Translations & Adaptations

The adaptations and translations below are copyrighted and available for performance. Please direct all inquiries to me at Rafael@rafaeldeacha.com. Translations/adaptations available are:

• LIFE'S DREAMING by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
• BASTIEN AND BASTIENNE by Mozart
• FALSTAFF AND HAL by William Shakespeare

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) wrote 220 plays during his career, at the height of the Spanish Golden Age theatre. His strengths as playwright were many, including his capacity for poetic beauty, his keen sense of dramatic structure and the depth of his philosophy of life.

One of the primary reasons why the great plays of the Spanish "Siglo de Oro" (1600's) lie dormant on library shelves is the set of challenges to actor and audience that stem from the daunting density of much of Calderón's syntax and language. Calderón's purposely convoluted, hyperbolic verse does not travel easily into English - a language that tends towards the terse and the brief.

With this rhymed verse translation the author throws the proverbial hat into the literary rink in one more attempt at grappling with Calderón's unique brand of verse while hopefully conveying its riches by means of - we fervently hope - intelligent and intelligible English. Here are three samples:

How it could race and run so fast, that violent monstrosity!
Much faster than the air, at vertiginous velocity,
A bird without a nest... A fish that could not swim...
A beast that brooked no rest.... A brute out on a whim...
It filled my heart with fear as on it plunged:
On to a naked, jagged pile of rocks it lunged,
And in a convoluted labyrinth, one could tell
It met untimely death, it leapt and fell!
Dead it lies upon this hill's descending crest,
Where beasts of burden perish and have their rest.
I beg you to refrain!

We are two: two out on this insane adventure,
Two who have left our homeland, here to venture!
This encroaching darkness traps me like a net!
I'm sore, I'm scared, I'm hurt, I'm mad, I'm wet!
I just rolled down that hill: my butt is raw
One more word out of you and off I go!

Birds are born, their wondrous plumes
Give their lofty flight its beauty
They learn to fly: it's their duty.
Out from their nests they have ventured
Their flight is adept, assured
Their homes they have left behind,
All empty, bereft, abandoned.
I've a soul and human might
Yet I can never take flight
And I've lesser liberty!

In my translation and adaptation of Life's Dreaming, I have retained over 80% of Calderon's original text. That which I "lost" I did lose with a happy heart and a clean conscience. By the time we near the end of the play (uncut) we would be clocking in at close to three hours of stage time. Shakespeare, uncut, can develop unwanted longueurs. Calderón - the Spanish Shakespeare - can become like a dinner guest whose company we love only to turn into a nuisance when he overstays his welcome over desert and coffee and cognac and cigars and...

With all due respect, that happens with Don Pedro Calderón in the third (final) act of his play, in which he has to tie together a series of little dramatic bows: the Rosaura-honor issue, the who's going to marry Estrella issue, the who's going to marry Rosaura issue, the who's Rosaura's father issue all in the last twenty-five minutes of the play. I try to provide a clean-cut, clear-cut solution by leaving the solving and explanatory responsibilities to Segismund and sparing the actors playing the roles of Rosaura, Estrella, the King, Clotaldus and Astolf the embarrassment of having to speak the lines Calderón provided them late in the play's denouement in what seems to have been a very late night of writing somewhere, sometime in the 17th century.

Gone too are most of the walk-on, one-liner roles - servants and soldiers - except for the loyal soldier - here renamed Captain - who frees Segismund from his prison for the final time.

This adaptation and translation of Calderón's Life's Dreaming is copywrighted and available for performance. Please direct all inquiries to me at Rafael@rafaeldeacha.com.

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Mozart wrote this one-act Singspiel in 1768, at the age of twelve. It was performed at the home of Dr. Anton Mesmer, the famed German scientist whose ideas led to the development of hypnotism. Performed on a miniature stage and sung by amateur singers, the little work is a naïve, sentimental, satirical, and, at times, completely silly and hilarious hodge-podge. But it is also charged with subtle political and social satire, though it remains, first and foremost, an entertainment.

The original text was translated from the French by the Viennese actor Friedrich Wilfred Weiskern. Johannes Müller added song verses, and court trumpeter Johann Andreas Schachtner contributed some recitatives, not all of which have survived.

The word Singspiel itself spells a curious and combined hidden meaning of singing and playing at the same time, past its dictionary definition of "play with music." Rather than accommodating the text to the cynicism of a contemporary audience by 'modernizing' or 'sending up' the translation with extraneous humor, the intent here is to faithfully reproduce in singer-friendly and intelligible English the sound of the Austrian-inflected German of Mozart's childhood.

The charming story also exudes the sense and sensibility of Jean Jacques Rousseau's 1752 play with music Le Devin du Village (The Village Soothsayer.) as well as much theatre of the time. This is a story that depicts a pastoral world of lusty shepherds and shepherdesses, and, in its time, it played to a society longing for a return to a bucolic, much simpler life and to a plainer and more humane set of moral and ethical values.

To a contemporary audience, one more and more concerned with the need for a gentler environment and a benevolent way of life, this one-act play with music can resonate with its candor.

In any case, this Singspiel is an astounding musical gem by a precocious musical genius, coming eighteen years or so before Mozart's and Daponte's and Beaumarchais' Figaro and Susanna in Le Marriage de Figaro or Le Nozze di Figaro first tread the boards and set out to make fools of their lords and masters.

