The French Source of the Earliest Surviving Arabic Hamlet

MARGARET LITVIN
HE OLDEST EXTANT Hamlet in Arabic, the 1901 adaptation by Tanyus Abdu, is a musical with a happy ending. Like many early adaptations of classic literary works, Abdus version has been exhaustively criticized for indelity and more recently rehabilitated as a brilliant example of tailoring to the target cultures values and needs. Yet much of the distortion or adaptation attributed to Abdu, it turns out, can be traced to his hitherto overlooked French source. This article identies that source: an 1840s Hamlet adaptation by ` re. Presenting the Abdu and Dumas texts toAlexandre Dumas pe gether, I ask why no one has made this little discovery before. This oversight leads me to question the two currently dominant models of international literary appropriation, which are both binary models. I then propose the global kaleidoscope as a new approach to non-Anglophone Shakespeare.

One can smile and smile

Several studies have surveyed the early Arabic reception of Shakespeare.1 Most compare successive translations; taking a teleological view, they tell of a bumpily asymptotic evolution from the crude, ridiculous and inaccurate2 adaptations of the 1890s toward ever more faithful and readable Arabic translations. Eager to distinguish themselves from their forebears, the literary-minded authors of these studies scold Arab translators for misunderstanding or misrepresenting important points in Shakespeares original. They either overlook or deplore Shakespeares earliest function in the Arab world: as script fodder for the Levantine immigrant entrepreneurs seeking to ll seats in Egypts new theaters.
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More recently, a few scholars have begun to apply the sociological insights of Pierre Bourdieu to the appropriation of Shakespeare in Arabic. Their work has highlighted the movement from early, commercially driven uses of Shakespeare to later attempts to foster a hierarchy of aesthetic and political values independent of normal market forces. From this angle, it becomes more interesting to examine the commercial and ideological contexts in which different notions of quality were developed and valorized, and less interesting to replicate one such standardthe delity paradigmin assessing competing translations.3 The favorite exemplar for both groupswhipping boy for the former, sociocultural phenomenon for the latteris Tanyus Abdu (18691926), a Lebanese immigrant to Egypt and the author of the earliest surviving Arabic Hamlet adaptation.4 Like many other Levantine immigrants, Abdu made his living as a journalist and translator. He frequented literary and political salons in Alexandria as he had done in Beirut, apparently joining a socialist political party.5 He met and undertook various writing projects with other Syrian-Lebanese expatriates, many of them Christian, Francophone, and opposed to Ottoman rule in the Levant. Among his efforts were a bimonthly magazine, al-Ra w (the narrator), and a newspaper, al-Sharq (the East), both of which serialized literature. Abdu was also extraordinarily prolic as a translator and adapter. Although his political sympathies were socialist, his artistic genius lay in feeding the tastes of Egypts emerging bourgeoisie. He has accordingly been criticized as a mass producer, a hack whose inartistically simple language and na ve use of western sources betrayed traditional Arabo-Islamic standards of literary craftsmanship.6 He has become an icon of indelity;7 among his counterparts in Europe, perhaps only One Thousand and One Nights translators Antoine Galland and Sir Richard Burton have provoked comparable scholarly dismay. Critics have accused Abdu of writing more than six hundred, sometimes seven hundred Arabizations of French and English works of ction and drama. With obvious pleasure, they repeat and embellish the legend that he
was perhaps the most irresponsible of all: according to writers and journalists who knew him personally, Abdu did not really translate but Arabicized what he read. He never followed the original or tried to convey its meaning. He translated anywhere and everywhere, regardless of

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his circumstancesin a coffeeshop, on a sidewalk, on a train, even on the at roof of his house. Abdu was, if we may believe one contemporary description, a walking library . . . He carried with him sheets of paper in one pocket and a French novel in the other. He would then read a few lines, put the novel back in his pocket, and begin to scratch in a ne script whatever he could remember of the few lines he had read. He wrote all day long without striking out a word or rereading a line.8

Abdu began his Hamlet translation in 1901 on the commission of Syrian-born theater manager Iskandar Farah, owner of Cairos alTiya tru al-Mis (Egyptian Theatre) and director of its troupe. The . r text was written for performance rather than reading, reecting what Sameh Fekry Hanna has called the doxa of early drama translation in Egypt, namely producing translations to be performed by singers-cum-actors for an audience for whom singing made good theatre.9 So dominant was the stage over the page in this period that two earlier Arabic Hamlets have not survived in written form.10 Yet Abdu seems to have wanted it both ways, seeking some literary value for his translation. The printed play went into two editions; the title page of the second (1902), which has survived, reads (in Arabic): The story of HAMLET a play in ve acts composed by Shakespeare the renowned English poet * * * Arabized by The skilled writer Tanyus Effendi Abdu Owner of the well-reputed al-Sharq Newspaper * * * A second edition at the expense of Ibrahim Faris, owner of al-Sharqiyya bookshop, Cairo, Egypt Al-Mat .baa al-Umumiyya [The Public Press], Cairo, Egypt11 The translator thus brought all his cultural capital to the printed text, giving himself equal billing with Shakespeare and invoking his success as a journalist as well as his Ottoman title of Effendi

