Much Ado About Shakespeare.

Abstract

This article deals with a vicious literary feud between Eiríkur Magnússon (University Librarian at Cambridge University) and Matthías Jochumsson (one of Iceland’s foremost poets during the 19th century) which was occasioned by the latter’s translation of Shakespeare’s Othello into Icelandic. During the years before and after 1880, Shakespeare’s plays were very popular with Icelandic translators and no less than six of them were translated. Steingrímur Thorsteinsson translated King Lear in 1874, Eiríkur Magnússon The Tempest in 1885, and Matthías Jochumsson Macbeth in 1874, Hamlet in 1878, Othello in 1882 and Romeo and Juliet (which Jochumsson completed in 1881, but was not published until 1887). The Othello translation turned out to be the one that caused the greatest stir. It originated in a particularly nasty review which Eiríkur Magnússon wrote about Jochumsson’s translation of the play. This feud went on for the next three years and did not really end until Magnússon came in for a similar attack for his translation of The Tempest. Various other leading literary figures were also dragged into this dispute between Jochumsson and Magnússon. Although Jochumsson found himself at the losing end to begin with, he did, however, emerge as having conclusively defeated Eiríkur Magnússon in the end. Keywords: Eiríkur Magnússon, Matthías Jochumsson, Shakespeare translations, reviews, literary feuds