1.
In a situation similar to that of other European countries, Shakespeare’s Sonnets were translated into Spanish at a much later date than his plays. The first dated publication of Shakespearean sonnets in Spanish was that of Matías de Velasco y Rojas (1829-1901), also known as the Marqués de Dos Hermanas, a Cuban lawyer and writer residing in Spain. Velasco, who translated thirty-seven sonnets in full, and over fifty fragmentarily, all in prose, used  his translations as quotations in his Breve estudio de los Sonetos de Shakespeare (Madrid, 1877). However, and with very few exceptions, the Spanish renderings that followed up to the early 1920s were not only in verse, but cast in the sonnet mould. After this, no Spanish renderings of this type were published in Spain till Angelina Damians brought out her verse translation of the whole cycle in 1944.(2) Since then a good number of Spanish versions of the complete sequence have appeared. With some exceptions, those translated in Latin American countries tend to maintain the sonnet structure, whether Italian or Elizabethan, thus using rhymed hendecasyllables. On the other hand, those translated in Spain offer a variety of solutions, from rhymed and unrhymed hendecasyllables or alexandrines to free verse. Therefore, if these early Spanish verse translations in the sonnet form set an example for later translators, this seems to have been followed more closely in Latin America than in Spain.  Be that as it may, these translations form a homogeneous and unique group, along the lines of those found in countries like Germany, where Shakespeare’s sonnets had been translated in sonnet form from the first half of the 19th century.(3)

2.
Within the general bibliography on "Shakespeare in Spain," documentation on the Spanish translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets always lagged behind that on the translations of his plays. In addition, it has always been incomplete. The first discussion of these early Spanish verse translations is to be found in Eduardo Juliá’s Shakespeare en España (Madrid, 1918). Juliá’s information was later complemented by Alfonso Par’s Contribución a la bibliografía española de Shakespeare (Barcelona, 1930). Surprisingly, Par’s wide-ranging Shakespeare en la literatura española (Madrid & Barcelona, 1935) barely touches on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Other bibliographical repertoires, like Ricardo Ruppert’s Shakespeare en España (Madrid, 1920) and Ángeles Serrano’s Bibliografía shakespeariana en España: Crítica y traducción (Alicante, 1983) did not add new information and have proved to be manifestly incomplete or erroneous on a number of points.

Apart from the Velasco prose translations, Eduardo Juliá (pp. 180-182) documented four Spanish verse translations by Miguel Antonio Caro, ten by José de Armas and three by one Julio "Acebal," published in literary journals, as well as eleven by Fernando Maristany, published in his own 1918 anthology.  As far as Alfonso Par is concerned, he did not incorporate Armas or "Acebal" in his Contribución, but added two anthologies (pp. 81-82) which included new translations: two by Fernando Maristany in one of them (1920), and in the other, nine by José Pablo Rivas, five by Carmela Eulate and one by Gabriel de Zéndegui. This second anthology, devoted entirely to Shakespeare, shows no date of publication (though Par erroneously gives 1920), but may have come out around 1922. Leaving out the prose renderings by Matías de Velasco, and bringing together the information in Juliá and Par, the list of Spanish verse translators and translated sonnets up to the early 1920s is as follows:(4)

1892 & 1893. Caro: 29, 43, 48 and 116. (La España Moderna)(5) 1915. Armas: 18, 25, 29, 37, 66, 71, 100, 121, 138 and 153. (Cuba contemporánea) 1916. Acebal: 31, 90 and 104. (España) 1918. Maristany: 17, 18, 30, 33, 60, 66, 71, 73, 74, 106 and 116. (Las cien mejores poesías (líricas) de la lengua inglesa) 1920. Maristany: 27 and 50. (Florilegio de las mejores poesías líricas griegas, latinas, italianas, portuguesas, francesas, inglesas y alemanas) Undated (ca. 1922).  Rivas: 1, 2, 23, 25, 29, 72, 103, 121 and 149. Undated. Eulate: 32, 127, 142, 143 and 152. Undated. Zéndegui: 146. (Las mejores poesías (líricas) de los mejores poetas. Shakespeare)

According to all this information, between 1892 and ca. 1922 seven translators had produced Spanish translations in sonnet form of thirty-seven different Shakespearean sonnets, of which there were three different renderings of sonnet 29 and two of sonnets 18, 25, 66, 121 and 116. Unfortunately, none of the three anthologies mentioned cite the date of the first publications of the translations included in them.

