Bowdlerizing or maximizing? Two strategies to render Shakespeare’s sexual puns In nineteenth-century spain

Resumo

In 1883, Ricardo de Miranda, Marqués de Premio Real, addressed a letter to poet and novelist Emilia Pardo Bazán in the newspaper La Época.2 In this letter, Miranda argued Zola’s “immoral naturalism” was lacking in English novelists and playwrights, whose works could be read in family, as they were appropriate for people of all ages. Miranda emphasised the great difference in naturalistic styles between Shakespeare and Zola, and subtly blamed the latter for writing “coarse and revolting” novels.3 In order to prove his point, the Marqués de Premio Real invited Countess Pardo Bazán to review Shakespeare’s plays, with the exception of Titus Andronicus, a tragedy about whose authorship Miranda was not sure. Four days after the publication of this letter, Pardo Bazán answered the Marqués with another, where she reviewed Shakespeare’s texts and showed the extent to which his works were full of a realism that made Zola’s pale in comparison.