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''The Old Tune'' is a free translation of Robert Pinget’s 1960 play ''La Manivelle'' (''The Crank'') in which Samuel Beckett transformed Pinget’s Parisians, Toupin and Pommard into Dubliners, Cream and Gorman. Its first radio broadcast was by the BBC on 23 August 1960. Barbara Bray directed Jack MacGowran (Cream) and Patrick Magee (Gorman). For the unspecified old tune played by Gorman on the barrel organ Beckett selected ''(The Bluebells of Scotland )'', suggested by the bank of bluebells〔Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 178〕 mentioned near the start of the play. ==Background== In 1957, Pinget, who at the time was close friends with Beckett, undertook a translation of Beckett's radio play ''All That Fall'', which found Beckett's approval. In 1960 Pinget's play ''Lettre Morte'' was presented on a double bill with ''Krapp's Last Tape'' at the Théâtre Récamier in Paris. When Randolph Goodman interviewed the French playwright in 1967, Pinget explained that Beckett : “offered to put my play into English. As he only translates his own material, I considered his offer a great kindness. Beckett wanted to set the scene of the play in Dublin and turn my Parisians into Irishmen; I gave him my permission to do so. It is a model translation.”〔Goodman, R., (Ed.) ''From Script to Stage: Eight Modern Plays'' (San Francisco: Rinehart, 1971), p 550〕 This was not too much of a stretch as Pinget’s original was written in “highly colloquial French”〔Mercier, V., ''Beckett/Beckett'' (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 43〕 in the first place. Beckett already admired Pinget’s work – he had, for example, insisted that his friends. the Reaveys attend a performance of the French production on which he had been working – and “used to cite this play as an illustration of how important the proper use of music could be to a playwright, especially one who was cognizant of the importance of unifying the two disciples.”〔Bair, D., ''Samuel Beckett: A Biography'' (London: Vintage, 1990), p 585〕 “By transforming the French into Irish rhythmic prose, Beckett went beyond translation to make the play his own, although it is less elusive than the drama which constitutes his fully original work. It is easy to see what attracted him to the text, two men on the margins of society, facing isolation and semantic memory loss, which disrupts communication.”〔Brown, V., ''(Yesterday’s Deformities: A Discussion of the Role of Memory and Discourse in the Plays of Samuel Beckett )'', (doctoral thesis)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Old Tune」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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