All these bibliographical data were used by Micaela Muñoz in her work on the Spanish translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The bulk of it was her doctoral dissertation, entitled Ediciones y traducciones españolas de los sonetos de William Shakespeare: análisis y valoración crítica, read in 1986 and published in various formats over the following three years. In it she critically examined and contrasted various Spanish translations of ten Shakespearean sonnets. Then she published two derivative articles on the same subject. Clearly, the work of documentation by Juliá, Par and Muñoz has been crucial, and we must be indebted to their efforts, which have made later research an easier task. However, their work also shows errors and omissions which need to be amended.

In her "Los sonetos de Shakespeare: traductores y traducciones españolas" (1987), Muñoz offered a list of translators and translations, and corrected some mistakes and omissions by Juliá and Par. Thus she pointed out that Caro’s renderings had been published in Latin America in 1891 —i.e., one year earlier than they began to appear in Spain— and that Par did not mention the names of the translators in one of the two anthologies (Eulate, Maristany, Rivas and Zéndegui). However, she omitted the 1920 Florilegio listed in Par —though the two new translations by Maristany included in it are mentioned by her (p. 94)— and, repeating an error in Par, she gave the 1920 date to the undated Shakespeare anthology. Muñoz rightly showed that the surname "Acebal" was Juliá’s misspelling of "Arceval" —a mistake later repeated by Ángeles Serrano—, but did not find out that "Julio Arceval" was the pseudonym of none other than Salvador de Madariaga. The true identity behind the pseudonym was made clear in a later issue of the same literary review where he had brought out his translations,(6) as well as in other publications, particularly in his Manojo de poesías inglesas (Cardiff, 1919), published under his real name, in which he included his three translations of Shakespearean sonnets.

Following Par, Micaela Muñoz mentioned that Zéndegui’s rendering had first appeared in his Sones de la lira inglesa (Oxford, 1920) and omitted the first publication of Rivas’s translations, which had appeared in his own Antología de poetas extranjeros antiguos y contemporáneos (Madrid, 1920). This anthology shows that Rivas had also translated Shakespeare’s sonnet 71, which was not included in the Shakespeare anthology and has, therefore, been absent from Par and Muñoz. Then, neither of them mentions the first publication of Carmela Eulate’s translations, although, had they tried to document them, they would have found that these had apparently never been published before. According to her biographer, Eulate was preparing an Antología de poetas norteamericanos e ingleses, which surely would have included her versions of these Shakesperean sonnets, but was never published.(7)

The other derivative article by Micaela Muñoz (1989) was devoted to the translators of Shakespearean sonnets in the 19th century, in which, following Juliá and Par, she wrote on Matías de Velasco and Miguel Antonio Caro, who was discussed as a Colombian man of letters. As I shall explain, the national origin of these early verse translators has been overlooked or, at best, taken for granted, when, I think, it may be more significant than meets the eye. Of the seven early translators discussed so far, only Madariaga and Maristany were Spanish. Neither Juliá, nor Par, nor Muñoz mention that Matías de Velasco, Marqués de Dos Hermanas, was actually Cuban,(8) as were Gabriel de Zéndegui and José de Armas —Juliá, however, does specify (p. 30) that Armas was a "crítico cubano". Neither do they inform us that Carmela Eulate was Puerto Rican or that José Pablo Rivas was Mexican. It is true that Velasco, Armas, Eulate and Rivas were residing in Spain, where their renderings came out in first or second publication. I shall come back to this Latin American presence later.

3.
Apart from all these gaps, there is a glaring omission in Juliá, Par and those who have followed them, both in Spain and abroad. I refer to the Antología de líricos ingleses y angloamericanos in seven volumes, published in Madrid between 1915 and 1924, and edited by the poet Miguel Sánchez Pesquera, another Latin American. It is a glaring omission, because this was the most extensive anthology of English language poetry in Spanish verse translation to have appeared in Spain over this period, perhaps the most extensive till then or ever. Volume five, published in 1922, contains a great deal of Shakespeare, specifically translations of  "The Phoenix and Turtle," selections of Venus and Adonis, passages from a number of Shakespeare’s plays, and verse renderings of thirty-four Shakespearean sonnets (two of them in free verse).(9) These include translations in the sonnet form by new translators: Rafael Pombo, Guillermo Macpherson, Guillermo Belmonte Müller, Jaime Martí-Miquel, Juan Antonio Pérez Bonalde and Matías de Velasco —Velasco being "new" here as translator of Shakespeare’s sonnet 149 in sonnet form. Pérez Bonalde, a Venezuelan poet, features as the author of the two free-verse renderings, and will only be discussed here in connection with dates.

