“I should like to have my name talked of in China”: Charles Lamb, China, and Shakespeare

Yun-fang Dai

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.20.07

Authors

Yun-fang Dai Associate Professor, School of Foreign Studies, Nantong University, China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.20.07

Keywords:

Shakespeare, tales, Charles Lamb, Yinbian yanyu, Thomas Manning

Abstract

Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare played an essential role in Chinese reception history of Shakespeare. The first two adaptations in China,Xiewai qitan 澥外奇譚and Yinbian yanyu 吟邊燕語, chose Tales as the source text. To figure out why the Lambs’ Tales was received in China even earlier than Shakespeare’s original texts, this paper first focuses on Lamb’s relationship with China. Based on archival materials, it then assumes that the Lambs’ Tales might have had a chance to reach China at the beginning of the nineteenth century through Thomas Manning. Finally, it argues that the decision to first bring Shakespeare to China by Tales was made under the consideration of the Lambs’ writing style, the genre choice, the similarity of the Lambs’ and Chinese audiences, and the marketability of Tales. Tracing back to the first encounter between Tales and China throws considerable light on the reception history of Shakespeare in China. It makes sense that nothing is coincidental in the history of cultural reception and the encounters have always been fundamentally influenced by efforts from both the addresser and the receptor.

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Author Biography

Yun-fang Dai, Associate Professor, School of Foreign Studies, Nantong University, China

Yun-fang Dai, PhD of National Taiwan University, works as Associate Professor in the School of Foreign Studies of Nan Tong University. She studies Comparative Literature and Shakespeare Translation Studies, particularly focusing on the early translation history of his works in China. Her paper, “Marginalizing Lin Shu in the Republican Era: Language Styles, Henry VI, and Translation,” was published at Studia Translatorica and her “Triple Spaces of the Window in Much Ado about Nothing” was included as a chapter in Shakespeare and Asia, published by Routledge in 2019.

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