Shakespeare and the Arab World

Katherine Hennessey, Margaret Litvin

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789202601
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism of Shakespeare
• Index: Literature

Offering a variety of perspectives on the history and role of Arab Shakespeare translation, production, adaptation and criticism, this volume explores both international and locally focused Arab/ic appropriations of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. In addition to Egyptian and Palestinian theatre, the contributors to this collection examine everything from an Omani performance in Qatar and an Upper Egyptian television series to the origin of the sonnets to an English-language novel about the Lebanese civil war. Addressing materials produced in several languages from literary Arabic ( fu??? ) and Egyptian colloquial Arabic ( 'ammiyya ) to Swedish and French, these scholars and translators vary in discipline and origin, and together exhibit the diversity and vibrancy of this field.

Part II

Adaptation

Performance

Chapter 6

The Taming of the Tigress

Faṭima Rushdī and the First Performance of Shrew in Arabic

David C. Moberly

---

[French Officer:] ‘If only the Arabs had more women like you!’

[Faṭima Rushdī:] ‘All Arab women are like me.’

‘You mean they are “actresses”?’

‘I am only an actress on stage … As for now, I am just a free Arab woman, fighting for the great Arab nation.’¹

The Taming of the Shrew occupies a unique place in Egyptian theatre, standing at the intersection of its colonial and revolutionary history, framing the clashes between its westernized elites and its lower classes, and helping vocalize its evolving debates about the nature of women and the marriage relationship. Shrew has been translated multiple times for the stage, into both colloquial and more literary registers of Arabic, and several Egyptian film producers have adapted it for the screen.² Indeed, the play remains one of the most popular Shakespeare comedies in the region and is a prominent medium for discussion about proper marriage roles to this day.³ (To witness this, one need look no further than the 2016 production of Gamīla [Beautiful], an Egyptian adaptation of Shrew that has been pointedly advertised as contributing to just such a discussion.)

Among Shakespeare’s comedies, Merchant is perhaps the strongest contender against Shrew in terms of popularity, as it has a strong history in the Arab world, fuelled in part by the Arab-Israeli conflict. Ramsīs ‘Awaḍ argues, however, that in Egypt between 1930 and 1980 Shrew was more popular, as evidenced by the large number of translations and adaptations of it into Arabic.⁴ Yet despite this popularity, the recent flurry of scholarship on Shakespeare in Arabic has looked mainly at tragedies such as Hamlet and Othello,⁵ replicating many Arab critics’ high-nationalist and masculinist focus on tragedy rather than comedy.⁶ (An exception is recent scholarship on the Arab reception of The Merchant of Venice, led by Mark Bayer and Katherine Hennessey.⁷) As nationalist assumptions in the region show their limits, it is time to broaden the frame.

This article analyses the reception of The Taming of the Shrew in Arabic. Specifically, it focuses on the earliest Arabic version of Shrew: Bishāra Wākīm’s 1930 translation for the Egyptian stage, entitled al-Gabbāra (The Giantess), one of the earliest translations of Shakespeare into Egyptian colloquial Arabic (‘āmmiyya). After showing how this play came about and what made it unique for Egyptian audiences, the article concludes by contrasting it with Ibrāhīm Ramzī’s translation of Shrew into literary Arabic (fuṣḥā) just three years later, in 1933, at the request of the Egyptian Ministry of Education.

Egyptian theatre critics who reviewed the 1930 performance present Shakespeare as an authority on the nature of women and their role in the marriage relationship. The play itself, however, starred and was co-produced by Fāṭima Rushdī (1908–96), an Egyptian actress and film idol (a mere twenty-two years old at the time), whose productions promoted the image of Egyptian women as strong, independent Arabs. Her backing of this early translation and staging of a Shakespeare play in Egyptian colloquial Arabic (‘āmmiyya) – a choice that made it more accessible to women and other less literate Egyptians – is an example of the methods that contributed to this image. These kinds of high-quality ‘āmmiyya performances (for which Rushdī was famous) were popular, as, unlike fuṣḥā translations, they could be more fully appreciated and absorbed not only by the educated male elite, but also by a broad spectrum of the Egyptian public. This kind of Shakespearean theatre, however, was short-lived. It was soon overwhelmed by the relative wealth of the Egyptian government, which increased its controls on the theatre by funding and rewarding only fuṣḥā projects. Among these projects was Ibrāhīm Ramzī’s 1933 translation of Shrew into fuṣḥā, which would largely bury the memory of Rushdī’s production in favour of one backed by the educated elite.

The Giantess: Bishāra Wākīm’s 1930 Translation

In 1930, the Fāṭima Rushdī Troupe performed the first production of The Taming of the Shrew in Arabic at the Printania [Brintāniyyā] Theatre in Cairo. Titled al-Gabbāra (The Giantess/Mighty Woman),⁸ the play used a translation by francophone-educated Egyptian actor (and later director) Bishāra Wākīm (1890–1949).⁹ Wākīm’s text (which is not extant, but may have translated Shakespeare through an intermediary source) made many cuts to Shakespeare: it shortened the play to four acts, removed Lucentio-centred subplots and featured only five named roles: Katherine, Petruchio, Baptista, Bianca and Grumio.¹⁰ The most widely noted element of this production, however, was the fact that Wākīm’s translation was in ‘āmmiyya, the local Egyptian dialect of Arabic used by both the literate and the illiterate, rather than in fuṣḥā, the higher-register form of Arabic in which theatre for the more educated upper classes was typically produced.

