Of Negroes, Jews and Kings

AbstractThe second half of the 19th century witnessed the appearance of the first Portuguese versions of Shakespears’s plays directly translated from English. Previous attempts to present Shakespeare to Portuguese theatre-goers and readers had been made through at times very free ‘adaptations’, usually from French versions. Of the translators who gained greater distinction, there was one who could not fail to catch his readers’ attention. because he was their King. Luis I of Portugal (1838–1889, King from 1861), also a man of letters and a patron of the arts, translated and published ‘Hamlet’ (1877), ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1879), ‘Richard III’ (1880) and ‘Othello’ (1885). His translations are often mentioned but seldom considered in any detail. This article reads them as the work of a late nineteenth-century monarch faced with the perplexities of royal power within a constitutional monarchy, of colonial power as held by a small nation in an increasingly competitive European scene, and of a society more...