Moliere adaptation

I don't know. I hope someone can help you. I just love Moliere...I'd like to hear more.


Welcome to AW!

AH. Okay. That would be cool.

I've been doing some googling. It looks like it may have been modernized before. I can't see any copyright info? I'm sure someone will be able to answer your question. Good luck.

There is no copyright issue at all with the original plays. They are in the public domain.

The only copyright issue is the translation that you will have to use if you do not speak French. Make sure it is an old translation. It is hard to do an adaptation without leaving any traces of a particular translation, unless you change things a lot in the adaptation.

How old? I wish I could tell you. Just now I looked at the information from the Copyright Office, and I am still not sure. I actually have a mind that understands this kind of thing, but there are too many questions and uncertainties.

You can find some better explanations of copyright than the one from the Copyright Office.

It has been done in this century for the stage. You can do it but be careful.

Wow, Moliere, there are so many great plays to choose from and he was such an astute social critic, you could really have fun with a loose adaptation. Remember 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern adaptation of The Taming of The Shrew, were you thinking of something along those lines?

On adaptation

It has been done in this century for the stage. You can do it but be careful.

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Jim, I am not sure what you meant by "You can do it but be careful." I do not know what it was that you were warning against.

But just to make sure that everyone understands, I will add one clarifying comment. A writer is legally free to do his own adaptation of any work in the public domain. If someone else has "updated" The Misanthrope to the twenty-first century, you are still free to do the same thing. Nobody owns the original play.

In a nutshell, regard the translation as a work in and of itself. Generally, fifty years after the death of the translator should be a good rule-of-thumb to follow.

Mind you, it all depends upon how closely you intend to follow the text. Throne of Blood is pretty clearly Shakespeare's Macbeth, just as West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet. But one is hard-pressed to find any specific lines that have been carried over. Likewise Clueless is Emma, when you get right down to it. Salem's Lot is Dracula. Roxanne is Cyrano de Bergerac. For that matter, in some ways Twilight is more-or-less a riff on Pride and Prejudice.

If you were to compare several different translations of a given Moliere play, then the thing you would have to avoid is any direct lifting of lines or phrases (this becomes much much easier if you read enough French to double-check with the original). In particular look to what is unique to Moliere:

Names of characters
Their essential relationships
The plot

Hope that is of some help.