Drama Retranslation in Distinct Socio-Political Contexts: Accommodating Lope De Vega’s "Fuente Ovejuna" for the British Stage

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two performable English retranslations of the Spanish classic Fuente Ovejuna (which premiered on British stages in 1936): Allan Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight’s All Citizens Are Soldiers (1967), and April De Angelis’s The Village (2018). It analyses the reception of Lope de Vega’s Golden Age classic at two temporally distant socio-political periods, and examines how one of its key themes, the revolt by the masses against subjugation, is portrayed in each case. A textual and paratextual examination of these English retranslations shows substantial alterations provoked by the source play’s relocation across spatial and temporal boundaries. The conclusions reveal the extent to which these two productions can be regarded as relevant at a particular time in the British theatrical culture, drawing particular attention to the need to re-evaluate the concept of ‘retranslation’ in dramatic literature.