First, it’s prose, translated by multiple prominent hands, so of course the rhythm or point to the line is lost. Montale and Ungaretti have translated individual poems, much more freely in the prior’s case.
Also lost in even great translations are the puns and historic meanings, say RJ I.i, the many uses of “stand,” the 1590’s word for erection—made clear in the puns on sword, “my naked tool is out.”
Here, Emilio Cecchi, translator of Otello, footnotes puns, like “white” and “wight” (170). He also has a great note on “folly” as “scemenza vale lascivia.” (Cecchi also translates Iago’s epigrams into verse, so his O is more four-stars; he was a screen-writer, films until 1949.)
My favorite lines, aloudread at Milanese cafe’s over a cappucio, as in Squarzina's Hamlet, adopt some Italian priority, like food: King, “Dove Polonio?” Hamlet, “A cena.” K, “A cena! Dove?” H,”Non dove mangia, ma dove e mangiato...Vermi politici si sta occupando di lui”(126). (Squarzina’s translation was first performed and directed by V. Gassman —and the translator—in Rome, Fall, 1952.)
Cecchi has Iago’s drinking song with Cassio, preparing him to be killed by a poorer swordsman,
“Facciam tintinnare i bicchieri/ [Ripetere]
La vita e un spanna,
Il soldato tracanna
E un uomo lui.”
Of course, “cannikin” hard to render by “bicchieri.” As is “clink” by “tintinnare,” to sound or ring.
Cecchi also has the gravediggers songs, and their complaint that la gente ripulita have right to drown themselves while men don’t.
Hamlet jokes with Horacio about nourishing bones that could as well make dice to play skittles, birilli. The gravedigger’s refrain,
Per baciare il primo che venga, hi ho hu,
C’e una bocca di argilla nel suol. (140)
Before this, “Una zappa e una vanga, e una vanga, hi ho hu,/ e un sudario per lenzuol,/ per baciare...”
Asked how long he’s dug graves, the digger-clown answers, since old Hamlet beat Fortibras, the same day young Hamlet was born, he who is mad and sent to Inghilterra. H, Perche? “Gli inglesi sono matti come lui.” (Again, Squarzina's Hamlet.) I note how many more syllables the Italian uses; in Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, "contumelie dall'uomo arrogante" for "the proud man's contumely"(107), half the syllables.
Paola Ojetti translates RJ, but finds the bawdy puns impossible, say Romeo’s to the Nurse, “The bawdy dial of the sun stands on the prick of noon,” Perche il dito Della meridiana sta adesso Mezzogiorno.(37). But again, Italian food comes through, with “una lepre, messere, in un pasticcio di quaresima..”. This improves on “an hare in a Lenten pie.” Anyone who’s dined on home-made pasticcio would prefer it to a pub Shepherds pie. Also, arguably, the Nurse's illiteracy comes across better because of the rolled Italian letter: "Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin with a letter [the same]?" "Si...Cominciano tutte due con una erre." N, "Che burlone! È il nome del cane rabbioso..No, no, è un altra lettera.." "R" was called the "dog's letter" because one growls to say it: and an Italian really growls to say the rolled "erre."