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(educated gentleman). In 1925, the year before his death, his literary pretensions would lead him to republish several arias from Hamlet as part of a slim d n (poetry collection) with a glowing wa preface by fellow Lebanese immigrant poet Khalil Mutran, 1872 1949).12 (Mutrans own 1918 Hamlet, also criticized for inaccuracy, would nonetheless gain lasting prestige for its ne use of literary Arabic.) But as a book Abdus Hamlet did not enjoy a successful afterlife. Long considered lost, it returned to print only in 2005, after translation studies specialist Sameh Fekry Hanna discovered a copy in the library of St. Antonys College, Oxford.13 Where Abdus adaptation had an impact was on the stage. It was performed in Egypt at least seventeen times between 1901 and 1910. From Cairo it traveled to Alexandria, Tanta, and Mansoura, becoming the second most popular Shakespeare adaptation after Najib al-Haddads 1890s Martyrs of Love (Shuhada al-Ghara m), based on Romeo and Juliet.14 In a theater world dominated by adap` re, altations and knockoffs of French comedy, particularly Molie Haddads Martyrs and Abdus Hamlet showed that Shakespeare, too, could bring real box ofce success. Abdus Hamlet has lived on in popular memory. More than half a century after the curtain last fell, translator Muhammad Awad Muhammad, 18951972) reminisces about it in the introduction to his own far more scholarly rendition of Hamlet. Quoting from memory (he misidenties the translator, as no one citing a printed text would do), Awad Muhammad reproduces the opening of Hamlets rst aria verbatim, adding some faint praise for the author:
Some of us still carry, sticking in our minds from childhood, some traces of that old translation, such as Hamlets chant (insha d) in the rst act Father where are you? See whats taken place. A wedding where there used to be a wake, Funerals turned to feast days on the morrow, And on that mouth, a smile instead of sorrow.15 And although we, too, could smile at this translation, yet its writer deserves our congratulations for opening the door to the translation of this literary monument, and for having no inhibitions about using poetry to beautify his Arabization.16

There is indeed reason to smile: Abdus Hamlet is a poor cousin of Shakespeares. Most of the text is in simple prose. Hamlets

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The French Source of the Earliest Surviving Arabic Hamlet 137 major speeches and asides (and Ophelias speech at the end of the nunnery scene) appear as sections of fairly repetitive verse, more like arias than soliloquies, as in the excerpt above. The act and scene divisions are odd; to begin with, the rst act consists of two scenes, the rst comprising seven parts and the second comprising four. There are scene changes that affect the plot; for instance, Hamlets relationship with his mother is rendered less complicated in part by relocating the closet scene from her private closet to the palaces main hall. The international politics are played down: Fortinbras is not mentioned in the council scene and never appears on stage. The opening scene on the ramparts is likewise omitted, making the play begin with the council scene and its rst line, the courtiers shout of Long live the king! Yet the Ghosts part is expanded overall, rendering the play less of a psychological drama about Hamlet and more of a ghost story.17 There are character changes as well. Most notably, Ophelia becomes a somewhat stronger character through the addition of lines early in the play and the sharpening of her mad scene. Early in the play, an interpolated scene gives us a vision of her relationship with Hamlet before it is ruined by circumstances: the two young people irt charmingly (like Romeo and Juliet) in rhyming prose, and he calls her a noble angel (13). Hamlet later thinks of Ophelia with regret when he discovers he has killed Polonius, again reinforcing Ophelias signicance to him (67). In her madness Ophelia ashes back to Hamlets injunction to enter a nunnery, provoking a near-comic moment with the incomprehending King and Queen: What? What nunnery? You want to become a nun, Ophelia? (77) Abdus Hamlet, meanwhile, is a decisive hero. For those Arab critics whose idea of Shakespeares prince hinges either on hesitation or on contemplation, this represents a terrible loss. For instance, Nadia al-Bahar writes:
One may overlook the various changes and excisions in this adaptation, but the most glaring drawback lies in the protagonist himself. Unlike Shakespeares Hamlet, he is determined to wreak vengeance; he is one given to action rather than reection. One is made aware of Hamlets resolution throughout the adaptation; he is not as reluctant or overmeditative as Shakespeares Prince. More like Laertes, he assigns great value to honor which furnishes a valid motive for any course of action he is to take. But, unlike Laertes, who in succumbing to the demands of honor becomes its very slave and thereby induc[es] his own destruc-

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tion; Hamlet retires at the end with victory. Thus, much of the inner struggle in the original Hamlet is lost and, alongside with it, much of the dramatic tension is diminished.18

