Abstract
This chapter traces the origin of Shakespeare’s lost play Cardenio, and comments on the Hakka Opera Betrayal. Lewis Theobald claimed that his Double Falsehood was adapted from William Shakespeare and John Fletcher’s lost play Cardenio. The Hakka Opera Betrayal (2014, Taipei) is inspired by Shakespeare’s lost play Cardenio and is staged by Zom-Hsing Hakka Opera Troupe. The Hakka performance script takes references from Betrayal, the Chinese translation by Ching-Hsi Perng and Chen Feng, inspired by Cardenio in English written by Stephen Greenblatt and Charles Mee. It is performed in Hakka language with Hakka music, features Taiwan’s local culture, and is presented by Hakka Opera, similar to the stylization of Chinese Jingju. I argue that, while theatrical mobility may exist in different adaptations, glocalization can integrate translocal cultures and theatrical performing methods. The issues of culture, sex, marriage, betrayal, madness, and interculturality are explored in cultural mobility by referring to the locals in Shakespeare’s other plays. By tracing the trademark of Shakespeare’s authenticity, the intertextuality of Shakespeare’s Cardenio and Greenblatt and Mee’s adaptation are explored. Comparably, Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Cardenio focuses on the homoerotic male friendship echoing Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixode, while the Hakka Opera Betrayal emphasizes brotherhood, filial piety, loyalty, and heterosexual love.
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Notes
- 1.
Cervantes’ s novel was translated into English by Thomas Shelton and published in 1612. When Shakespeare and Fletcher’s play was first performed in 1613, Cervantes’s novel translated into English “must have been a literary sensation in London .” (Stephen Greenblatt, “Theatrical Mobility” in Cultural Mobility, p. 80).
- 2.
Greenblatt at Harvard University in the perspective of cultural mobility propels the global theater interactive project on the multiple different adaptations and performances of researching Shakespeare’s lost play Cardenio. The website of the (re)making project http://www.charlesmee.org/about.shtml.
- 3.
The theme of male friendship and sexual betrayal appear in Shakespeare’s plays many times from his early Two Gentlemen of Verona to the late Two Noble Kinsmen.
- 4.
Charles Hamilton in “Some Words of Thanks” gratefully expresses: “The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, a long-time friend to all bardolaters; the Huntington Library, an old haunt of mine when I was a graduate student at U.C.L.A. in the late 1930s, and who generously provided a photocopy of a manuscript epistle by John Fletcher that enabled me to identify his script; the British Museum Library, professor of the original manuscript of Cardenio or The Second Maiden’s Tragedy” (1994, p. 258).
- 5.
The concept of glocalization , posted by Margaret Rouse, is: “in a global market, a product or service is more likely to succeed when it is customized for the locality or culture in which it is sold. For example, the international fast food chain McDonalds illustrates the concept of glocalization by changing their menus to appeal to local palates and customs.” Retrieved from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/glocalization. Accessed February 27, 2015.
- 6.
As playwrights Peng and Chen said in the Introduction of their collaborative Chinese script.
- 7.
She attended the International Shakespeare Conference in Taipei, and spoke after watching the premiere at the National Taiwan University.
- 8.
Cheng’s reply in the after-show seminar. My translation from Cheng’s reply in Chinese into English.
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Tuan, I.H. (2018). Translocal Mobility: Hakka Opera Betrayal Inspired by Shakespeare’s Lost Play Cardenio . In: Tuan, I., Chang, IC. (eds) Transnational Performance, Identity and Mobility in Asia. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7107-2_2
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