The risky and politically-dangerous humor of Lorenzo Daponte - Mozart's librettist for all his Italian comic operas - forebodingly anticipated the sentiments and ideals that gave rise to long-lasting social changes all over Europe. This Bastien und Bastienne is a first step in the direction of the politically-charged comedy and drama that Mozart and his librettist would later bring to full bloom in his mature works.

Here is a trio of samples:

Befraget mich ein zartes Kind
A CHARMING CHILD ONE DAY INQUIRES
Um sein zukünft'ges Glücke,
WHAT FATEFUL ILLS AWAIT HER.
Les ich das Schiksal ihm geschwind
NO FEAT OF SCIENCE WAS REQUIRED:
Aus dem verliebten Blicke.
I ANSWERED "BLISS FOREVER!"

Würd ich auch wie manche Buhlerinnen
IF I WERE LIKE MANY OTHER MAIDENS,
Fremder Schmeicheleien niemals satt,
WITH THEIR WORDS THAT FLATTER AND ASTOUND,
Wollt ich mir ganz leicht das Herz gewinnen
I COULD WIN WITH EASE THE HEARTS OF STRANGERS
Von den schönsten Herren aus der Stadt.
AND THE BEST AND RICHEST MEN AROUND.

Großen Dank dir abzustatten,
GREATEST THANKS TO YOU FOR, SIMPLY,
Herr Colas, ist meine Pflicht;
GUIDING WELL MY PATH IN LIFE.
Du zertleist des Zweifels Schatten
YOU'VE DISPELLED MY DOUBTS SO QUICKLY,
Durch den weisen Unterrricht.
I CAN SAFELY CHOOSE A WIFE.

This singing-translation of Mozart's Bastien and Bastienne is copywrighted and available for performance. Please direct all inquiries to me at Rafael@rafaeldeacha.com.

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This is my adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth, parts one and two, in which I concentrate and focus all my attention on the Falstaff-Hal, Hal-King Henry relationships, and, marginally, on the backdrop of internecine jealousies and intrigues and old grudges that propel the play forward. The adaptation should run a total stage time of three hours (plus intermissions) if played at a good clip. It can be performed by 9 actors, with 6 of the nine taking multiple roles, and the Henry Fourth, Falstaff and Hal being played by one actor who does no other roles. Each half is given a prologue and an epilogue, culled from Shakespeare - Rumor appears at the top of the play and elsewhere. I grab some of the text of Henry V and "plug" it in. I think the scheme should work quite well.

Here is a trio of samples...

ACTOR 1
Theater (so and so) presents Falstaff and Hal, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth, parts one and two. Part one is titled The Scroll of Youth. This is the Prologue, spoken by the actors in the cast.
ACTOR 2
Open your ears! For which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
ACTOR 3
We, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the winds our post-horses, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth.
ACTOR 4
Upon our tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language we pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.

ACTOR 5
We speak of peace, while covert enmity
Under the smile of safety wounds the world.
ACTOR 6
And who but Rumor, who but only we,
Make fearful musters and prepared defense,
While the big year, swollen with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war.
ACTOR 7
And no such matter.
ACTOR 8
Rumor is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures.
ACTOR 9
It's of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it.

EPILOGUE TO PART ONE

ACTOR ONE
Now all the youth of England is on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.
ACTOR TWO
Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
ACTOR THREE
They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,
For now sits Expectation in the air,
And hides a sword from hilt unto the point
Promised to Harry and his followers.
ACTOR FOUR
From camp to camp through the foul womb of night
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other's watch.
ACTOR FIVE
Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs,
Piercing the night's dull ear and from the tents
The blacksmiths, working through the night,
Give dreadful note of preparation.
ACTOR SIX
The English sit and darkly ruminate,
Investing their wan cheeks and war-worn coats
With dread, and look unto the gazing moon
Like so many horrid ghosts.
ACTOR SEVEN
The royal captain of this ruined band
Walks from watch to watch, from tent to tent,
And forth he goes and visits all his host.
And calls them brothers, friends and countrymen.
ACTOR EIGHT
Upon his royal face there is no note
How dread an army hath surrounded him,
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of color
Unto the weary and all-watched night.
ACTOR NINE
A largess universal like the sun
His liberal eye doth give to every one,
Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all,
A little touch of Harry in the night.

EPILOGUE to PART TWO (spoken by the all the actors in the play)

ACTOR SEVEN
First, our fear... Then our courtesy... Last our speech.
ACTOR EIGHT
Our fear is your displeasure, our courtesy our duty, and our speech to beg your pardons.
ACTOR NINE
If you look for a good speech now, you undo us, for what we have to say is of our own making, and what indeed we should say will, I doubt, prove our own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture!
ACTOR THREE
Be it known to you, as it is very well, we could all be here playing in and listening to a very displeasing play and we'd have to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better one. We meant indeed to pay you with this, which, if like an ill venture it came unluckily home, we break, and you, our gentle creditors, lose
ACTOR FOUR
Here we promised you we would be and here we commit our bodies to your mercies. Bate us some and we will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.
ACTOR FIVE
If our tongues cannot entreat you to acquit us, will you command us to use our legs? And yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt.
ACTOR SIX
But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would we. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven us. If the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.
ACTOR ONE
One word more, we beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with me, Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France, where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions. That's for another time.
ACTOR TWO
Our tongue is weary and our legs are too. We will bid you good night but not kneel down before you but, indeed, to pray for you. Good night.

This adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry Fourth, parts one and two is copywrighted and available for performance. Please direct all inquiries to me at info@theaterbythebook.org.

Theater by the Book's 2008 programming is generously supported
by the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation.