. Florian Nicolau, A doua distributie: Macbeth de Shakespeare [The second
cast: Macbeth by Shakespeare], Teatrul 6 (1963): 84.
17. Calin Caliman, Othello de Shakespeare [Othello by Shakespeare], Teatrul 7
(1965): 37.
18. Mira Iosif, Othello de Shakespeare la teatrul C. I. Nottara [Othello by
Shakespeare at the C.I. Nottara Theater], Teatrul 12 (1969): 136.
19. Traian S elmaru, Un spectacol de cultura: Julius Caesar [A cultural specta-
cle: Julius Caesar], Teatrul 5 (1968): 41.
20. Mira Iosif, Regele Lear de Shakespeare [King Lear by Shakespeare], Teatrul
11 (1970): 52.
21. Mira Iosif, Macbeth de Shakespeare [Macbeth by Shakespeare], Teatrul 5
(1976): 44.
22. Dorin Moga, Coriolan de Shakespeare [Coriolanus by Shakespeare], Tea-
trul 1 (1980): 47.
23. Ibid., 46.
24. Constantin Radu-Maria, Coriolan de Shakespeare [Coriolanus by Shake-
speare], Teatrul 78 (1987): 117.
25. Ioan Valeriu, Spectacol Regele Lear de Shakespeare [Production of King
Lear by Shakespeare], Teatrul 7 (1988): 90.
26. Corina S uteu, Tacerea lui Goneril [Gonerils silence], Teatrul 10 (1989):
45.
PAGE 248 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:49 PS
NOTES 249
27. Ibid., 43.
28. Mira Iosif, Macbeth de Shakespeare [Macbeth by Shakespeare], Teatrul 6
(1982): 37.
29. Dan Predescu, De la obsesie la manie [From obsession to mania], Teatrul
azi 1112 (1990): 38.
30. Maria Constantinescu, Titus Andronicus de Shakespeare [Titus Andronicus
by Shakespeare], Romania Literara 39 (1997): 16.
31. Victor Parhon, Un spectacol de export. [A spectacle for export], Teatrul
azi 1 (1996): 14.
32. Ibid., 15.
33. Carmen Chihaia, Timon din Atena este cea mai radicala marturie asupra pas-
iunii mele shakespeariene [Timon of Athens is the most radical testimony of my
passion for Shakespeare], Teatrul azi 710 (1998): 95.
34. Delia Voicu, S i a fost Timon din Atena [And it was Timon of Athens], Teatrul
azi 12 (1999): 63.
35. Ileana Berlogea, Un rege Lear pe care nu-l vom uita curand [One King
Lear we are not likely to forget soon], Teatrul azi 79 (1999): 51.
36. Ibid., 52.
37. W. B. Worthen, Deeper Meanings and Theatrical Technique: The Rhetoric
of Performance Criticism, in Shakespeare in Performance, ed. Robert Shaugnessy,
6977 (New York: St. Martins Press, 2000), 69.
38. Gabriela Simion, Marele Will comprimat n doua ore de teatru [The great
Will compressed in two hours of theater], Cotidianul 1117 June (2001), http://
www.cotidianul.ro/anterioare/2001/cultura/cult1117iunie.htm (accessed March
21, 2005.
Chapter 6. Staging Revenge and Power:
Masks of Romanian Hamlets
1. Terence Hawkes, in a SHAKSPER posting, emphasizes the performative
meaning of the term playing: It seems to me that playing in the early modern
sense was a much more complex business than we allow, involving a far broader
range of performative activity than that implied by the term acting. Terence
Hawkes, Re: Literary vs. Theatrical Shakespeare, online posting, January 3, 2001,
SHAKSPER: The Global Electronic Shakespeare Conference, http://www.shaksper.net/
archives/2001/0015.html (accessed March 21, 2005).
2. Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Cavell warns that you always tell
more and tell less than you know (83). In exchange, drama relies on showing
rather than telling, and thus the possibility of equivocation on the part of the audi-
ence is slightly diminished.
3. Alex Newell, The Soliloquies in Hamlet: The Structural Design (Rutheford: Fair-
leigh Dickinson University Press, 1991), 49.
4. For extensive studies tracing the reception of Hamlet in Romania see: Marcu
Berza, Shakespeare in Roumania; Aurel Curtui, Hamlet n Romania, which covers the
areas of translations, criticism, and productions of Hamlet on the Romanian stage
up to the mid-seventies; Alexandru Dutu, Shakespeare in Romania. Among the large
number of Romanian critical studies of interest about Hamlet, only a few may be
mentioned: Didi Cenuser, Hamlet, altfel? (Sibiu: Editura Universitatii din Sibiu,
PAGE 249 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:49 PS
250 NOTES
1995); Al. Davila, Hamlet, Literatura si arta romana, 1898, 401; Mihail Dragom-
irescu, Hamlet, Critica dramatica 1904, 918; Hamlet, Critica (Bucharest: Editura
Casei S coalelor, 1928), 79; Al Dutu, Problematica hamletiana si unele studii re-
cente, Revista de lologie romanica si germanica 2 (1963), 34151; B. Fundoianu,
Hamlet si Electra, Rampa, April 17, 1916, 1; Mihnea Gheorghiu, Un Shake-
speare al erei moderne, Orientari n literatura straina, (Bucharest: E.S.P.L.A.,
1958), 567; Dan Grigorescu, Shakespeare n cultura romana moderna (Bucharest:
Minerva, 1971); Eugen Lovinescu. Hamletiana, Rampa I 54 (1915): 15; Cornel
Moldovanu, Hamlet, Autori si actori (Bucharest: Editura Casa S coalelor, 1944);
Dragos Protopopescu, Hamlet sau ntre istorie literara si estetica, Universul literar
3 (1926): 89; Raul Theodorescu, Hamlet de Shakespeare, Ritmul vermii 89
(1926): 209; Tudor Vianu, Shakespeare ca poet al Renasterii, Studii de literatura
universala si comparata (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1963): 5771; Shakespeare
si antropologia Renasterii, Studii de literatura universala si comparata (Bucharest:
Editura Academiei, 1963), 719; Umanitatea lui Shakespeare, Steaua 10 (1956):
8593.
5. See Ga
mini Salga
do, Three Jacobean Tragedies, rev. ed. (1969; repr., London:

Penguin, 1965), 1719.
6. The foreign theatrical companies producing Hamlet in Romania in the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries were the following: Kristoph Ludwig Seipp, Sibiu,
1788; Franz Xavier Felder, Sibiu and Timisoara, 179495; Johan Gerger, Bucharest,
1825; Ferenc Kazinczy, Cluj, 181429, and Targu-Mures, 1841; Ludwig Lowe, Sibiu,
1850; Ernesto Rossi, National Theater Bucharest, 187779; Teatrul mare, Bucur-
esti, 1861.
7. Odette Blumenfeld, Hamlet at the Craiova National Theater, in On Page
and Stage: Shakespeare in Polish and World Culture, ed. Krystyna Kujawinska Courtney,
197210 (Krakow: Universitas, 2000), 198.
8. Ionut Niculescu, Hamlet pe scena romaneasca [Hamlet on the Romanian
stage], Teatrul 2 (1989): 30.
9. The actors interpreting Hamlet in the same period in Bucharest are the fol-
lowing: George Calboreanu, Bucharest National Theater, 194142; George Vraca,
Bucharest National Theater, 194142; V. Valentineanu, Bucharest National The-
ater, 194142. For reviews of these productions see Traian Lalescu, Trei interpreti
ai lui Hamlet [Three interpreters of Hamlet], Universul literar 5 (1942): 2.
10. Niculescu, Hamlet pe scena romaneasca, 30.
11. Ibid., 28.
12. Ibid., 31.
13. Edmund Kean, Mounet Sully in Paris, Kacealov, and Kainz in Vienna.
14. Constantin Nottara, Tony Bulandra, Aristide Demetriad, Ion Manolescu,
George Vraca, V. Valentineanu, and George Calboreanu.
15. Victor Eftimiu, Interpreti ai lui Hamlet [Interpreters of Hamlet], Teatrul 4
(1968): 37.
16. Theodor Manescu, Manifestari artistice n detentie [Art forms in deten-
tion], Teatrul 11 (1973): 4143.
17. Mircea Alexandrescu, Un spectacol de culoare la o piesa de idei: Hamlet de
W. Shakespeare [A colored spectacle for a play of ideas], Teatrul 9 (1958): 81.
18. Ibid., 83.
19. Niculescu, Hamlet pe scena romaneasca, 32.
20. Marcela Ilnitchi, Hamlet pe scena romaneasca [Hamlet on the Romanian
stage], Teatrul azi 789 (2000): 54.
21. Mircea Alexandrescu, Hamlet de Shakespeare [Hamlet by Shakespeare],
Teatrul 6 (1961): 83.
PAGE 250 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:49 PS
NOTES 251
22. Virgil Munteanu, Hamlet de W. Shakespeare [Hamlet by W. Shakespeare],
Teatrul 3 (1974): 42.
23. For reviews of this opera adaptation of Hamlet see Luminita Vartolomei, In-
troducere la Hamlet de Pascal Bentoiu, Teatru 9 (1975): 2022; Opera Romana
din Bucuresti: Hamlet de Pascal Bentoiu, Teatru 10 (1975): 6264.
24. Florian Potra, Interferente: Fuziune de arte [Interference: Fusion of arts],
Teatru 10 (1975): 65.
25. Laurentiu Ulici, Totul despre Hamlet [Everything about Hamlet], Contemp-
oranul 52 (1985): 11.
26. Dinu Kivu, Hamlet de Shakespeare [Hamlet by Shakespeare], Contempora-
nul 14 (1987): 9.
27. Ludmila Pantajoglu, Cu Richard Eyre, directorul Teatrului National din
Londra, despre Hamlet la ora romaneasca [Interview with Richard Eyre, director
of the London National Theater, about Hamlet at the Romanian hour], Romania
Literara 18 (1990): 24.
28. Michael Billington, Hamlet-ul romanesc n Anglia [The Romanian Hamlet
in Britain], Romania Literara 41 (1990): 16.
29. Ion Remus Andrei, Hamlet la Teatrul National din Craiova [Hamlet at the
Craiova National Theater], Luceafarul 26 (1997): 18.
30. Incidentally, I have noticed that the director Matthew Warchus used the
same artice in the 1997 RSC Hamlet, with Alex Jennings in the title role. For a
review of this production, see Cynthia Marshall, Sight and Sound: Two Models of
Shakespearean Subjectivity on the British Stage, Shakespeare Quarterly 51 (Fall
2000): 35361.
31. Victor Parhon, Hamlet la sfarsit de mileniu [Hamlet at the end of the mil-
lennium], Teatrul azi 3 (1997): 7.
32. Carmen Tudora, Hamlet, Adevarul Literar si Artistic 368 (1997): 7.
33. Magdalena Boiangiu, Forma si limitele vremii [The whips and scorns of
time], Romania Literara 28 (2000): 17, www.romlit.sfos.ro/www/texte00/rl28/
tea.htm (accessed March 26, 2005).
34. W. B. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance, 48.
35. Magda Petreu and Ion Vartic, eds., Vlad Mugur, spectacolul mortii [Vald Mugur,
the spectacle of death] (Cluj Napoca: Biblioteca Apostrof, Teatrul National Cluj,