In effect, all these new versions lead us to reconsider the dating of the first Spanish translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Unfortunately, this anthology does not mention the date of the first publications of the translations included, but in one case I have been able to find its first publication, and in the others that are relevant some reasonable guesses can be made. Let us look at these two cases briefly, before we discuss the new translations.

In the first place, the Velasco version of sonnet 149 was included in his own book of sonnets, published in 1889. If he had not entitled it "Traducción de Shakspeare," it could have passed as an original poem, since it was cast in the mould of the Italian sonnet, like the others in his book. This may be the first Spanish rendering of a Shakespearean sonnet in the sonnet form, and is at least the first of its kind whose first publication date is known. The other candidate which this anthology has revealed is the translation of sonnet 111 by the Gibraltarian Guillermo (or William) Macpherson (wrongly indicated as "III"), but I have not been able to trace its first publication. Macpherson translated twenty-three Shakespearean plays into Spanish between 1873 and 1897. As he was born in 1824 and died in 1898, his version might predate Velasco’s, and even Velasco’s 1877 prose renderings.

Matías de Velasco's rhymed version of sonnet 149

As regards Pérez Bonalde’s renderings, all of his poetic translations were published posthumously in 1947 in a volume that included another free-verse rendering of a Shakespearean sonnet, that of 116 —and, alas, went undated.(10) I have not been able to trace the first publication of his Shakespearean translations, which may not have been published at all in his life time. Be that as may, as Pérez Bonalde was born in 1846 and died in 1892, it is not impossible that his free verse renderings were written even before the 1877 prose translations by Velasco and were, therefore, the first ever in Spanish.

Coming back to the anthology, we can see that it includes translations published previously by Maristany, Eulate, Caro and Armas, but none by Madariaga, Rivas or Zéndegui — it does include only one by Maristany (106) and four by Eulate, but not that of sonnet 32. Leaving aside the free verse translations by Pérez Bonalde, the list of new Spanish verse translators and translated sonnets included in it reads as follows:

Pombo:  2, 11, 13, 27, 73, 95 and 147. Belmonte: 7, 27, 31, 50, 90 and 104. Martí-Miquel:  24, 75, 87 and 153. Macpherson: 111. Velasco: 149.

Velasco and Macpherson have already been discussed. Rafael Pombo (1833-1912) was Poet Laureate in his native Colombia. He may have translated Shakespeare and other poets because of the influence of English and North-American lyrical poetry on his own work. His verse translations of Shakespearean sonnets were published posthumously.(11) Some of them were dated 1893 and 1897. 

Rafael Pombo's version of sonnet 73

Belmonte and Martí-Miquel were the only Spaniards in this group. Guillermo Belmonte (1852-1929) was a poet from Córdoba and translator of poetry, particularly that of Alfred de Musset and Michel Angelo. In his discussion of his life as a poet, an editor of his poems mentions his translations of these poets, but not of Shakespeare.(12)

Guillermo Belmonte's version of sonnet 31

I have been unable to trace the first publication of his Shakespearean translations —which may not have been published at the time or may have been commissioned for this anthology.  Instead, those by Jaime Martí-Miquel, Marqués de Benzú, a Valencian poet and translator, appeared previously in his Flores de luz: Poesías de autores extranjeros puestas en rima castellana, an undated anthology published probably in 1896.(13) However, he had also written a rendering of Shakespeare’s sonnet 66, published in 1895 in his El ramo de pensamientos. Poesías de ilustres poetas extranjeros puestas en rima castellana. This translation, not included in the anthology under discussion, and which, like that of Rivas’ sonnet 71, has not been documented before, turns out to be the first in sonnet form of a Shakespearean sonnet produced by a Spaniard.

To the best of my knowledge, this important anthology has only been mentioned by Miguel Gallego Roca, but unfortunately, the author discusses what is a seven-volume anthology in barely two pages, and says that it includes the translations of all the sonnets by Shakespeare, when it facts it conetains only a selection of them.(14) As for the renderings of Shakesperean sonnets in the anthology, a number of them show obvious misprints and errors of various kinds, particularly when set against the texts in their first publications or the original English poems.

