In the Prologue, we look back on Kazuko Matsuoka’s activities before she started translating Shakespeare in earnest. Since her student days at the English Language and Literature Department of Tokyo Women’s Christian University, every time she tried to escape from the difficult works of Shakespeare, he just would not let her pass over, and it seems that most of it had to do with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In her second year of college, she had planned to give up on joining the Shakespeare Research Society (nicknamed Shay-ken) because it was too difficult...but just when she was about to do so, at the welcome party for new students, she was designated to play the role of Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She thought that the Kumo Theatre Company’s launch performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was interesting, and so she became a research student in the literary department of the Kumo Theatre Company after graduating from university. After that, she went to the University of Tokyo graduate school with the intention of training, and for her master’s thesis, she wrote about John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (created around the 1620s), which is a play that was also influenced by Romeo and Juliet. After completing her master’s degree, she began translating art criticism and novels, and while working as professor at Tokyo Medical and Dental University, she also worked on translating contemporary British and American theatre. While doing so, in 1992, she finally received an offer from director and actor Kazuyoshi Kushida to translate A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is to be performed at Theatre Cocoon.
We trace the path taken by Ms. Matsuoka as she enters the world of Shakespearean play translation after translating various genres other than Shakespearean plays.