2001).
36. Ibid., 143.
37. Ibid., 109.
38. My references to the Hamlet text are to the Arden Shakespeare, edited by Har-
old Jenkins (London: Routledge, 1993).
39. Vlad Mugur, William Shakespeare: Tragedia lui Hamlet, Print de Danem-
arca; Versiune regizorala de Vlad Mugur, in Vlad Mugur, spectacolul Mortii, 45.
40. Ibid., 113.
41. Ibid., 119.
42. Ibid., 120.
43. Ibid., 121.
44. Ibid., 126.
45. For online Romanian reviews of this production see Marina Constantinescu,
Hamlet sau despre moarte, Romania Literara 27 (2001), www.romlit.ro/www/
texte01/rl27/mar.htm (accessed March 28, 2005); Bedros Horasganian, Julieta,
Ofelia, Romeo si Hamlet, Observator cultural 93 (December 2001), www.observator
cultural.ro/arhivaarticol.phtml?xid841 (accessed March 28, 2005).
46. Cristina Modreanu, Calatorii initiatice n prag de nou mileniu: Festivalul
PAGE 251 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:50 PS
252 NOTES
National de Teatru 2000 [Initiatory travels in the new millennium: The National
Theater Festival 2000], Adevarul Literar si Artistic 545 (2000): 10.
47. Marin Sorescu, Monolog despre Hamlet [Monologue about Hamlet], Tea-
trul 3 (1988): 16.
48. Ibid., 15.
49. Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet n Purgatoriu [Hamlet in Purgatory], trans.
Sorana Corneanu, Dilema 356, 357, 358 (December, 1999): 17, http://www.algo
ritma.ro/dilema/fw.htm?current379/index.htm (accessed March 26, 2005).
Chapter 7. Romanian Mental and
Theatrical Maps: Romances
1. For an ample study of this production of The Tempest directed by Liviu Ciulei
see Gheorghe Ghitulescu, Furtuna, testamentul lui Shakespeare: n regia lui Liviu Ciulei
[The Tempest, Shakespeares testament: directed by Liviu Ciulei] (Bucharest: Edi-
tura Eminescu, 1985).
2. Irina Coroiu, Furtuna de Shakespeare [The Tempest by Shakespeare], Tea-
trul 11 (1983): 26.
3. Victor Parhon, Furtuna de Shakespeare [The Tempest by Shakespeare],
Teatrul 6 (1987): 48.
4. Mircea Ghitulescu, Pericle de Shakespeare [Pericles by Shakespeare], Tea-
trul 1 (1982): 33.
5. Furtuna, directed by Karin Beier, co-production by the European Theatres
Union, Buhnen der Stadt, Koln, WDR Television and Theaterformen Festival, 1998,
was produced at the National Theater Bucharest in September 1997 by Volker Ca-
naris. Reviews: Saviana Stanescu, Euro-Furtuna [The Euro-Tempest], Adevarul Li-
terar si Artistic 387 (1997): 7; Ionela Lita, Integrarea Romaniei n Shakespeare
[Romanias integration in Shakespeare], Adevarul Literar si Artistic 387 (1997): 7.
6. Graham Keith Gregor, Spanish Shakespeare-man a: Twelfth Night in Ma-
drid, 199697, Shakespeare Quarterly 49 (1998): 421. For an excellent account of
Shakespeares presence in Spain, as a stage character and a cultural icon see also
Keith Gregor, Shakespeare as a Character on the Spanish Stage: A Metaphysics of
Bardic Presence, in Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe, 4353.
7. Gregor Spanish Shakespeare Mania, 422.
8. See Rafael Portillo and Manuel J. Go mez-Lara, Shakespeare in the New
Spain: or, What You Will, in Shakespeare in the New Europe, ed. M. Hattaway et al.,
20820 (Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1994).
9. Boika Sokolova, Shakespeare: Man of the Millennium, in Four Hundred
Years of Shakespeare in Europe, 98109, esp. 99100.
10. Ibid., 1012.
11. H. R. Coursen, Shakespeare in Production: Whose History? (Athens: Ohio Univer-
sity Press, 1996), 27.
12. Ibid., 21.
13. This approach is naturally indebted to Terence Hawkess Shakespeare in the
Present (London: Routledge, 2002).
14. Robert Weimann, Bifold Authority in Shakespeares Theatre, Shakespeare
Quarterly 39 (1988): 40117, esp. 409.
15. Manfred Pster, Shakespeare and Italy, or, the law of diminishing returns,
in Shakespeares Italy: Functions of Italian Locations in English Renaissance Drama, ed.
PAGE 252 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:50 PS
NOTES 253
Michele Marrapodi et al., rev. ed. (1993; repr., Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1997), 295.
16. Ibid., 296.
17. Ibid., 300.
18. References to Bohemian, meaning a native of Bohemia or a gypsy or vaga-