However, Abdus most striking difference from Shakespeare is his ending, which Sameh Fekry Hanna has summed up as Long Live Hamlet and Down With Shakespeare!19 In the plays closing scene, Hamlet fatally wounds Laertes, stabs the king, then forces him to drain the poisoned cup. Just at this moment the Ghost reappears, making himself visible to all those present. The nal passage is worth quoting in full:
Hamlet: Am I not the king now? Everyone out! (All [courtiers] exit.) O sinners, do you see this ghost now? Laert20: Oh God, whom do I see? The dead king! King: My brother! Queen: My husband! Laert (to the Ghost): My lord, your pardon! Ghost: Yes, for your tears have expiated your sin, and God is pitying and merciful, so pray and die. Queen: Your mercy and forgiveness, for I am dying. Ghost: Your sin grew from love, and god is compassionate to lovers. O woman, your tears have washed away your shame. You may have been a woman on earth, but you will be a queen in heaven, so pray and die. (Queen dies.) King: Pardon, my brother, and have mercy on this criminal. Ghost: No pardon for you, and no mercy, you bloody traitor. Your lthy soul will go to Hell, so despair, O traitor, and die. (King dies.) Hamlet: And me, father? Will God have mercy on me after all the blood shed by my hand? Four peoplewill God forgive me this sin? Ghost: As for you, live happy on earth, forgiven in heaven. Ascend before my eyes to your uncles place, for this throne was created only for your majesty. (Hamlet climbs the steps of the throne looking at his father with an expression of wonder. Ghost lowers into the ground, looking smilingly at Hamlet. The curtain descends gradually as the ensemble sings a hymn from offstage.)

Abdus most un-tragic denouement sees Justice done: the corrigible sinners are forgiven, the incorrigible sent to their damnation. The exemplar of lial piety, showing praiseworthy concern for collateral casualties, is duly rewarded with a throne and paternal smiles. Above all, the audience is sent out singing. Ophelia has

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The French Source of the Earliest Surviving Arabic Hamlet 139 drowned by this time; but some early twentieth-century directors, honoring Abdus spirit if not his script, made her survive and become Hamlets queen.21

Cribbing from Dumas

What no one has yet pointed out, to my knowledge, is that Abdus Hamlet is based on the French Hamlet by Alexandre ` re (180270).22 Premiered in Paris in 1846, Dumas HamDumas pe let was republished many times, including in 1863 and 1874 as part of Dumas complete works (of which Abdu the walking library surely owned a copy). Abdu appears to have consulted Dumas 1848 edition or one of its reprints, not incorporating the later revisions that (at his co-writers insistence) restored Shakespeares ending.23 A textual comparison (with Dumas Hamlet, this time, not Shakespeares) shows that Abdu followed his source fairly closely, with some minor revisions. Only Abdus songs create a major difference in effect from Dumas play. They abandon Dumas highly uid and enjambed alexandrines for jinglelike Arabic verse. This makes Hamlets speeches less interesting to read but more singable for the musical star playing Hamlet (of whom more below). The debt to Dumas explains many peculiarities of the Abdu version, from the apparent padding throughout (the French alexandrine is two syllables longer than Shakespeares iambic pentameter line) to the odd act-part-scene divisions, claried plot, excised Fortinbras subplot, and interpolated scenes. All the character changes with which Arab critics have reproached Abduthe decisive Hamlet, active Ophelia, unsensual Gertrude, and prayerless Claudiuscan be traced to his idiosyncratic French source. Dumas also deserves the credit (or blame) for Abdus happy ending. In his text, too, the Ghost appears, both to see his murderers die (in Hamlets words) and to deliver the judgment of God and the dramatist. The Ghost forgives Laertes and Gertrude, telling the impulsive courtier to pray and die and the morally weak queen to hope and die but sending Claudius, beyond pardon, to hells cruelest res. Only a shred of doubt is reintroduced in the plays last lines: Hamlet, asking the Ghost what penalty awaits him for delaying his revenge and causing four unnecessary deaths, is told: You will live! (268) Justice is served, and the only uncertainty is whether Hamlets survival is meant as a reward or a punishment.

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Abdu reproduces this conclusion almost verbatim, adding only the Ghosts nal benediction to clarify Dumas ambiguous (but certainly not tragic) closing lines. Dumas closing gives a avor of both his alexandrines and his moral vision (1046):
HAMLET (aux courtisans, sur un signe de lOmbre) : sitent; il brandit son euret). Et vous, laissez-nous! (Les courtisans he Quun de vous fasse un pas, Il nen fera pas deux! Je suis roi, nest-ce pas? Roi de votre existence et de leur agonie! ` ce soit nie! Il sied quentre nous cinq la pie Sortez tous! s, ils sortent lentement) (Intimide sent, mourants, le voyez-vous? A pre LAERTE : Dieu puissant! le roi mort! ` re! LE ROI : Mon fre poux! LA REINE: Mon e ce! ` lombre): Gra LAERTE (a me, LOMBRE: Oui, ton sang trop prompt tentraina vers lab Lae rte, et le Seigneur ta puni pour ton crime. Mais tu le trouveras, car il sonde les curs, ve ` re la ` -haut. Lae Moins se rte,prie et meurs! (Laerte meurt) , pitie ! LA REINE: Pitie tait ton amour me me, LOMBRE: Ta faute e Ame trop faible, et Dieu vous aime quand on aime! sa honte avec ses pleurs: Va, ton cur a lave ` re et meurs! (Gertrude Femme ici, reine au ciel, Gertrudeespe meurt) LE ROI: Pardon! me! LOMBRE: Pas de pardon! Va, meurtrier infa Pour tes crimes hideux, dans leurs cercles de amme, vorants nont pas trop de douleurs! Les enfers de sespe ` re et meurs! (Claudius meurt) Va, traitre incestueux! va! de HAMLET: Et moi? vais-je rester, triste orphelin, sur terre, gne de mise ` re? A respirer cet air impre dien choisi par le courroux de Dieu, Trage le et mal saisi mon jeu, Si jai mal pris mon ro sans combattre, Si, tremblant de mon uvre et lasse Pour un que tu voulais, jen ai fait mourir quatre, Est-ce que Dieu sur moi fera peser son bras, ` re? et quel cha timent mattend donc? Pe LOMBRE: Tu vivras!

