Dubbing Romeo and Juliet in Italy: A journey across time.

William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet has generated a wealth of reappropriations for various media through time. Several film adaptations have been produced. Among them, Renato Castellani’s 1954 film, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version and Baz Luhrmann’s postmodern William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of three film adaptations of Romeo and Juliet produced between 1950 and 2000 in their original English and dubbed Italian versions. By focussing on the Prologue and on some lines from the first scene, the paper describes the way the opening scene is portrayed in the films and examines the approach adopted by the Italian translators/dubbing professionals to deal with Shakespeare’s classic text and its literariness across time. The paper shows that each new film adaptation requires a new and different translation, depending on the director’s interpretation of the story, type of film and target audience.