Abstract
The article deals with the most significant changes the authors introduced in order to adapt the Shakespearean play to operatic requirements, e.g. reducing the number of characters, ascribing new parts to some of the characters remaining or balancing female and male voices on stage. An analysis is made here also of the flow of time inscribed in the libretto and the significance of the scene when the messenger comes to the Princess, saying that the King of France is dead. Their symbolism is interpreted with the additional contexts that were provided by W.H. Auden’s lecture on Love’s Labour’s Lost, which are: court love, court manners, euphuism and the Platonic philosophy and its continuations. This philosophical context allowed both poets to read the play as a process of gaining knowledge of life and feelings which the King of Navarre and his courtiers had declared to study in their academy, but never succeeded.
References
E. Mendelson, Introduction, w: W.H. Auden i Ch. Kallman, Libretti and Other Dramatic Writings by W.H. Auden 1939-1973, ed. by E. Mendelson, Princeton 1993, s. XXX , 717, 733.
H. Carpenter, W.H. Auden: A Biography, Boston 1981, s. 427—428.
W.H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, reconstructed and ed. by A. Kirsch, Princeton 2000, s. 33 („W.H. Auden: Critical Editions").
A. Kirsch, Introduction, w: W.H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, s. IX—XI.
W. Shakespeare, Ucieszna i krotochwilna komedia zwana Serc starania stracone, przeł. M. Słomczyński, posłowie J. Kydryński, Kraków 1984, s. 8.
Platon, Biesiada, przeł. E. Zwolski, Kraków 1993, s. 35
W. Shakespe¬are, Jak wam się podoba, przeł. M. Słomczyński, posłowie J. Kydryński, Kraków 1983, s. 115.
W.H. Auden i Ch. Kallman, Love's Labour's Lost. Operatic pastoral in three acts after William Shakespeare, w: W.H. Auden i Ch. Kallman, Librettix, s. 315.
W.H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, s. 43. [21] W.H. Auden i Ch. Kaiiman, Love's Labour's Lost, s. 353—354, 357.
W.H. Auden, Rękafarbiarzaiinneeseje, s. 355-358.
License
Authors
Authors of texts accepted for publication in Images are required to complete, sign and return to the editor's office the Agreement for granting a royalty-free license to works with a commitment to grant a CC sub-license.
Under the agreement, the authors of texts published in Images grant the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań a non-exclusive, royalty-free license and authorize the use of Attribution 4.0. License (CC BY 4.0). Creative Commons sub-license.
The authors retain the right to continue the free disposal of the work.
Users
Interested Internet users are entitled to use works published in Images since 2016, for non-commercial purposes only, under the following conditions:
- attribution - obligation to provide, together with the distributed work, information about the authorship, title, source (link to the original work, DOI) and the license itself.
- no derivatives - the work must be preserved in its original form, without the author's consent it is not possible to distribute the modified work, such as translations, publications, etc.
Copyrights are reserved for all texts published before 2016.
Miscellaneous
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań retains the right to magazines as a whole (layout, graphic form, title, cover design, logo etc.).