4.
As I have shown, there are twenty-one early translations of Shakespearean sonnets in sonnet form that are absent from the relevant bibliographies. If we add them to the ones that had already been listed, the sum total now yields forty-six different Spanish renderings in the sonnet form published up to the early 1920s, and some of them in more than one version.(15) They were written by poets or translators of poetry, many of them Latin Americans, some of whom were residing in Spain. As sonnets in Spanish, few would deny that they are quite accomplished, and can be read as sonnets in their own right. One may even dare to say that, as poetry, some of them have arguably not been bettered by the later Spanish translations in the sonnet mould. In this context, one should underline the contribution of the Latin Americans, which was considerable, and not only because of their number. Already at the end of the 19th century, the Colombian Miguel Antonio Caro criticized the lack of interest in verse translation in Spain, held the opinion that poetic beauty was lost in prose translation and expressed his conviction that extreme fidelity implies infidelity in the extreme. He put his theory into practice by translating Virgil in verse, as well as selected poems by Shakespeare and other poets.(16) Caro shared with many other Latin American poets/translators an interest in the musicality of poetry which is often responsible for more poetic and melodic translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets than those written by Spanish translators.

Following those who study poetic translation in terms of purely linguistic fidelity, we may be inclined to agree that, as translations, a number of these early verse renderings are quite free or less faithful than some of the more recent ones. Micaela Muñoz, for one, calls them "traducciones perturbadoras" (disturbing translations).(17) It is not the purpose of this article to argue about the pros and cons of translating poetry, let alone about the right method of assessing verse translation. Like all renderings of Shakespearen sonnets in sonnet form, these early verse translations confirm the fact that translating poetry as poetry is a special activity that goes over and beyond the translator’s linguistic abilities and calls for freedom in the translating process for the sake of creativity and poetic tension. In other words, it forces the poetic translator by necessity to avoid literalness and to offer a different form of fidelity. This explains why some translators of Shakespearean sonnets are loath to use the terms "translate" and "translation" for their activity. Madariaga, for one, referred to his poetic translations as "transcreaciones,"(18) and the Chilean Tomás Gray, who translated the complete cycle of Shakespearean sonnets as sonnets, called  them  "interpretaciones" or "aproximaciones".(19) This being the case, it would seem more fruitful to discuss literary translation as a privileged field of operations for aesthetic discussion as Borges did, and to which we could now add "and for cultural discussion".  If we look upon literary translation as translated literature,we can understand that it is studied not only within Translation Studies, but as a subject of Hermeneutics, Literary History, Literary Theory, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies and Reception Studies. The present interest in the reception of Shakespeare’s work in Europe —and the whole world at large— and the recent publication of a fully documented anthology of Shakespearean sonnets in more than sixty languages offers a wide scope for comparative studies in various areas.(20) Let me refer to just a few instances from the translated sonnets under discussion.

As is well known, poetic translation has made it possible to widen the field of versification, to enrich literary traditions and to fertilize new forms in national literatures. Obviously, these early Spanish verse translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets could not do for Spanish or Hispanic literatures what Wyatt’s and Surrey’s translations and adaptations from Petrach did for the sonnet in English in the 16th century. However, and as Miguel Gallego points out, at the beginning of the 20th century poetic translation in Spain was an instrument for updating both remote and immediate traditions, and it had an important role in the critical and aesthetic shaping of avantguard movements. In this context, he brings up the case of poet Gerardo Diego, who discussed the structure of the Elizabethan sonnet, admitted the aesthetic possibilities that this form may have in Spanish and wrote and translated Elizabethan sonnets himself.(21) Gallego believes that, among the early Spanish translations of Shakespearean sonnets, those rendered as Elizabethan sonnets must have been crucial for the acceptance of the final couplet by Spanish-speaking critics and poets,(22) despite the difficulty of adapting it to the Spanish literary system.

Moreover, what in Translation Studies, especially those with a strictly linguistic approach, tends to be regarded as infidelity and even anathema, may be of interest for such areas as Comparative Literature, Reception Studies or Cultural Studies. One of the earliest verse translators of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the Colombian Rafael Pombo, otherwise a competent poet and translator, renders "nature" as "God" in sonnet 11, and in sonnet 13 he incorporates references to "God" and "the Lord" that are nowhere to be found in the original. A merely linguistic approach would not be of much help here. On the other hand, suspecting a religious and ideological intention behind these changes, a student of these versions would have to investigate the ideology of the poet-translator, his cultural and literary background, his poetry and his other translations, the circumstances that led him to translate these sonnets and even their possible influence or effects. In the process, this student might discover that Pombo is not the only literary translator bent on ideological and religious manipulation of the originals, and may wish to compare him with others in different literatures and cultures, and so come to valuable and wide-ranging conclusions.

Then we find that Martí-Miquel in sonnet 66, Pombo in 27, Caro in 43, Maristany in 18 and Madariaga in 104 change the gender of the fair youth who is supposed to be the dedicatee of the first 126 sonnets. Again, here one would have to ask if the gender was changed for reasons of rhyme, or if the translators were not aware that the dedicatee was a man, or if they applied self-censorship for fear of displaying the homoeroticism that has often been pointed out in this first group of Shakespearean sonnets. Again, a student of these versions would find out that a similar decision was also taken by other translators (see, for one, Tomás Gray’s rendering of sonnet 10), learn sooner or later that this gender-shift was first operated by John Benson in the 17th century,(23) and so investigate into the possible influence of this English edition on these and other translators of the sonnets, both into Spanish and  into other languages. And so on and so forth.

By providing evidence of these early versions of Shakespearean sonnets into Spanish, this article contributes in the first place to complementing the documentation on "Shakespeare in Spain" in general, and that of the Spanish versions of his sonnets in particular. Since these translations constitute the beginnings of Shakespeare’s poetry in Spain, and the early phases of such phenomena may in many cases have a durable effect, they have an extra importance as documents for the early reception of Shakespeare’s poetry in the country. Furthermore, and as I have attempted to show, they may encourage further studies beyond the purely linguistic, both in general and in some particular areas of research within the fields of Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature and Reception Studies, especially those devoted to Shakespeare in Europe and in the rest of the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY (in chronological order)

(1) SHAKESPEARE’S RECEPTION IN SPAIN. WORKS CITED.

Eduardo JULIÁ MARTÍNEZ, Shakespeare en España. Traducciones, imitaciones e influencia de las obras de Shakespeare en la literatura española, Madrid, Tip. de la "Rev. de Arch., Bibl. y Museos," 1918.

Ricardo RUPPERT Y UJARAVI, Shakespeare en España. Traducciones, imitaciones e influencia de las obras de Shakespeare en la literatura española, Madrid, Tip. de la "Rev. de Arch., Bibl. y Museos," 1920.

Alfonso PAR, Contribución a la bibliografía española de Shakespeare, Barcelona, Instituto del Teatro Nacional, 1930.

———, Shakespeare en la literatura española, I & II, Madrid & Barcelona, Victoriano Suárez & Biblioteca Balmes, 1935.

Ángeles SERRANO RIPOLL, Bibliografía shakespeariana en España: crítica y traducción, Alicante, Instituto de Estudios Alicantinos, 1983.

Micaela MUÑOZ CALVO, Ediciones y traducciones españolas de los sonetos de William Shakespeare: Análisis y valoración crítica, Zaragoza, Universidad de Zaragoza, 1987.

———, "Los Sonetos de Shakespeare: Traductores y traducciones españolas," Miscelánea, 8 (1987), 87-99.

———, "Ediciones y traducciones españolas de los sonetos de William Shakespeare: Análisis y valoración crítica," in Resúmenes de Tesis Doctorales, curso 1985-1986, Zaragoza, Universidad de Zaragoza, 1988.

———, "Traductores de los Sonetos de Shakespeare al castellano en el s. XIX," Fidus Interpres. Actas de las Primeras Jornadas Nacionales de Historia de la Traducción, vol. II, ed. Julio-César Santoyo et al., León, Universidad de León, 1989, p. 115-119.

Miguel GALLEGO ROCA, Poesía importada: traducción poética y renovación literaria en España (1909-1936), Almería, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad, 1996.

Shakespeare's Sonnets For the First Time Globally Reprinted. A Quartercentenary Anthology 1609-2009, eds. Manfred Pfister and Jürgen Gutsch, Dozwil TG Schweiz, Edition SIGNAThUR, 2009, pp. 83-85, 99-104, 267-268, and 645-655.

(2)  EARLY VERSE TRANSLATIONS CITED, INCLUDING SONNET NUMBERS.