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The French Source of the Earliest Surviving Arabic Hamlet 141

Bend again toward France

Tanyus Abdus choice of source makes sense: Dumas was in vogue. His Orient-obsessed Le Comte de Monte-Cristo had been translated into Arabic in 1871, its enormous success inspiring ten different translators to tackle fourteen additional Dumas novels by 1910.24 Stage adaptations based on Dumas, many of them social critiques calling for class equality, were among the most popular plays performed in early twentieth-century Cairo, Alexandria, and Beirut.25 As a source, Dumas represented the convergence of Abdus leftist sympathies and his commercial instincts. Dumas was also a culturally congenial sourcemore so than Shakespearebecause French aesthetics had done so much to shape the Arab theater of the day. Partly this is because the theater community was heavily Francophone. Their earliest and most fre` re, not Shakespeare.26 Even by quent adaptations had been of Molie 1901, the working model was still the French comedy or operetta. Joseph Zeidan observes:
Most of the persons involved in [theater translation] were graduates of French schools in Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt. This phenomenon, together with the fact that French was the most important European language in Egypt from the time of Muh s reign until the British occupa. ammad Al tion of 1882, was responsible for the fact that most of the European plays chosen were either originally written in French or had been translated into French from some other European language. Some of Shakespeares plays, for example, were translated into Arabic from French, rather than from English.27

French scripting and acting conventions (which partly incorporated those of Italian opera) also spoke to the new Arab theater audiences. These were drawn from the growing middle classes of Alexandria, Cairo, and Beirut. Like French playgoers, they wanted to see tableaux, not interaction between characters. Well into the nineteenth century, French acting
was still of the neoclassical teapot or declamatory variety, whereby the actor delivering the speech stood at the front of the stage and declaimed his or her lines to the audience, while the rest of the actors on taires at the Academie stage stood behind, in a semicircle . . . The socie

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Franc aise were even known to perform encores, repeating speeches out of context when the audience had applauded their delivery.28

In pre-Revolutionary France, Shakespeares plays had provoked ambivalence. Critics from Voltaire onwards famously considered him a drunken savage, overowing with genius but lacking in taste.29 Nonetheless, obsessed with Italian opera, French writers seized on the operatic possibilities of Shakespeares texts. Stage performance began with the late-eighteenth-century imitations of Jean-Franc ois Ducis (17331816), who bragged of knowing point langlois (no English at all).30 Working from excerpts and prose summaries by Pierre Antoine de La Place (170793), Ducis labored to produce acceptably decorous yet Shakespearean adaptations of Hamlet (1769), Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and King John.31 Introducing extra characters and neoclassical balance, he turned Hamlet into a text on lial piety32 and a lie a pretext for elaborate visual display. (He also made Ophe 33 household word in France. ) For Ducis and his successors,
the procedure routinely followed was to reduce and regularise the text, while multiplying the cues for spectacle and ostentation. French Shakespeare was, in a word, operatic, and it entered the theatre through the breach that opera had made. Visual and emotional stimulus were provided by big stages, elaborate and realistic scenery, and supplementary pantomime and ballet. At the time when Shakespeares name began to circulate in France, fashionable Paris was addicted to the Italian opera, and his work was taken up by theatre because it could be a vehicle for this sort of entertainment.34

The operatic approach carried over to Egypt. Italian opera had publicly represented the modernizing drives of Egypts rulers ever since Giuseppe Verdis A da was commissioned to inaugurate Khedive Ismails Italian-style Opera House in the 1870s.35 The earliest term for theater was the Italian t tru (tiatro), not the later-adopted a Arabic masrah . . Italian and French styles shaped Egyptian acting: dialogue was de-emphasized; soliloquies and other climactic speeches were declaimed like arias, facing the audience, often fortissimo.36 Leading man Shaykh Salama Higazi (18521917) epitomized the trend. One of the rst Egyptians in a theater milieu dominated by mostly Christian Syro-Lebanese immigrants, the wildly popular Quran-chanter-turned-singer was nicknamed the Caruso of the

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The French Source of the Earliest Surviving Arabic Hamlet 143 East after his Italian younger contemporary, tenor Enrico Caruso (18731921).37 His popularity helped secure the place of the musical as a lasting form in Egyptian theater and eventually also Egyptian cinema. Higazi starred in several Shakespeare plays, as well as versions of A da, Racines Andromaque, Corneilles Horace, Alexandre Dumas La Tour de Nesle, Victor Hugos Angelo and MarieTudor, Scribes lAfricaine, Dennerys Les Deux Orphelines, and La lias by Alexandre Dumas ls. To each he brought Dame aux Came his distinctive style:
In performing a role, Higazi would alternate between declamation and singing; this created a vogue for lyrical theater. Higazis contemporaries termed this genre opera, the term taken up by Iskandar Fahmy, who observed that it effectively banished dramatic art. One would be tempted to call these works operettas, were they not denatured translations of certain European melodramas, tragedies, dramas, and operas.38

