Verse drama in the twenty-first century?

Abstract

Based on his personal experience as a translator of plays, the author argues — with examples — for maintaining the verse form when translating an original text in verse for the stage, convinced that verse, far from a simple adornment, enhances the aesthetic enjoyment and effectiveness in the reception of the play, while the prose option is doomed from the outset to impoverish and weaken it.

He also reviews the versifying criteria that characterise Elizabethan English drama and Neoclassical French theatre, along with the strategies that have been used to transfer this drama to other languages, eras and cultures.