bond, appear in Measure for Measure (4.2.132) and The Merry Wives of Windsor
(4.5.18) as well. As for Russia, there are several other references in Measure for Mea-
sure (2.1.129; 3.1.354) or Loves Labours Lost (5.2.368), apart from those in The Win-
ters Tale (3.2.118), but these have been ascribed to the trade relations and the
historical event of the arrival in London of the Russian ambassador Possemsky and
the establishment of an English trade company with Russia.
19. Eleni Coundouriotis argues that Stoker is setting in motion a delegitima-
tion of the Ottoman history of Eastern Europe through the gure of the vampire.
Eleni Coundouriotis, Dracula and the Idea of Europe, Connotations 9.2 (1999
2000): 144.
20. It is probably an agreeable coincidence that Bram Stoker, the creator of the
Dracula ctional character, was Henry Irvings manager between 1868 and 1905.
The English actors famous interpretations of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Shy-
lock have contributed to the creation of the Shakespeare theatrical myth in the
Western world almost as successfully as the dissemination of the Dracula metaphor
in connection with Transylvania.
PAGE 253 ................. 11420$ NOTE 10-20-05 11:12:51 PS
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Index
Alarcon, Pedro Antonio de, 40
Alecsandrescu, Dan, 181
Alifantis, Nicu, 111, 112
America, 19, 36, 43, 92, 138, 154, 181,
192, 193
Anatol, Constantin, 201
Antony and Cleopatra, 40, 42, 49, 50, 59,
161, 162, 166
Arad Theater, 128, 129, 143, 152
Arany, Janos, 44
Argentina, 34
Arghezi, Tudor, 198
Arghir, Sorin, 81
Armenia, 45
As You Like It, 12, 100, 1024, 108, 109
11, 117, 118, 12224, 126, 128, 134,
145, 146, 150, 155, 164
audience: Elizabethan and Jacobean,
21, 22, 29, 50, 67, 151, 194, 195, 220;
modern, 20, 30, 40, 48, 65, 68, 69, 72,
79, 82, 9197, 99, 100, 114, 157, 187,
192, 197, 235; Romanian, 11, 13, 23
25, 4647, 5054, 56, 57, 60, 63, 64,
66, 68, 70, 74, 75, 7883, 86, 8792,
9496, 98102, 1048, 11016, 118
22, 124, 127, 12846, 14855, 157,
159, 160, 162, 166, 167, 169, 17176,
178, 18082, 18589, 19192, 196
99, 2014, 205, 206, 208, 20912, 215,
216, 218, 22128, 23031
Austria, 20, 38, 39, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 188
Bacau Theater, 104, 106, 108, 110, 164
Bagdat, Toma Alexandru, 53
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, 134, 207
Balkans, 20, 34, 44, 45, 99, 220
Bantas, Andrei, 119
Barac, Ion, 52
Barborescu, Stefan, 197
Barsan, Zaharia, 197
Baudissin, Wolf Graf von, 39
PAGE 266
266
Bauernfeld, Eduard von, 39
Beckett, Samuel, 32
Beier, Karin, 229, 230, 231
Belgium, 93
Beligan, Radu, 75
Benda, Otto, 39
Bentoiu, Pascal, 205
Berechet, Mihai, 166, 168
Bible, 54, 65, 153
Bikelas, Dimitrios, 45
Bjurback, Olof, 41
Black Sea, 11, 21, 26, 27, 28, 137
Blanco-White, Jose Maria, 40
Boccaccio, 19
Bocsardi, Laszlo, 154, 155
Boddaert, P., 41
Bohemia, 227, 235
Bohl de Faber, Juan Nicolas, 40
Bogdanovic, Milan, 44
Boito, Arrigo, 39, 40
Bokor, Petre, 192
Borgeson, Jess, 192
Bosy, Michal, 43
Botosani Theater, 114, 209
Botta, Dan, 60, 88
Botta, Emil, 167
Braila Theater, 130
Brandes, Georg, 41
Brasov Theater, 124
Brazil, 34
Brecht, Bertold, 32, 69, 70, 163, 186,
191, 226
Breugel, Pieter, 226
Brezeanu, Ion, 145
Britain, 20, 21, 23, 29, 30, 34, 44, 45, 59,
68, 84, 89, 94, 95, 97, 72, 110, 209,
232, 233. See also British Isles
British Isles, 27. See also Britain
Brook, Peter, 136, 139, 156
Bulandra Theater, 102, 103, 104, 127,
136, 166, 170, 190, 197, 206, 211, 212,
221, 226
................. 11420$ INDX 10-20-05 11:12:51 PS
INDEX 267
Bulandra, Tony, 197
Bulgaria, 31, 33, 41
Burgersdijk, Leendert Alexander Johan-
nes, 41
Burton, Robert, 211
Byron, George Gordon, 197
Cajander, Paavo, 41
Calboreanu, George, 198
Calin, Tudor, 198
Caramitru, Ion, 207
Carcani, Giulio, 40
Carpathians, 21, 27, 35
Catholicism, 51, 219
Cassian, Nina, 215, 222
Ceausescu, Nicolae, 13, 85, 86, 89, 117,
121, 122, 126, 162, 177, 179, 183, 184,
185, 208, 209, 222, 232
Cernescu, Dinu, 116, 142, 144, 175, 176,
177, 178, 179, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206,
225, 226, 233
