In the Workshop of Alessandro Verri, Shakespeare Translator

Abstract

The study presents the work of translating of Shakespeare’s Othello by Alessandro Verri. The Milanese intellectual, passionate about translation and the English world, discusses with his brother Pietro a dense correspondence that will constantly accompany the two illuminists. The countless letters tell of the wonder of the discovery of the Bard’s works, the first impressions (also at an international level), the methods of translation and the principles that regulate them, and the first drafts in Italian of short significant passages. The analysis proceeds by investigating, through some examples, the concretization of the theories expressed in the correspondence, comparing the two Verrian versions of the work, the first merely ‘of service’, the second the result of a more careful labor limae, and conceived for publication. A journey through the pages of a personal and professional path of the first translator of the tragedy of the Moor of Venice.