You have written a great deal about Shakespeare. What interested you, as a Romanian, about his works? What about them attracted your interest?

First of all, I am a Romanian and a student of English. Ever since I was studying British literature at the University of Bucharest I was fascinated with the plays and their Romanian productions. Those were the seventies in Romania, the heyday of communism, when being a student of English gave one an aura of illicit access to the denigrated but secretly admired Western thought. Later on, I enlarged my knowledge and interest of Shakespeare through my PhD study. On seeing as many productions as I could, I realized that there are as many ways of looking at the plays as there are eyes to see, or ears to listen. I was attracted by their flexibility and resourcefulness, and because you may leave the theater thinking intensely about an issue. Maybe my being multicultural counted a lot, because I must admit I prefer seeing a production in English rather than in Romanian, because the text is not tainted by translation. I simply love the words as they surge.

You explain that Shakespeare’s works functioned as a form of resistance to Communist rule during the Soviet period. How did these 400-year-old works by a foreign playwright come to have this period?

When I was a student, I got in the habit of applying a secret game of mine to the concrete life situations I was in: I found parallels between people and events happening to me and my friends, and characters and situations in Shakespeare’s plays. So many circumstances were relevant that I couldn’t help admitting that there’s method in it. If I was able to do that, I suppose many others were. Since we weren’t allowed express our thoughts openly, we could at least enjoy the secret pleasure of opposing communism vicariously. There was no visible current of opinion, because few people actually dared to become political dissidents, but each of us lived our own secret form of resistance. Some people invented and propagated jokes about the flaws of the regime and their acolytes, protected by the anonymity of hearsay; others, like me, went to see a Shakespeare play and delighted in discovering concealed meanings, which the director and the actors self-consciously put there, protected by the bards impeccable name. In both situations there was no way of proving sedition, but the words and interpretations stayed and grew with us.

Which of Shakespeare’s plays are most popular in Romania, and why?

It is difficult to say which plays were most favored by theaters and translators in various periods. I believe Romania was no different from other countries in Europe, for which Shakespeare became popular in the nineteenth century, especially with plays such as Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, or Romeo and Juliet. Later, when all the plays were available in numerous translations, Hamlet still had the leading role, and interpreting and producing this tragedy in various modes became a most wanted accreditation for actors and directors, even for certain theatres. However, when social issues were concerned, the comedies came into the foreground, as it happened in the early communist period, when playing the political game was downright dangerous. The great tragedies and even the romances (The Tempest) were used for instilling political innuendo during communism, when directors were addressing political issues via the Shakespeare medium. Now it is impossible to say which play is most popular. It all depends on who we are and what we want to resonate through one play or another.

What is the future of Shakespeare in Romania?

Its hard to predict. I can only say that in an age of so much volatile change as the one we live in, an adaptable protean figure can be a suitable answer to our secret fears, even the fear of change itself. We may come to rely on the unstable Shakespeare as one fixed point of reference in an insecure world. Romania is on her way towards the European Union (a much wished-for prospect of integration in the democratic system of values), and Shakespeare is an enjoyable and instructive visa on this passport because he speaks the language of civility and mutual sympathy.

–Lorna Marie McManus