SHOULD SHAKESPEARE BE TRANSLATED INTO MODERN ENGLISH?

SHOULD SHAKESPEARE BE TRANSLATED INTO MODERN ENGLISH? My friend Joe Foley has long contended that Shakespeare’s language is inaccessible to modern audiences. John McWhorter argues in this essay that for theatrical performance Shakespeare should be translated into modern English. What Seamus Heaney did for Beowulf should be done for Shakespeare’s plays. McWhorter says that the audiences for Shakespeare would be greatly increased—that “Shakespeare in the original would play to critical huzzahs but half-empty houses, while people would be lining up around the block to see Shakespeare in English the way Russians do to see an Uncle Vanya.” I don’t agree with McWhorter in his claim that Shakespeare in the original text is hard to enjoy. The popular success of outdoor Shakespeare in our area shows that the plays work for a lot of people even when the acoustics are imperfect.