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 162
chorography, 29, 30, 81
Christianity, 28, 36, 50, 51, 58, 63, 64,
65, 180, 188, 196, 201
Ciobanu, Nona, 145, 146
Ciulei, Liviu, 102, 103, 104,109, 110,
127, 128, 136, 137, 138, 170, 211, 212,
218, 221, 222, 223
Ciupe, Theodor, 111
Clark, Jaime, 40
Codreanu, Mihail, 197
Codrescu, Constantin, 201
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 196
Colpacci, Alexandru, 150
comedy, 13, 2425, 55, 91, 99, 110, 114,
128, 131, 133, 139, 149; dark, 102,
109, 113, 115, 128, 142, 147, 151; and
farce, 88, 101, 106; and grotesque,
120, 132; and ideological use, 33, 84,
85, 105, 226; and melancholy,
12223; and parody, 125, 153; pasto-
ral, 103, 117, 146; and psychology,
118, 135, 138; romantic, 29, 97, 103,
107, 119, 149, 150, 155; slapstick, 111,
119, 224; and social satire, 112, 113,
121, 127, 154
The Comedy of Errors, 45, 96, 100, 133,
134, 151
Comedy Theater, 11, 86, 88, 119, 134,
151
PAGE 267
Communism: and censorship, 11, 24,
68, 71, 89, 90, 99, 122, 147, 153, 159,
160, 164, 165, 168, 171, 172, 184, 199,
201, 202, 234; in Eastern Europe, 12,
31, 32, 41, 70, 89, 110, 170, 178, 233;
and the iron curtain, 132, 202; and
propaganda, 97, 103, 159, 162, 163,
165, 167, 172; in Romania, 13, 2326,
31, 35, 42, 68 74, 79, 80, 83, 86, 89,
94, 97, 98107, 11015, 11723, 125
27, 13234, 138, 139, 14245, 14748,
15354, 15681, 18389, 191, 194,
199209, 213, 22124, 23234. See also
Socialism
Constanta Theater, 155, 185
Coriolanus, 13, 64, 161, 172, 17779, 187,
189
Cornisteanu, Mircea, 82, 83
Cozorici, Gheorghe, 200
criticism: and history, 67, 74, 93, 233;
Marxist, 13, 70, 73, 107, 114; perform-
ance theory, 12, 56, 69, 101, 158, 159,
202, 217, 234, 235; and Shakespeare,
31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 4749, 51, 57, 72,
74, 81, 82, 8587, 89, 95, 97, 99100,
102, 103, 105, 108, 110, 112, 113, 118,
120, 122, 128, 130, 136, 137, 145, 146,
15051, 16465, 16768, 17173,
177, 180, 18384, 18992, 199, 200
203, 2056, 21112, 218, 221, 223,
225; social, 70, 72, 73, 112, 159, 167,
188; and theater, 11, 20, 68, 69, 70,
75, 79, 81, 82, 89, 91, 93, 99, 100, 101,
113, 161, 163, 164, 197, 211, 234
Croatia, 42, 44, 229
Cruz, Ramon de la, 40
cultural memory, 12, 21
Cymbeline, 29, 221
Cyrillic alphabet, 42, 53, 56
Czech, 33, 42, 43
Dabija, Alexandru, 111, 119, 120, 147,
149, 151
Dahlgren, Fredrik, 41
Dan, Al. Dem., 197
Danube, 11, 21, 26, 27, 35, 41, 187
Darie, Alexandru, 132, 133, 134, 135,
136, 189, 226
Demetriade, Aristide, 197, 198
Demetrius, Lucia, 145
democracy, 35, 59, 69, 102, 132, 144,
................. 11420$ INDX 10-20-05 11:12:52 PS
268 INDEX
148, 154, 177, 178, 179, 184, 192, 225,
231, 236
Denmark, 41, 56, 188, 195, 197, 199,
200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 212
dictatorship, 74, 86, 89, 126, 133, 144,
167, 178, 184, 191, 232
Diogenes, 126
director, 13, 24, 25, 37, 38, 43, 61, 68,
69, 70, 75, 78, 8083, 84, 8695, 97
120, 12225, 12736, 138, 139, 141
54, 156, 159, 16066, 16872,
174213, 21519, 22327, 229, 230,
234, 235
Dobrentei, Gabriel, 44
Dobsinsky, Pavol, 43
Doring, Heinrich, 39
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 119
Dracula, 80, 131, 236
Dragomir, State, 197
Druzhinin, Alexander, 42
Ducis, Jean Francois, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42,
55
Dumas, Alexandre, 37, 56, 196
Duse, Eleonora, 40
Dutch, 41
Dutescu, Dan, 174, 215
Duval, Georges, 197
Eastern Europe, 12, 13, 19, 20, 21, 22,
26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 40,
41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 67, 70, 94, 152, 170,
189, 220, 233, 235, 236
Elemer, Kincses, 174, 223, 224
Elizabethan, 21, 28, 50, 51, 55, 67, 78,
87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 102, 104,
110, 111, 150, 151, 166, 167, 170, 173,
195, 206, 211, 212, 234, 235. See also
Tudor
Empress Sissi, 45
England, 12, 14, 24, 29, 34, 37, 42, 46,
51, 56, 59, 61, 67, 72, 80, 88, 90, 95,
161, 167, 235
Enlightenment, 31, 32, 47
Eschenburg, Johann Joachim, 43
Etterle, Fory, 201
Faccio, Franco, 40
Fascist regime, 12, 199. See also Hitler
Fatulescu, Florin, 124
Fick, Joseph, 39
Finland, 41, 189, 229
