It happened in September, but I have to mention Meryl Friedman’s Tug of War. An adaptation of Plautus’s Rudens, based on Amy Richlin’s translation at the Malibu Getty. There was a round platform stage with a few benches and props. Six men—one in drag—and two women (one playing a man part of the time.) A musical ensemble consisting of an accordionist, guitarist, and clarinetist. The worst part of the whole production came right at the start: the cast was dressed in scrupulously tidy versions of thrift-shop motley: torn fancy dress coats and dresses, flamenco dancer garb, funny hats, cutoffs, sneakers. But the first words were novel and funny: they made the Getty’s set legally required speech about refraining from “unnecessary loud or prolonged applause” and made a joke of it. And then we were off.
It made free with Rudens, sometimes straying off into business that came from everywhere but Rome. But scenes, and speeches and bits of business straight from Plautus kept coming, one after another, and it was delightful. The ensemble was a bit too determined to be breezy and zany, but they made the thing move, and were winning. I missed Plautus’s stage picture—the hut and the shrine. I always picture these plays to myself as having an emphatic contrast between the static, unchanging scene and the lively comings and goings of the actors. And translating the shrine into a beach BBQ hut was clever, but completely eliminated the element of piety which, though unrefined and conventional, also adds a pretty contrast to the goings-on. And making a big deal out of “hempus,” a translation of “silphilium,” I guess, made too much of a completely expendable element of the original.
But most of the innovations were both respectful of Plautus and good jokes. Making Plesidippus into a ridiculous Latin peacock, and Ampelisca into a guy in drag, the sack into a trunk, long soliloquies into songs. Richlin stated the problem in the program: “The plays of Plautus were funny, and the main problem for translators is to make them funny now in the same way they were funny then.” Comedy raises a question of immediacy and connection that isn’t so pertinent for tragedy. The strangeness of Hippolytus or Agamemnon doesn’t interfere with their impressiveness—it can even add to it. But that kind of aloofness is deadly to comedy. Unintelligibility and strangeness can be funny, but not remoteness--that at best is just camp.
One of the things that Friedman’s version completely dismissed was Plautus’s significant act divisions. Apparently the act divisions are later additions to the text, but they reflect real divisions in the action. He always ends the act clearing the stage, and it’s always with a significant action that propels what’s to come. Like the pimp storming into the temple at the end of Act 2. It’s a formalism, but it has a tidiness that appeals to me.
Am I wrong in reading surprising attitudes in this play? The prologue introduces the idea of morally judging god. And then there is the contrast implied between the pimp’s impiety and everyone else’s piety regarding Venus. Is Plautus saying pimps have nothing to do with Venus? It seems more like a Christian sentiment.
Another interesting element is the unapologetic classism. A freeborn person and a slave are assumed to be visibly distinguishable—their stations may be accidentally mixed up, but the action of the play—of the gods—is to set them right: Athenians with Athenians, slaves with slaves. Friedman’s rifle-toting Priestess was a perfectly acceptable substitution for Daemones’s two slaves, but again we lost the significant stage picture of the two girls sitting on the altar. I have no doubts that Friedman was correct in eliminating Gripius—it’s just too absurd to devote the last two acts of the play to a character who’s only introduced in Act 4.
This production naturally brings up the question of Louis Zukofsky’s 1967 Rudens, incorporated into his poem “A.” It’s his most appealling work, his Tempest and his Sea and the Mirror. The Zukofsky experts are too cautious. Their reassurances that it is not a translation of Plautus’s play, but an entirely independent creation—a fantasia on the sonic pattern of Plautus’s text—is going way too far. Indeed it’s not the first translation I would hand a Latin-less reader who wants to know what Rudens is about. But it’s definitely the second thing I would offer. First of all, since when is it ever wrong to produce beautiful English verse?
nine
men’s
morris
this
is
my
form
a
voice
blown
My impression that this was the most gorgeous, accessible and enjoyable part of “A” was confirmed and reinforced over and over again. The anxious warnings that the text is totally opaque are exaggerated. Yes, there are lines and passages that are paratactic and outside of English grammar, but they are the minority. The majority of lines chime along amusingly with the Latin—or at least with an idea of the action. I want to copy out all the passages that particularly delight me, but I’m too tired. Leave it to Zukofsky:
I’ve experienced comedians declaiming wisdom
applauded by the audience out
there - they’re called people – everybody
so divorced going home all
information about rectitude proves useless.
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