Through the 1920s, ‘āmmiyya was often the dialect of choice for ‘lower’ genre comedic plays depicting Egyptian domestic life. The trend had begun very early in the history of Egyptian theatre, with the work of Ya‘qūb Ṩannū‘ (1839–1912), the first playwright to produce plays solely in ‘āmmiyya. For instance, his play al-Amīra al-Iskandarāniyya (The Alexandrian Princess), performed between 1870 and 1872, was an ‘āmmiyya comedy that – like Shrew – featured an unruly wife as the title character.¹¹ The Giantess, however, represented the first time many Egyptian critics and theatre-goers could remember seeing a Shakespeare play translated completely into ‘āmmiyya performed on such a public stage.¹² Previous translations of his plays in this generation had been into fuṣḥā, partially because the higher register was considered ‘proper’ for high literature, whereas the colloquial was the realm of lower ‘entertainment’.¹³ Fuṣḥā was also used in translations of Shakespeare for nationalistic reasons aimed at the preservation of a united Arab elite. In 1918, for example, in his famous translation of Othello, Khalīl Muṭrān had rejected the use of vernacular outright, stating his belief that it had ‘shattered the unity of the [Arab] nation’.¹⁴

In its novel use of the Egyptian dialect in an adaptation of Shakespeare, The Giantess reflected the evolving state of Egyptian theatre in the 1920s and 1930s. The play was performed in an era in Egypt when the independent, unregulated nature of the theatre market allowed for such productions, and in particular permitted women – who were far less likely to have received an education in any language at all, much less the fuṣḥā of the elite (aside from memorizing bits of the Qur’ān) – to flourish in the upper echelons of a growing field. Whereas other professions in 1920s Egypt often required workers to be able to read and use either a European language or fuṣḥā, light theatre did not, and many women filled positions as singers, dancers and actresses throughout the country. One of these women was Fāṭima Rushdī, who not only played the role of Katherine in The Giantess, but also co-owned and managed the troupe that performed it. Hers was one of the largest and most popular acting companies in Egypt at the time. She was the first woman to put together an acting company of its size in the Arab world. Even the company itself was named after her: the Fāṭima Rushdī Troupe.¹⁵

By 1930, Rushdī was well known as one of Egypt’s great actresses. She and her producers promoted her as the ‘Sarah Bernhardt of the East’, modelling her after one of the world’s most famous actresses of the previous generation (Bernhardt’s 1888 Egypt tour had been a sensation) and casting her in a number of Arabic-language productions of plays in which Bernhardt had previously starred, including Jeanne D’Arc, La Dame aux Camélias and La Tosca.¹⁶ Rushdī’s beginnings, however, were humble and not without tragedy. She was born to a lower class family in Alexandria as the fifth of five girls. Her father died when she was very young. Rushdī worked, along with her sister, as a singer at the Amīn ‘Aṭā Allāh Theatre in Alexandria to help provide for her family, despite her lack of education, taking advantage of the openness of the market at the time. Her very first night on stage, the great Cairo-based composer and singer Sayyid Darwīsh (1892–1923, also Sayed Darwish) heard her perform one of his songs and asked her mother’s permission to take her and her sister to the capital to work with him.¹⁷ She sang, danced and performed in casinos, theatres and coffee shops in Cairo throughout her pre-teen years.¹⁸ Since she only knew ‘āmmiyya, however, and was illiterate and uneducated in fuṣḥā, she was unable to work at the more respectable theatres in Cairo until 1923, when an opportunity came her way.¹⁹

In that year, at age 14, she met ‘Azīz ‘Ayd (1884–1942) and Yūsuf Wahbī (1898?–1982), both of whom worked for the Ramsīs Theatre, founded by Wahbī, which had become one of the larger and more impressive theatres in Cairo.²⁰ They were impressed with her potential, and she became the first woman hired at Ramsīs in three years.²¹ At this theatre, however, all roles were performed in fuṣḥā, so ‘Ayd took on the task of training her.²² Rushdī was deeply affected by his teaching and by his artistic tastes, which included a healthy respect for fuṣḥā that went hand in hand with admiration for Shakespeare and Sarah Bernhardt.²³ Her memoirs reflect the fire that he lit in this young actress:

He [‘Ayd] showed me that true art is neither in old drama nor modern drama – as evidenced by Shakespeare’s plays, which were enacted hundreds of years ago, and are still produced in multiple countries, in all directions – but the crux of the art, or the sum of theatrical genius, never changed, because such universal plays touched the cores of [people’s] hearts, however diverse the nationality and varied the tastes of the masses. And all of this depended upon the spirit that drove those who undertook these roles, and became completely and totally ‘clothed’ in the desired character, as Sarah Bernhardt had done in enacting the roles of young men until she entered into general fame.²⁴

‘Ayd filled Rushdī with confidence that she could be as great as even the greatest actresses in playing the roles of that great, true artist, Shakespeare. Rushdī adored ‘Ayd, and eventually married him while still in her mid-teens, though he was about twenty-four years her senior. This odd marriage arrangement only served to reinforce the influence ‘Ayd had on Rushdī’s artistic tastes, an influence that would last for a lifetime, even long after their divorce.²⁵ As she said in her 1971 memoir:

What was I in relation to ‘Azīz ‘Ayd? I was, perhaps, for him, as Galatea was to the artist Pygmalion. I was for ‘Azīz ‘Ayd that beautiful living thing that was made from the sap of his ideas and his experiences and his friendly artistic spirit, and his delicate temper and his hot blood and his strong passion, and he made from all of that a beautiful thing, and that thing was me, the beauty of art, which li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• I. Critical Approaches and Translation Strategies
• II. Adaptation and Performance
• Index