Abstract
This paper gives an overview of the very beginnings of Shakespeare in the Croatian drama until the postmodernism period. Shakespeare's plays began to be performed in Croatia in the late 18th century when German theatrical troupes performed Shakespeare's localized dramas, but theatre audience could still not grasp the true size of Shakespeare plays by watching the adaptations. In the late 18th century Shakespeare started to be translated into Croatian thanks to two priests: Ivan Krizmanic and Antun Kazali. These translations have a high cultural and historical value, but are also important for the future reception of Shakespeare in Croatia as they hide a roadmap and valuable help for its future translators and interpreters. In the mid 19th century Shakespeare started to be deliberately exploited for the first time in the Croatian literature as intertext for the purposes of creating a national drama that would trigger patriotic feelings. In the beginning, the borrowings were discreet and occasional but Stjepan Miletic, in an innovative and open manner, started using Shakespeare in his own works. After Miletic era, a period of poor interest in Shakespeare performance set in. Few literary-drama attempts to insert Shakespeare's elements into own plays were mostly unnoticed either because of questionable quality of the dramas themselves or because of the upcoming nightmarish war and post-war years that generated the structure of the Croatian drama in which Shakespeare's dominant themes did not fit in. However, the period of postmodernism in Croatia used Shakespeare as intertext in creating post-modern Croatian drama. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n9p399
Highlights
William Shakespeare has been present in the works of Croatian dramatists since Dimitrije Demetar, i.e. since the Croatian Illyrian movement, through the period of modernist literature until postmodernism
Shakespeare in Croatia began appearing in the time of romanticism
Motherland was a central theme in these dramas and Shakespeare served as “a layout in which the authors build their dramas with a particular national function” (Vidan, 1995, p. 54.)
Summary
William Shakespeare has been present in the works of Croatian dramatists since Dimitrije Demetar, i.e. since the Croatian Illyrian movement, through the period of modernist literature until postmodernism. The motives, intensity or the echoes of the Shakespeare borrowings are not always the same. During the Illyrian movement and Croatian national revival period, the reasons for the borrowings were national and programmatic. The intensity of Shakespeare borrowings in the period between the two world wars was very feeble. Shakespeare’s reaffirmation in Croatia starts with Ivo Brešan’s grotesque Predstava Hamleta u Mrduši Donjoj (Acting Hamlet in the village of Mrduša Donja). This play is a turning point, as it will greatly influence Croatian dramatists until today
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