Witold Chwalewik

Witold Chwalewik (1900–1985) translated three of Shakespeare’s plays: Miarka za miarkę (Measure for Measure, 1958), Hamlet (1963) and Król Lear (King Lear, 1964). A trained lawyer and English graduate, he began his scholarly studies in the 1920s and took them up again after the Second World War. In 1971 he completed his doctoral thesis entitled ‘Polish sources of inspiration in the works of Shakespeare’. In 1973 he began his academic career on the strength of his research on Joseph Conrad. He made numerous research trips to Great Britain and the United States. He also took part in conferences on Shakespeare in Stratford.

He was active as a translator, a translation critic and a researcher into the early modern period with extensive experience in working with sources. In 1965 he was awarded the Roy Translation Prize in recognition of his achievements in the field of translation.

Chwalewik published the first fragments of his translation of Hamlet in the early 1950s, when he was an advocate for meeting the needs of the theatre and modernising the language of translation. Ultimately, however, he published a philological translation of the play in a bilingual edition, with a substantial introduction and notes. An unusual undertaking at the time, it was intended to cater for readers hungry for knowledge about Shakespeare’s plays, but without access to their English editions. His two subsequent translations appeared in a series put out by the State Publishing Institute (PIW), unaccompanied by extensive critical apparatus.

Chwalewik’s translation of Hamlet was seen as an academic edition, in a similar vein to the 1895 translation by Władysław Matlakowski. The bilingual format meant that the volume was noted in English-speaking countries. A small number of perfunctory reviews aside, however, Chwalewik’s translations were not the subject of detailed analysis. They were held up as typical examples of philological and literal translation, bereft of any poetic qualities. They have rarely been staged: Hamlet on one occasion and Miarka za miarkę twice, but intermeshed with another translation. None of his translations have been reissued.