Adapting Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Drama for Theater: A Selection of Problems on the Way of Rendering the Tragicomedy The Two Noble Kinsmen into Polish Magdalena Kizeweter and Anna Wojtyś University of Warsaw, Poland ABSTRACT: The text of a drama may be changed considerably in the process of its adaptation for theater. Factors such as the age of the target audience, the size of the theater or the available equipment often result in the need for the alteration of the text which typically involves its abridgement. Other solutions include the rephrasing of the original passages and replacing portions of text with more familiar expressions. The article discusses the adaptation of The Two Noble Kinsmen, a less-known Shakespearean drama composed in collaboration with Fletcher. The play had its Polish premiere in 2016 in the Jan Dorman Theater in Będzin. Due to the nature of the house, which is predominantly a theater for children, the literal Polish translation underwent considerable changes. KEYWORDS: adaptation, adaptation procedures, Shakespeare in translation, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare and Fletcher 1. The Two Noble Kinsmen and its Polish version(s) The Two Noble Kinsmen (TNK) was written in 1613 or 1614, hence it is one of the last plays composed by Shakespeare. For a long time, its authorship remained doubtful especially because the text was not included in the First Folio. According to the title page of its first publication in 1634, it was “Written by the memorable Worthies of their time; Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare, Gent.,” which is often regarded as conclusive piece of evidence since, as Spalding ([1833] 1876) puts it, “There was no motive for falsely stating Shakspeare’s authorship, because no end would have been gained by it.” Numerous studies focusing on the language of The Two Noble Kinsmen (cf., e.g., Hart 1934, Spencer 1939, or Hoy 1962) have shown that the text
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