Zygmunt Kubiak

Zygmunt Kubiak (1919-2004) was an essayist, translator and a leading expert on classical antiquity. He translated a single Shakespeare play: Dwóch panów z Werony (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1958). It was to be the first of his many translations, from Latin, modern Greek and English. He often returned to Shakespeare, for instance in his essay ‘Nature and Madness’ (1956) about the origins of totalitarian ideologies.

He studied Classics at the University of Warsaw. In 1994 he obtained a PhD for a thesis on Renaissance literature. He was the author of Greek and Roman Mythology (Mitologia Greków i Rzymian, 1997), Greek and Roman Literature (Literatura Greków i Rzymian, 1999) and Greek and Roman History (Dzieje Greków i Rzymian, 2003). In 1997 he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

The translation was commissioned by the State Publishing Institute (PIW) for a series of new, post-war versions of Shakespeare. There are only a small number of footnotes, reflecting Kubiak’s strategy of maintaining the comedy, the tempo and the deftness of the dialogue, and disregarding where necessary the literal meaning of the original in extended wordplay, mockery and maxims. Kubiak avoided archaicisms and radical modernisations. He used unrhymed, eleven-syllable lines and preserved the divisions between verse and prose.

The translation has neither been reviewed nor reissued. References to it in the critical literature are sparse. It was performed once, in 1968, with the translator’s name not to be found in the programme. Stanisław Barańczak’s later translation of the play preserved Kubiak’s choice of name for one of the characters (Speed): Chybcik.