Laura Campillo ARNAIZ - Appropriating KING LEAR in Early Twentieth Century Spain (pag. 127-140)
The reception of Shakespeare in Spain can be considered to begin in 1772 with the performance of Hamleto, King of Denmark, a translation of Shakesperean descent allegedly written by Ramón de la Cruz. From that year onwards, a number of Spanish playwrights, novelists and poets have shown a keen interest in translating the Bard’s plays. From the Hamlet translation published in 1798by Leandro Fernández de Moratín to the Hamlet play translated by post-war playwright Antonio BueroVallejo in 1960, a wide range of Shakespearean plays have captivated the Spanish imagination, with Hamlet being the undisputed favourite. It is therefore intriguing that the only translation Nobel Prize winner Jacinto Benavente wrote was that of King Lear- a play that, despite the place it has in the Shakesperean canon, was hardly known to Spanish audiences throughout the 19th century. King Lear never enjoyed the popularity of Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, and few Spanish readers and theatre goers had actually heard about it by the turn of the 20th century in Spain. The aim of this article is to determine the reasons that lead Jacinto Benavente to write this translation. In the first part of this research, I will study the influence of Shakespeare in Benavente’s works. In the second,I will analyse a number of examples from his translation in order to establish its defining features and the place King Lear has in Benavente’s literary production.