This operatic background helps contextualize Abdus Hamlet. The leading role was full of songs and empty of doubt to tailor it for the then forty-nine-year-old Higazi, whose mere presence in a cast at that time could guarantee a plays commercial fortunes. Higazi would later break with Farah and form his own Arabic Theater Company (Da r al-Tamth l al- Arab ) in 1905, taking Hamlet with him: his fans were loyal, and they knew what they wanted. It is reported that when Higazi once bowed to high-cultural pressures and tried to perform Hamlet without singing, they nearly rioted; to mollify them, a new song with lyrics by respected poet Ahmad Shawqi (18681932) was commissioned and integrated into future performances.39 Higazi later recorded the song, a lament that began dahr mas ib adad (Fate has aficted me with innu and bila .a merable calamities), as part of his successful contract with the German phonograph company Odeon.40 The lyrics are preserved in Abdus published text, where a footnote identies their author as the honorable friend Ahmad Bey Shawqi, the prince of poets and poet of the prince.41 Within the context of the French theater, ironically, Dumas Hamlet had represented a move away from the dominance of star actors and their stilted acting.42 As a child, Dumas had been awestruck by a performance of Ducis imitation of Hamlet; he claimed to have learned the leading role by heart.43 As a young man he had been inspired by a visiting English production (1827, starring

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Charles Kemble and Harriet Smithson) that showed the real esh and blood passions of Shakespeares characters yet deferred to French taste by omitting Fortinbras, Norway, bawdy language, and many subplots and scenes.44 Nineteen years later, still knowing little English, Dumas entered a sometimes uneasy collaboration with the young writer Paul Meurice. Working from Meurices literal translation, he sought to recreate the celebrated British Hamlet in his own rewriting. Like his sources, Dumas streamlines the plot and minimizes changes of scenery. He moves the closet scene between Hamlet and Gertrude (3.4) into the main hall (as did Ducis); his Hamlet actually protests that a conversation in his mothers bedroom might be overheard by her living husband or disturbed by her dead one (224). There is no prayer scene in which Hamlet forebears to kill Claudius, so no ground for accusing Hamlet of indecision. Expurgated yet exaggerated, the Meurice-Dumas Hamlet represents a strange mix of Romantic naturalism with the remnants of Ducis ance (propriety): neoclassical biense
Dumas recast what in France was still widely regarded as a ramshackle masterpiece, and pulled and pummelled Shakespeares imagery to make it t into rhyming alexandrines . . . Fortinbras disappeared, and the whole of the opening scene on the battlements of the castle was scrapped because there was no gainsaying old wisdomit was superuous to depict what was subsequently narrated. But in the rst act a scene was added in which Hamlet courted Ophelia and left her exclaiming, breathless with rapture, Il maime! Il maime! Oh! Que je suis heureuse!45

The global kaleidoscope

Why has Abdus obvious debt to Dumas thus far escaped scholarly attention? Although it is widely repeated that Abdu translated Shakespeare through the French, no one has ever taken the trouble to nd out which version he used. Nadia al-Bahar has come closest, claiming in her 1976 study of early Arabic Hamlets that Abdus source was the 1769 adaptation by Jean-Franc ois Ducis.46 This is implausible: key features of Ducis lies status as Claudius daughter, the added condant/e text (Ophe characters of Elvire and Norceste, etc.) are absent from Abdus; Abdu includes Shakespearean scenes absent from Ducis (e.g., the

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The French Source of the Earliest Surviving Arabic Hamlet 145 gravediggers); and their endings differ. As we have seen, Abdus few similarities to Ducis likely stem from Dumas own fascination with the Ducis version. But at least al-Bahar asks the question. Other scholars have treated Abdus sourcing as irrelevant. They simply state that he translated from French, then get on with analyzing his departures from Shakespeare. The problem, I believe, is that scholars have naturally tended to look at international Shakespeare appropriation through two lenses, both insufcient. Each appropriation represents 1) a reworking of Shakespeare and 2) a response to its own sociocultural context. As teachers and students, we have found it easy and fruitful to look at Text B and ask how it appropriates and revises Text Aor, somewhat better, how it reects Context X. Both lenses, of course, have their uses. However, this means that the majority of appropriation studies until very recently have been either Shakespeare-centric or narrowly context-centric. They have often ignored what I have termed the global kaleidoscope of sources and models available to every rewriter.47 They have pretended instead that every Shakespeare appropriation represents a direct one-onone engagement with Shakespeares text. In so doing they have lost access to the multitude of hidden intertexts that mediate every adapters relationship with Shakespeare. In general, the myth of adaptation as a binary process has outlived its usefulness. It rarely happens in practice that a would-be adapter sits down at his or her desk and reads a Shakespeare play for the rst time. Rather, the rst Shakespeare encounter is usually mediated by some combination of the lms, performances, abridgments, translations, articles, conversations, versions of other Shakespeare plays, and other materials that happen to be available alongside, before, or even instead of the authoritative original text. This may be particularly salient for non-Anglophone adapters. If the original work enjoys global circulation, like Shakespeares tragedies, then adapters receive competing intertexts from a great variety of literary and theater traditions, not just from the source culture. From these diverse intertexts they must choose their Shakespeare sources, much as a musical group chooses its inuences. The choice may be partly conscious and partly unconscious; like all artistic choices it is not taken in a vacuum, but in dialogue with the priorities and resources of the adapters own cultural context. We should not be hoodwinked by the adapters themselves. They

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often like to present themselves in unmediated dialogue with a great author such as Shakespeare, erasing other intertexts from view. Unsurprisingly, Dumas is not credited on Abdus title page; Shakespeare the renowned English poet is. Our vision has been limited, too, by the binary Prospero-and-Caliban emphasis in much postcolonial criticism. In the case of Arab Shakespeare, as Abdus example shows, models from the British colonizers culture were important but not decisive. Certainly there were British schools with required English classes and schoolboy abridgments such as the Lambs Tales from Shakespeare, available in both English and Arabic by 1900. But in every period there have been other privileged channels from which Arab writers chose sources to inuence their views of literature, theatre, and Shakespeare: French in the nineteenth century, then later German, American, Soviet, and Eastern European. Shakespeare was nearly always received as a global ( a lam ) writer, not a particularly English writer or a British colonial export. For that matter, there is nothing specically colonial or postcolonial about the Arab case. French translations also mediated the initial reception of Shakespeare in Italy, Spain, Holland, Russia, and many parts of Eastern Europe. In contrast to the paradigm of postcolonial appropriation, my global kaleidoscope model gives up any claim to predictive power: it offers no systematic theory of which intellectuals will appropriate which Shakespeare texts, and how, at what historical moments. At best, it offers an angle of approach. Its main virtue, demonstrated in Abdus example, is that it can bring previously hidden intertexts into view. In the Arab case, as I will conclude by suggesting, it can also serve the larger project of reinserting modern Arabic literature into world literature.

An unsophisticated audience
Like Shakespeareans, scholars of Arab drama have overlooked Abdus direct source. At most, they point to his use of French as further evidence of his sloppy translation practice; the French text (simply because it is not in English) is another layer of incomprehension between Abdu and Shakespeare. Even al-Bahar and Zeidan (both quoted above), immediately after noting that Abdus Hamlet relied on a French source, proceed to mock Abdus plot and character choices as though they were his own. This pattern of

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The French Source of the Earliest Surviving Arabic Hamlet 147 mockery is present in English- and Arabic-language works on early Arab theater for both scholarly and more general audiences. Poking fun at early twentieth-century Arab performance culture, it seems, is a temptation too strong to resist. Since traditional Arabic high culture famously lacks the concept of tragedy,48 Abdus smile-inducing ending has played into larger cultural anxieties. The Arab publics aesthetic competence is brought into question: are Arab playgoers qualied to deal with the great western literary classics? Dissertations on Arab Shakespeare written by Arab students in American or British doctoral programs especially tend to reproduce this discourse. For instance, here is Amel Amin Zakis comment on Abdus typically French interpolated love scene:
The style of Abduhs version is quite poor, and sounds as though it were written by a high school student. Several times Hamlet addresses Ophelia as sweetheart, angel, loving angel, expressions of endearment we never hear him utter in the original . . . The paragraph in question provides a good example of the manner in which the translator tried to play on the emotions of a culturally and aesthetically unsophisticated audience that was incapable of distinguishing between good and bad art.49

A Bourdieusian approach like Sameh Hannas helps reverse the plus and minus signs. Fidelity to Shakespeares text is no longer the issue. Abdus adaptation to his audiences desires becomes a virtue, and the change introduced by Tanyous Abduh to the ending of Hamlet can be socioculturally explained:
In relating to the mainstream theatre audience in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both theatre translators and playwrights needed to be aware of two factors: the social reality of their audience and the range of familiar folk narratives which formed their world view and conditioned their appreciation of all other forms of popular entertainment. . . . The audience in early twentieth-century Egypt would not have accepted a dead Hamlet after all the perils he experiences in the play. This would have been a stark breach of their social as well as aesthetic codes.50

From this socioaesthetic analysis it is one short step to see what Abdus audience really wanted: an uplifting French drama authored by Shakespeare! As a commercially motivated translator, Abdu had every incentive to deliver one.

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Recognizing the French connection, however, nally lets Abdu and his Egyptian audiences off the hook. It is no longer a problem of traditional Arab culture and its compatibility with the great western classics. It turns out that familiar folk narratives have no direct impact on Abdus revisions to Hamlet, although of course his audiences tastes (and his own) did condition his choice of Dumas. Ironically, Abdus much-criticized distortions of Shakespeare can be traced to hypercivilized French writers and audiences, not backward Arab ones. In this light, it is interesting that Dumas Hamlet remained in the die-Franc Come aise repertoire until the First World War, precisely the same time Mutrans Arabic adaptation replaced Abdus in Egypt. Dumas text (albeit with deep revisions) was performed in France as late as 1954.51 By then, Abdus imitation was long gone from the Arab stage.

NOTES
This articles fundamental debt to the work of Sameh Fekry Hanna will be evident throughout. I am also grateful to Susan Jackson and Susan Zimmerman for helpful comments. To facilitate library and Internet searches, I follow a more formal transliteration system for Arabic proper names in the notes than in the main text. 1. M. M. Badawi, Shakespeare and the Arabs, Cairo Studies in English (1966): 18196; Nadia al-Bahar, Shakespeare in Early Arabic Adaptations, Shakespeare Translation 3, no. 13 (1976): 1325; Suheil Bushrui, Shakespeare and Arabic Drama and Poetry, Ibadan 20 (1964): 516; Tawf q H b, Shaksb r . ab f l, December 1, 1927, 2014; Falah Kanaan, Shakespeare on the Mis . r, al-Hila Arab Page and Stage. (PhDiss., University of Manchester, 1998); Fatma Moussa Mahmoud, Hamlet in Egypt, Cairo Studies in English (1990): 5161; Gha l Shukr al-H , Shaksb r f al- Arabiyya, in Thawrat al-Fikr f Adabina th (Cairo: . ad Maktabat al-Anglu al-Mis . riyya, 1965), 5471; Mohamed M. Tounsi, Shakespeare in Arabic: A Study of the Translation, Reception, and Inuence of Shakespeares Drama in the Arab World. (Ed Diss., University of Northern Colorado, 1989); Mohammed Baqir Twaij, Shakespeare in the Arab World. (PhDiss., Northwestern University, 1973); Amel Amin Zaki, Shakespeare in Arabic. (PhDiss., Indiana University, 1978). 2. Bushrui, Shakespeare and Arabic Drama and Poetry, 6. 3. See Sameh F. Hanna, Towards a Sociology of Drama Translation: A Bourdieusian Perspective on Translations of Shakespeares Great Tragedies in Egypt. (PhDiss., University of Manchester, 2006); Sameh F. Hanna, Hamlet Lives Happily Ever After in Arabic, The Translator 11, no. 2 (2005): 16792; Sameh F. Hanna, Othello in Egypt: Translation and the (Un)making of National Identity, in Translation and the Construction of Identity, ed. Juliane House, M. Rosario Mart n Ruano, and Nicole Baumgarten (Seoul: IATIS, 2005), 10928; Sameh F.

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Hanna, Decommercialising Shakespeare: Mutrans Translation of Othello, Critical Survey 19, no. 3 (2007): 2754; Mark Bayer, The Martyrs of Love and the Emergence of the Arab Cultural Consumer, Critical Survey 19, no. 3 (2007): 626. For the approach more broadly, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Richard Jacquemond, Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt, trans. David Tresilian (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008); Elisabeth Kendall, Literature, Journalism, and the Avant-Garde: Intersection in Egypt (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 4. See, e.g., Zaki, Shakespeare in Arabic, 85113; Hanna, Towards a Sociology, 12554. 5. Ilham Makdisi, Theater and Radical Politics in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria: 18601914 (Georgetown University: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Occasional Paper, 2006), 30. 6. A criticism analyzed in Hanna, Towards a Sociology, 127 and chapter 3. 7. Hanna, Hamlet Lives, 170. 8. Matti Moosa, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1983), 107. He is paraphrasing Abdus exact contemporary, writer-journalist Sal m Sark s (18691926). 9. Hanna, Hamlet Lives, 185. 10. Rams d and Ju s Awad n H rj . cites two earlier translations by Am . adda M , Shaksb r f Mis r (Cairo: al-Haya al-Mis riyya , now lost. See Rams rza s Awad . . . mma li-l-Kita al- A b, 1986), 84. 11. See Hanna, Towards a Sociology, 51. Title page reproduced and translated on 3056. I have modied the translation slightly. 12. Among the Hamlet poems reprinted in Abdus d t Jum n are Mana ja wa juma (Monologue of a skull, i.e., Hamlets Alas, poor Yorick speech); Wada H (Farewell, beauty, i.e., Laertes and the Queens words at Ophelias . asna grave); Ha mlit wa-Ummuhu (Hamlet and his mother, partially translated shiq (A lovers speech, Hamlets below, cf. Hamlet 1.2.12959); and Kala m A letter to Ophelia, cf. 2.2.115ff ). They are presented as freestanding poems; only Hamlet and his Mother is labeled as coming From the play Hamlet by the author of this d nyu n. See T n T nyu s Abduh, D s Abduh (Cairo: Mat wa wa .a .a .ba at al-Hila l, 1925), 64, 65, 80, and 81. 13. For the story of this discovery, see the editors introduction to T nyu s .a Abduh, Ha mih (Cairo: Supreme Council of Culture of mlit, ed. Sa H . Fikr . anna Egypt, 2005), ii. 14. al-Bahar, Shakespeare. She also credits Abdus Hamlet with an earlier run in Alexandria (189798), but this is contradicted by Hanna and not conrmed by the best authority, M. Y. Najm (see note 40 below; pages 8081). Perhaps the 1890s performances used one of the two earlier Hamlet translations, now lost. 15. This is the opening of the poem reprinted in Tanyus Abdus d n under the title wa Hamlet and his mother, p. 80. The full twelve-line poem, standing in for Hamlets rst soliloquy, simply laments the ckleness of Hamlets mother. 16. William Shakespeare, Ha mlit, Am nima rk, trans. Muh r Da . ammad Awad . Muh r al-Ma a rif, 2000), 24. . ammad, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Da

