Serving Twa Maisters: Five Classic Plays in Scots Translation

by John Corbett, Bill Findlay (Editor), Robert Kemp (Contributor)

This collection contains five classic works translated into Scots from the heart of post-war Scottish tradition: Let Wives Tak Tent by Robert Kemp from Molière (1948); The Burdies by Douglas Young from Aristophanes (1959); The Servant o' Twa Maisters by Victor Carin from Goldoni (1965); The Hypochondriak by Hector MacMillan from Molière (1987); and Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti by Peter Arnott from Brecht (1999).

416 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

John Corbett is a Capes International Fellow and Visiting Professor at the University of Sao Paulo. He was previously a Professor and Head of the English Department at the University of Macao, and before that a Professor at the University of Glasgow, where he served as Head of the Department of English Language. He has published widely on diverse topics, including Scottish literature and the Scots language, literary translation, intercultural language education, and corpus linguistics. He is an Honorary Vice-President of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies and he has twice chaired the MLA Scottish Literature Forum.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The five comedies in SERVING TWA MAISTERS - including two by Molière and one each by Aristophanes, Goldoni and Brecht – are all enjoyable and worth reading.

It may, of course, seem odd to read such plays in Scots rather than in English or in the original languages, but the plays represent two strains in contemporary Scottish literature – the flowering of Scottish drama since the 1970s and the ongoing reinvention of the Scots language.

The plays in SERVING TWA MAISTERS are from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 80s and 90s, and the language they use varies considerably, even down to spelling. Some of the translators were concerned with making their works understandable to a modern audience, while others used a more artificial language that may have been substantially harder to listen to.

I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in Scottish drama or the contemporary Scottish literary scene.