PAGE 268
Flanders, 34
Foersom, Peter, 41
France, 25, 32, 34, 35, 3738, 40, 41, 42,
43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 54, 55, 56, 62, 63,
80, 88, 108, 146, 188, 196, 197, 198,
203, 229, 232
Freud, Sigmund, 203
Frunza, Victor Ioan, 91, 94, 149, 150,
153
Gabor, Tompa, 210, 211
Galgotiu, Dragos, 130, 131, 132, 190
Galiano, Antonio Alcala, 40
Garc a, Manuel, 40
Geijer, Eric Gustaf, 41
geography, 20, 28, 35, 220, 227, 228
Gerbel, Nikolai, 42
Geric, Vladimir, 44.
Germany, 20, 25, 31, 32, 35, 37, 3839,
41, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 52, 55, 68, 70,
108, 188, 196, 198, 199, 213, 229, 230,
232, 233
Gervinus, Georg Gottfried, 47
Ghiurcescu, Lucian, 81, 94
Giulesti Theater, 142, 180, 225
Globe, the, 19, 29, 78, 91
Gnedich, Nikolai Ivanovich, 42
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 39, 47,
196, 225
Gogol, Nikolay, 162
Goldoni, Carlo, 163
Gonta, Grigore, 88, 89
Greece, 44, 45, 89, 181
Grigore, Dan, 207
Grigorescu, Dan, 34, 135
Guizot, Francois, 37
Hagberg, Carl August, 41
Hamlet, 12, 23, 25, 26, 28, 32, 34, 37, 38,
39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52,
55, 56, 57, 58, 65, 68, 74, 75, 84, 100,
118, 132, 150, 160, 161, 176, 194219,
233
Hannikainen, Pietari, 41
Hausvater, Alexandru, 227, 228, 231
Hebbel, Friedrich, 47
Heine, Heinrich, 47
Heinichen, Carl, 39
Henriad, 13, 38, 7982, 90, 91, 94, 175
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 47, 196
Heufeld, Franz, 38, 39, 43
................. 11420$ INDX 10-20-05 11:12:52 PS
INDEX 269
Hilsenberg, Ludwig, 39
history, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, 2225, 28, 30,
32, 34, 35, 38, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49,
55, 58, 59, 60, 63, 6668, 7175, 79
86, 8895, 97, 101, 103, 108, 115, 122,
142, 154, 156, 159, 165, 167, 173, 177,
179, 180, 183, 185, 186, 191, 197, 203,
205, 211, 221, 233, 235
Hitler, 85, 199. See also Fascist regime
Holland, 41. See also Dutch
Homer, 19, 225
Howell, Anthony, 96
Hughes, Ian, 96
Hugo, Francois Victor, 38
Hugo, Victor, 38, 47, 196
humanism, 31, 72, 94, 103, 150, 202
Hungarian Theater, 149, 210
Hungary, 33, 41, 43, 44, 46, 50, 174, 236
Ibsen, Henrik, 163
Ieremia, Ioan, 79, 80, 81, 91, 94, 179
Iordache, S tefan, 86, 204
Iordanescu, S tefan, 143, 144, 152
Iosif, S t. O., 135
India, 31, 145
Iovita, Cristina, 127, 128
Islam, 28, 36, 51, 65
Italy, 3940, 46, 47, 55, 146, 188, 195,
196, 213, 229, 235
Iures, Marcel, 92, 211, 222
Jacobean, 21, 50, 220, 226, 235. See also
Stuart
Japan, 95, 149, 175, 176, 189
Jarry, Alfred, 184
Julius Caesar, 13, 41, 44, 49, 50, 52, 53,
59, 161, 17071, 187, 189
Junimea society, 54
Kaufmann, Philip, 39
Kazinczy, Ferenc, 43
Keats, John, 196
King John, 11, 44, 50, 5963, 86, 8789
King Lear, 21, 23, 32, 38, 42, 44, 45, 50,
58, 59, 101, 162, 17274, 17981,
19092
Kok, Abraham, 41
Korner, Julius, 39
Kostic, Laza, 44
Kott, Jan, 32, 70, 71, 73, 97, 177, 179,
180, 186
Kozmian, Stanislaus, 42
PAGE 269
La Calle, Teodoro, 40
Lachmann, Karl, 39
La Place, Antoine de, 37, 55
Laroche, Benjamin, 37
Latin, 22, 35, 36, 57, 137, 235
Lembcke, Edvard, 41
Lemouton, Emilia, 44
Lennep, Jacop van, 41
Leonardo da Vinci, 221
Leoni, Michele, 39
Leoveanu, Sorin, 217
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 47, 196
Le Tourneur, 37, 44, 53, 56, 196
Levitchi, Leon, 34, 47, 48, 174, 215, 221
Lichiardopol, Mihaela, 155
Long, Adam, 192
Ludwig, Otto, 47
Lundblad, Sven, 41
Lungeanu, Mihai, 116, 117, 142
Lupu, Adrian, 128, 129
Macbeth, 13, 23, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43,
44, 54, 59, 162, 16668, 172, 17576,
18386, 225
Machiavelli, 74, 85, 86
Macpherson, William, 40
Magna Carta, 59
Mallarme, Stephane, 55
Manea, Aureliu, 109, 110, 175, 176
Maniutiu, Mihai, 90, 92, 95, 128, 129,
183, 189, 190
Manolescu, Grigore, 56, 196, 197, 198,
211
Manolescu, Ion, 197, 198
Marascu, Tudor, 143, 155, 156
Marbe, Myriam, 109
Marculescu, Constantin, 197
Marin, Mircea, 180
Marx, Karl, 31, 70, 72, 73, 74, 101, 103,
105, 106, 107, 112, 158, 162, 167, 171,
222, 234
Matoses, Manuel, 40
Measure for Measure, 38, 44, 108, 11517,
132, 133, 134, 142, 14344, 151,
15355
Mediterranean, 27, 30, 96, 195