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17. Marcellus and Bernardo reintroduce many details from the ramparts scene when they later narrate the Ghosts appearance to Hamlet. 18. al-Bahar, Shakespeare, 19. 19. Editors introduction to Abduh, Ha mlit, vi. 20. Abdus text transcribes the French pronunciation, not the English. 21. Personal communication from Sameh Hanna. (In Abdus 1902 printed text Ophelia dies.) a tre Complet de Alex. Dumas (Paris: 22. Alexandre Dumas, Hamlet, vol. 11, The ` res, 1874). Subsequent references are to this edition, by page Michel Levy Fre number. 23. Romy Heylen, Translation, Poetics, and the Stage: Six French Hamlets (London: Routledge, 1993), 4560. 24. Sabry Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology of Modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1993), 279n94. 25. Makdisi, Theater, 21. atre e gyptien 26. See, e.g., El-Sa aises du the d Atia Abul Naga, Les sources franc (18701939) (Algiers: SNED, 1972). 27. Joseph T. Zeidan, Modern Arab Theater: The Journey Back, in Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Literature, ed. Issa J. Boullata and Terri DeYoung (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997), 17392, esp. 180. 28. Heylen, Translation, 47. 29. Quoted in John Pemble, Shakespeare Goes to Paris: How the Bard Conquered France (London: Hambledon, 2005), 6. 30. Quoted in Heylen, Translation, 28. die, imite e de langlois (Paris: Chez 31. See Jean-Franc ois Ducis, Hamlet, trage , 1770). Gogue 32. Dedicating a later edition to his own father (1812), Ducis explains that in te de peindre la tendresse dun ls pour son adapting Hamlet, Mon bu t avait e ` re (my goal was to depict a sons affection for his father). Jean-Franc pe ois die en cinq actes, imite e de langlois (Paris: A. Nepveu, Ducis, Hamlet, trage 1826), 6. 33. James M. Vest, The French Face of Ophelia from Belleforest to Baudelaire (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), 7596. 34. Pemble, Shakespeare Goes, 95. 35. Cairos Opera House, designed by Italian architects, was commissioned in 1869 by Khedive Ismail (ruler of Egypt 186379) to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. Because the Egyptian-themed A da was not ready for its opening night, Verdis Rigoletto was performed instead; A da premiered in December 1871. Khedive Ismails Opera House burned down in 1971; a parking garage now stands in its place, and the new Opera House is in another location. For photos, see Fayza Hassan, Not by Bread Alone, al-Ahram Weekly, November 4, 1999. 36. On these rather melodramatic signs of French and Italian inuence see, e.g., Badawi, Shakespeare and the Arabs, 195. It is still the case that some Egyptian actors are applauded upon their characters rst entrance in a play (which interrupts the action), and that monologues, even those which are not soliloquies but addressed to other characters, are typically recited facing the audience. 37. Viola Shak, Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998), 107. 38. Abul Naga, Les sources franc aises, 214.

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39. Muh suf Najm, Al-Masrah al-Adab al- Arab al-H th: . ammad Yu . iyya f . ad 18471914 (Beirut: Da r Bayru a wa-l-Nashr 1956), 260. t li-l-T . iba 40. Odeon had opened a Cairo ofce soon after its founding in 1904. The company signed Higazi in 1906, eventually producing forty-seven of his records. One of the earliest bestsellers was Peace Be Upon Such a Beauty, a song from the Romeo and Juliet adaptation in which Higazi also starred; it sold twenty thousand de ric Lagrange, Les records in one year. See al-Bahar, Shakespeare, 2021; Fre Archives de la Musique ArabeSalama Higazi,(1994), http://www.bolingo.org/ audio/arab/gudian/higazi.html. 41. Page 86. On this interpolated poem see Hanna, Hamlet Lives, 186. 42. On Dumas ambitions and disappointments on the Parisian theater scene, see Heylen, Translation, 4560. 43. Pemble, Shakespeare Goes, 109. 44. Heylen, Translation, 45. 45. Pemble, Shakespeare Goes, 110. 46. al-Bahar, Shakespeare, 13. 47. For the model and an example from a later period, see Margaret Litvin, Vanishing Intertexts in the Arab Hamlet Tradition, Critical Survey 19, no. 3 (2007): 7494. 48. See, e.g., Jorge Luis Borgess short story, La busca de Averroe s. 49. Zaki, Shakespeare in Arabic, 93. 50. Hanna, Hamlet Lives, 188. 51. Pemble, Shakespeare Goes, 109.

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Title: The French Source of the Earliest Surviving Arabic Hamlet Source: Shakespeare Stud 39 Ja 2011 p. 133-151 ISSN: 0582-9399 Publisher: Associated University Presses 2010 EastPark Boulevard, Cranbury, NJ 08512

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