Skip to main content
Shakespeare & Beyond

Play on! Octavio Solis on translating ‘Edward III’

Although there’s some debate about whether to include Edward III in the official list of Shakespeare plays (the Folger Shakespeare Library does not), the Play on! project to translate all of Shakespeare’s plays into contemporary English decided it made the cut and asked playwright Octavio Solis to take it on. This conversation with Solis continues our series of Q&As with Play on! participants.

Beginning May 29 and continuing through June, the Play On Shakespeare Festival will present 39 readings from the Play on! Shakespeare translation project in partnership with Classic Stage Company and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The readings will take place at the Classic Stage Company performance space in New York.

Read an introduction to the Play on! project by Lue Douthit, the project director

Read previous Q&As in the series


What were your first impressions of Edward III?

My first impression was that scholars had it all wrong. This was not a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd or some other lesser writer. The work was entirely the Bard’s own. If this was a collaboration, it was between a young swaggering upstart just learning his craft and the genius that would pen the later masterpieces of his career; both of them happen to be Shakespeare.

What did you learn about Edward III through the translation process? Do you see it differently now?

I thought the play was a propaganda piece designed to glorify the reign of a popular king, but it was also a bit of a mess. That’s because in writing a work about this King’s more or less successful war campaign to France, Shakespeare could not ignore some inconvenient facets of his protagonist’s character. Therefore, in the middle of the play, there’s an entire and very engaging romantic subplot involving Edward and the Countess of Salisbury, with whom he is thought to have had an affair. There’s also the fact that the King’s incursion was brutal and often mercilessly conducted on foreign soil, making him look like an invader.

What was remarkable in working on this play was realizing that the whole construction of the story is supported by a single theme: the value of a man’s word. It’s a play on which promises, oaths, vows and signatures all direct the action of the play. Questions of fealty to one’s king, husband, father, country, and even one’s own heart are raised and wrestled with. This single ligament of one’s good word draws together what seem like incongruent storylines and character arcs into a single unifying sheaf.