The Merchant of Venice, 33, 38, 45, 50, 52,
59, 63, 64, 11415, 134
The Merry Wives of Windsor, 29, 42, 44, 91,
94, 100, 101, 108, 112, 113, 134, 151,
163, 164
................. 11420$ INDX 10-20-05 11:12:53 PS
270 INDEX
Meurice, Paul, 56, 196
Meyer, Joseph, 39
Mickiewicz, Adam, 42
Micu, Dan, 122, 123, 124, 137
A Midsummer Nights Dream, 108, 12728,
133, 13439, 151, 152, 153, 156, 211
Mihalache, Andrei, 185
Millo, Matei, 114
Moga, Dorin, 81
Moldova, 11, 27, 46, 47, 50, 54, 80, 112,
114
Molie`re (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 56,
163
monarchy, 75, 78, 79, 80, 83, 102, 137,
168
Montegut, Emile, 38, 196
Morand, Euge`ne, 38
Morat n, Leandro Fernandez de, 40
Morgenstern, Maia, 181
Mounet-Sully, Jean, 196, 197
Much Ado About Nothing, 38, 100, 101,
108, 13132, 134, 14749
Mugur, Vlad, 25, 104, 106, 200, 21217
Nasta, Dan, 201, 202
National Opera, 205
National Theater of Bucharest, 75, 92,
120, 139, 163, 166, 169, 172, 196, 197,
198, 213, 229
National Theater of Cluj-Napoca, 91,
94, 109, 111, 129, 153, 181, 189, 197,
201, 212, 213, 215
National Theater of Craiova, 82, 168,
184, 187, 190, 197, 200, 210, 213
National Theater of Iasi, 104, 117, 127,
128, 152, 198
National Theater of Targu Mures, 152,
174, 206, 223
National Theater of Timisoara, 79, 90,
94, 155, 201
Nedelcu, Vasile, 144, 145
Negulici, Ion, 53
Nekrasov, Nicolaj, 42
New Testament, 58, 64, 65
Nicolau, Florian, 88, 104, 167, 168, 221
Nicolescu, Miron, 201
Nottara, Constantin, 114, 197
Nottara Theater, 79, 81, 94, 122, 123,
166, 175, 176, 192, 202
Odeon Theater, 90, 213, 227
Old Testament, 58, 63, 64
PAGE 270
Olivier, Lawrence, 200
Olteanu, Ion, 201
Ortelius, 12, 22
Orthodox Church, 50, 51, 139, 196
Ortlepp, Ernst, 39
sterberg, Valdemar, 41
Ostrovsky, Alexander, 42, 162
Ostrowskiego, Krystyna, 42
Othello, 23, 27, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 47,
50, 53, 54, 100, 163, 16870, 18182,
192
Ottoman Empire, 26, 28, 36, 45, 50, 51,
59, 64, 96, 182
Ovenez-Dorosenco, Anca, 120
Ovid, 19, 28, 137
Paris, 51
Parker, Lynne, 96
Paszkowski, Jozef, 42
Penciulescu, Radu, 75, 78, 79, 172
Pepino, Cristian, 110, 111
Pericles, 13, 221, 22526, 22728, 231
Peto, Sandor, 44
Petz, Leopold, 39
Piave, Francesco Maria, 39
Picasso, Pablo, 142
Pintea, Adrian, 211
Pitesti Theater, 115
Pittis, Florian, 222
Plato, 139, 226, 231
Ploiesti Theater, 131, 144, 175
Poland, 33, 42, 46, 70, 229, 233, 236
Polevoj, Nikolaj, 55.
politics, 11, 20, 24, 29, 35, 67, 73, 86, 88,
9093, 96, 108, 111, 122, 123, 144,
148, 151, 156, 160, 161, 171, 173, 182,
186, 200, 201, 202, 205, 207, 209
Popescu, Cristian Theodor, 152, 189
Popescu, Horea, 75
Portugal, 55
Protestantism, 51, 219
Protopopescu, Dragos, 139, 221
Purcarete, Silviu, 84, 85, 184, 187, 188,
189
Purcell, Henry, 226
Purgatory, 219
Pushkin, Aleksandr, 196
Radoff, S tefan, 203
Radulescu, Ion Heliade, 53
Raicu, Mihai, 174, 175
................. 11420$ INDX 10-20-05 11:12:54 PS
INDEX 271
Ralea, Marian, 88
Rebengiuc, Victor, 222
Rebreanu, Liviu, 198
red curtain, 13, 132, 187
Reitzel, Holst, 41
Rembrandt, van Rijn, 148
Renaissance, 27, 30, 32, 74, 75, 131, 140,
146, 150, 181, 202, 220, 221, 235
Repan, Alexandru, 203
Richard II, 38, 7579, 8284, 95
Richard III, 32, 50, 59, 72, 7475, 8486,
9192, 95, 100, 166
romance, 13, 26, 29, 41, 46, 57, 220, 221,
226, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 235
Romania, 1113, 1927, 2942, 4475,
7980, 8284, 8692, 94104, 1069,
11115, 117, 118, 120, 12342, 144
47, 14972, 174, 175, 177202, 2046,
20813, 21516, 21835
romantic, 25, 29, 32, 36, 37, 44, 47, 48,
49, 53, 55, 84, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103,
107, 112, 115, 119, 140, 141, 142, 146,
150, 152, 155, 157, 182, 194, 198, 199,
200, 211, 212, 213, 215, 217
Romeo and Juliet, 31, 33, 40, 44, 55, 59,
100, 153, 163
Rossi, Ernesto, 196
Rusconi, Carlo, 39
Russia, 27, 3233, 42, 50, 55, 56, 79, 97,
108, 110, 122, 163, 165, 168, 182, 200,
201, 222, 229, 233, 235. See also Soviet
Sade, Marquis de, 153
Sadoveanu, Mihail, 198
S ahighian, Ion, 74
Salvini, Tommaso, 196
Sapdaru, Ion, 152, 209
Sasarman, Mihaela, 143
Satu Mare Theater, 174
Sava, Ion, 185, 198
Scarlat, Nicolae, 206
Scheutz, Georg, 41
Schiller, Friedrich, 39, 41, 47
Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 39, 41, 43,
47, 57
Schlegel, Friedrich, 47
Schroder, Friedrich Ludwig, 38, 39, 41,
43, 52.
Schwob, Marcel, 38.
S erban, Andrei, 139, 140, 141, 142, 150,
170, 171
PAGE 271
Serbia, 33, 42, 44, 95
setting, 11, 36, 81, 82, 84, 88, 89, 98,
104, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 124, 131,
136, 137, 143, 147, 148, 150, 173, 186,
195, 204, 205, 210, 227
Sfantu Gheorghe Theater, 154
Shakespeare, William, 1114, 1975,
78112, 11415, 117, 120, 12225,
12739, 14142, 144, 145, 147, 149,
15176, 17984, 18687, 18992,
194202, 205, 209, 21013, 21525,
22736
Shaw, George Bernard, 163
Shiva, 145
Singer, Daniel, 192
Sladek, Josef Vaclav, 43
Slavic, 36, 41, 45, 229
Slovakia, 42, 43
Slovenia, 188
Socialism, 31, 70, 72, 73, 74, 83, 101,
102, 103, 105, 107, 112, 113, 114, 118,
125, 147, 158, 164, 167, 174, 176, 178.
See also Communism
Solomon, Petre, 221
Sonnets, 45, 106, 118, 146, 163, 226
South Africa, 31, 188
Soviet, 25, 32, 33, 100, 163. See also
Russia
Spain, 40, 41, 55, 61, 188, 195, 23132
Stalin, Joseph, 79, 99, 101, 109, 165,
171, 174, 200
Stoica, S., 53
Streinu, Vladimir, 215
Stuart, 14, 21, 50, 220, 226, 235. See also
Jacobean
Sturdza, Petre, 197
Sumarkov, Alexander, 55
Sweden, 41, 189
Taine, Hipolyte Adolphe, 47, 196
Tanase, Maria, 109
The Taming of the Shrew, 12, 42, 100, 102,
108, 11314, 129, 134, 151, 164
Teatrul Mic, 75, 79, 84, 145, 177
The Tempest, 44, 45, 71, 123, 127, 211,
22125, 22931
Teodorescu, Anda, 119
Teodorescu, Crin, 104, 105
Teodorescu, George, 166, 205
Teodorescu, Virgil, 145
Tham, Karel Hynek, 43
................. 11420$ INDX 10-20-05 11:12:55 PS
272 INDEX
Thomander, Johan Henrik, 41
Tieck, Dorothea, 39
Tieck, Ludwig, 39, 57
Timon of Athens, 48, 172, 17475, 176,
18990
Titus Andronicus, 13, 161, 18788, 192
Tocilescu, Alexandru, 112, 113, 206,
207, 208, 209
Todea, Cornel, 169
Toia, Nicoleta, 117, 118
Tomori, Athanazius, 44
Toparceanu, George, 135
tragedy, 13, 25, 32, 39, 50, 53, 54, 56, 58,
59, 75, 83, 88, 128, 131, 168, 16971,
174, 175, 176, 179, 18082, 185, 187,
191, 194, 195, 2036, 211, 217
Transylvania, 11, 27, 38, 41, 45, 46, 48,
50, 52, 54, 129, 235, 236
Tudor, 12, 13. See also Elizabethan
Turkey, 21, 27, 28, 35, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51,
56, 64, 96, 182. See also Ottoman Em-
pire
Twelfth Night, 12, 100, 101, 1047, 108,
10910, 12022, 13031, 134, 139
42, 14950, 151, 231
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 100, 108,
11920, 151, 164
Tyl, Josef Kajetan, 43
Ulrici, Herman, 39
Uylenbroek, P. J., 41
PAGE 272
Valentineanu, Valeriu, 198
Velasco Rojas, Mat as de, 40
Verri, Alessandro, 39
Vienna, 35, 46, 51, 116, 117, 196, 197
Vigny, Alfred de, 37, 47
Vinea, Ion, 215
Viskovatov, Sergej, 55
Visa, Iulian, 113, 114, 115
Visan, Dorel, 92
Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet), 37
Vorosmarty, Michael, 44
Voss, J. H., 39
Vraca, George, 74, 166, 198
Vulpe, Andreea, 180, 181
Walachia, 11, 27, 35, 46, 47, 50, 54, 80
Western Europe, 12, 22, 26, 28, 35, 37,
51, 53, 59, 112, 124, 132, 163, 177,
179, 181, 182, 189, 233, 236
Wieland, Christoph Martin, 38, 39, 41,
43, 47
The Winters Tale, 221, 22627
World War II, 12, 25, 200
Wulff, Peter, 41
Youth Theater of Piatra Neamt, 112,
113, 147
Yugoslavia, 91
Zirra, Mihai, 201
................. 11420$ INDX 10-20-05 11:12:55 PS

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Shakespeare

rmer, translated the prison metaphor into an

nich, Konstanz, Hanover, Esslingen, Mu

nich. When, in October 2001,

ngel-Luis Pujante and

lisabethains 47 (1995): 2942.

mbl nzirea scorpiei de Shakespeare [The Taming of the

ola de Estudios Renascentistas Ingleses) 8 (1997):

do, Three Jacobean Tragedies, rev. ed. (1969; repr., London:

nsemnari despre Shakespeare. In Shakespeare si opera lui: Culegere de

mbl nzirea Scorpiei de Shakespeare. Teatrul 12 (1980): 5456.

mbl nzirea scorpiei de Shakespeare. Teatrul 12 (1980): 5456.

mini, ed. Three Jacobean Tragedies. 1965. London: Penguin, 1969.

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