Mind your language
Mind your language
Shakespeare plays need surtitles to make them intelligible. Otherwise one only understands what is going on by previous study.
I have stumbled across a translation of Shakespeare into English on a website called No Fear Shakespeare. Hamlet’s well-known soliloquy goes: ‘The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all?’
The double is is certainly a modern touch. Nobler is a surprising survival, considering how much else was jettisoned. I’m not sure about nasty. If it does not have a babyish tone, then it connotes dirtiness, as in that resolution for ‘When I come to be old’ by Jonathan Swift: ‘Not to neglect decency, or cleenlyness, for fear of falling into Nastyness.’
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