Matías de VELASCO Y ROJAS, Sonetos, Madrid, Montoya, 1889, p. 101.
[sonnet 149]

M[iguel]. A[ntonio]. CARO, Sonetos de aquí y allí. Traducciones y refundiciones, Curazao, Bethencourt, 1891, pp. 12-17. 
[sonnets 29 ("Retractación"), 43 ("Día y noche"),  48 ("Joyas del corazón"),  116 ("Amor verdadero")]
Reprinted in La España moderna   44, Agosto, año IV, 1892, 185 [sonnet 43];  48, Diciembre,  año IV, 1892, 26 [sonnet 116];  49, Enero, año V, 1893, 140 [sonnet 29];  58, Octubre, año V, 1893, 48 [sonnet 48].

Jaime MARTÍ-MIQUEL, El ramo de pensamientos. Poesías de ilustres poetas extranjeros puestas en rima castellana, Madrid, Teodoro y Alonso, 1895, pp. 145-146.
[sonnet 66]

———, Flores de luz: Poesías de autores extranjeros puestas en rima castellana, Valencia, Pascual Aguilar, 1896?, pp. 65, 123, 155 and 195.
[sonnets 24, 75, 87, 153]

José de ARMAS, "Varios sonetos de William Shakespeare," Cuba contemporánea, IX, 1915, 72-77.
[sonnets 18, 25, 29, 37, 66, 71, 100, 121, 138, 153]

Julio ARCEVAL [Salvador de MADARIAGA], "Tres sonetos de Shakespeare," España, 18 mayo 1916, 15.
[sonnets 31, 90, 104]
Reprinted in Salvador de MADARIAGA, Manojo de poesías inglesas, Cardiff, William Lewis, 1919, pp. 3-7.

Rafael POMBO, Traducciones poéticas, Bogotá, Imprenta Nacional, 1917, PP. 8-12.
[sonnets 2, 11, 13, 27 ("Las noches de Shakespeare"), 73 ("Amor de moribundo"), 95, 147]

Fernando MARISTANY, Las cien mejores poesías (líricas) de la lengua inglesa, Valencia, Cervantes, 1918, pp. 2-12.
[sonnets 17, 18, 30, 33, 60, 66, 71, 73, 74, 106 and 116]

———, Florilegio. Las mejores poesías líricas griegas, latinas, italianas, portuguesas, francesas, inglesas y alemanas, Barcelona, Cervantes, 1920, pp. 487-493.
[same sonnets as in 1918 anthology, plus 27 and 50]

José Pablo RIVAS, Antología de poetas extranjeros antiguos y contemporáneos, Madrid, Hernando, 1920, pp. 50-56.
[sonnets 1, 2, 23, ZÉNDEGUI, Sones de la lira inglesa, London, Oxford University Press, 1920, p. 77.
[sonnet 146]

Miguel SÁNCHEZ PESQUERA (comp.), Antología de líricos ingleses y angloamericanos, vol. 5, Madrid, Hernando, 1922, pp. 263-284.
[sonnets  2 (Pombo), 7 (Belmonte), 11 and 13 (Pombo), 24 (Martí Miquel), 27 (Pombo), 27 (Belmonte), 29 (Caro), 31 (Belmonte), 37 (Armas), 43 and 48 (Caro), 50 (Belmonte), 71 (Armas), 73 (Pombo), 75 and 87 (Martí Miquel), 90 (Belmonte), 95 (Pombo), 104 (Belmonte Müller), 106 (Maristany),  111 (Macpherson), 116 (Caro), 121 (Armas), 127 (Eulate), 138 (Armas ), 142 and 143 (Eulate),  147 (Pombo), 149 (Matías de Velasco), 152 (Eulate) and 153 (Jaime Martí Miquel).  Sonnets 66 ("Desaliento") and 146 ("Inmortalidad") by Pérez Bonalde are in free verse]

Shakespeare. Las mejores poesías (líricas) de los mejores poetas IV (Barcelona: Cervantes, 1922?), pp. 11-38.
[sonnets 1 and 2 (Rivas), 17 and 18 (Maristany), 23 and 25 (Rivas), 27 (Maristany), 29 (Rivas), 30 (Maristany), 32 (Eulate), 33, 50, 60, 66 and 71 (Maristany), 72 (Rivas), 73 and 74 (Maristany), 103 (Rivas), 106 and 116 (Maristany), 121 (Rivas), 127, 142 and 143 (Eulate), 146 (Zéndegui), 149 (Rivas), 152 (Eulate)]

