THE TRANSNATIONAL DIMENSION OF SHAKESPEARE’S THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR AS ADAPTED INTO OPERA BY RITTER AND DITTERSDORF
THE TRANSNATIONAL DIMENSION OF SHAKESPEARE’S THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR AS ADAPTED INTO OPERA BY RITTER AND DITTERSDORF

Summary/Abstract: This paper looks at the changes that occur in the adaptation of Shakespeare’s play The Merry Wives of Windsor into opera as it travels transnationally from England to Germany and temporally from the Elizabethan Age to the end of the eighteenth century. The change of mentalities is obvious, as greater momentum is granted to bourgeois interests, such as trade and money issues. The process of translation is also vital in the forging of the libretto. Therefore, the names of the characters are modified to reflect the local colour of German society, as well as to subliminally impress a description of those respective characters upon the audience. Thus, for instance, the name Ruthal suggests a nature that is forever calm when confronted with the unexpected crises of life. Even if in the original play the women are cast in unusually important positions for that age and for Shakespeare’s wont, functioning as clever stage directors of the farce and astutely duping the men, in Ritter’s and Dittersdorf’s Singspiels they practically reach a form of feminism avant la lettre. The male characters also differ from their theatrical models in that Falstaff and Ford (re-baptised Wallauf) are much more vindictive and less benign. The rigours of the operatic tradition impose various transformations from spoken to sung language, entailing a dramatic metamorphosis which results in the alteration or downright rewriting of the plot, as well as the reduction of the number of acts and characters. Finally, the conclusion of this study maps the whole transnational journey of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor in its musical adaptations, which has brought utmost global fame to a play that has never been greatly favoured by the theatre.

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