Translating for the Audience. Plautus's "Captivi" by the Accademici Intronati (Siena 1530) and Goldoni's Adaptation of Voltaire's "L'Ecossaise" (Venezia 1761)

This collected monograph from New York creatively takes stock on the wide-ranging textual criticism of the specific technical and cultural issues arising from translating texts for theatre. The volume analyses two methodologically relevant examples, which -albeit they relate to different historical contexts- both date back to a distant past and have strong international significance. The first, Renaissance humanism, had to come to terms with the ancient civilization at the dawn of modern theatre. The second, the world-wide European Enlightenment theatre, built a modern grammar of taste and sensitivity on stage. The first selected case-study is the ‘vernacularisation’ of Captivi by Plautus authored in 1530 by the Accademici Intronati of Siena, whom - in their Prigioni - freely 'rewrote' the Latin original in the tragic historical circumstances of the Sack of Rome and the siege of Florence. The second, Goldoni’s 1761Scozzese, is a bold makeover of Voltaire’s Ecossaise. The work, while having paid a merely cosmetic tribute to the great ‘noble father’ of contemporary theatre, suitably corrected many of its structural and dramatic deficiencies, in a nexus of proud and conscious emulation.