J[uan]. A[ntonio]. PÉREZ BONALDE, Poesías y Traducciones (Recopilación), Caracas, Ediciones del Ministerio de Educación Nacional, 1947, pp. 216-218.
[sonnets 66, 116 and 146, all in free verse]

 

NOTES

(1) This paper is part of Research Project FFI2008-01969/FILO, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
(2) The Argentinian Mariano de Vedia y Mitre began translating Shakespearean sonnets in rhymed alexandrines in 1927,  which appeared in the Argentinian press and in literary journals up to 1947. Then Vedia produced a second version of the complete sequence in rhymed hendecasyllables, which was published in a single volume (Los sonetos de Shakespeare, Buenos Aires, Kraft, 1954). In Spain, Angelina Damians’ translation had been preceded by Carme Montoriol’s Catalan rendering of the whole cycle in rhymed Catalan decasyllables (Els sonnets de Shakespeare, Barcelona, Verdaguer, 1928).
(3) See Werner von Koppelfels, "’dressing old words new’: William Shakespeare’s Sonnets into German," in William Shakespeare’s Sonnets for the First Time Globally Reprinted. A Quartercentenary Anthology, eds. Manfred Pfister and Jürgen Gutsch, Dozwil TG Schweiz, Edition SIGNAThUR, 2009, pp. 265-80.
(4) For full bibliographical details see Bibliography (2).  
(5) Caro even translated as a sonnet a passage from Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona (II.vii.24-38), written originally in blank verse, which he entitled "Amor de mujer," and added to the other four.
(6) His "Romance de ciego" (España, V, 199, 30 enero 1919, 11) was signed by "Salvador de Madariaga (Julio Arceval)".
(7) Ana Margarita Silva, Carmela Eulate Sanjurjo, San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1966, p. 69. This biographer also mentions (p. 213) an Antología de poetas occidentales, trans. Carmela Eulate et al., Barcelona, Cervantes, 1933-1935-1938. However, this anthology does not seem to have ever been published.
(8) See Antonio F. Grilo, "El Excmo. Sr. D. Matías de Velasco y Rojas, Marqués de Dos Hermanas," La ilustración española y americana, XXIX (8 agosto 1874), 454-455.
(9) The monumental New Variorum edition of the Sonnets, 2 vols., ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, Philadelphia & London, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1944, devotes a mere twenty-two lines to the Sonnets in Spain (vol. 2, appendix III, pp. 396-397) —including those translated in Catalan and in Latin America—, and also omits this important anthology.
(10) J.A. Pérez Bonalde, Poesías y Traducciones (Recopilación), Caracas, Ediciones del Ministerio de Educación Nacional, 1947.
(11) Rafael Pombo, Traducciones poéticas, Bogotá, Imprenta Nacional, 1917.
(12) Guillermo Belmonte y Müller, Espuma y cieno. Poesías de 1879 a 1886, ed. Vicente Orti y Belmonte, Córdoba, Diputación Provincial, 1973, p. 23.
(13) The first page proper contains a sort of dedication and the following note: "Madrid y Febrero del 96".  
(14) Miguel Gallego Roca, Poesía importada: traducción poética y renovación literaria en España (1909-1936), Almería, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad, 1996, pp. 140-142.
(15) Most of them are brought together in Shakespeare, Sonetos escogidos. Las primeras versiones castellanas, ed. Ángel-Luis Pujante, Molina, Nausícaä, 2009.
(16) See Micaela Muñoz Calvo, "Traductores de los Sonetos de Shakespeare al castellano en el s. XIX," Fidus Interpres. Actas de las Primeras Jornadas Nacionales de Historia de la Traducción, vol. II, ed. Julio-César Santoyo et al., León, Universidad de León, 1989, p. 117.
(17) Micaela Muñoz Calvo, "Ediciones y traducciones españolas de los sonetos de William Shakespeare: Análisis y valoración crítica," in Resúmenes de Tesis Doctorales, curso 1985-1986, Zaragoza, Universidad de Zaragoza, 1988, p. 315.
(18) Salvador de Madariaga, Manojo de poesías inglesas puestas en verso castellano, Cardiff, William Lewis Ltd., 1919, p. ix.
(19) Sonetos de amor de Shakespeare, trans. Tomás Gray, Santiago de Chile, Al Margen Editores, p. 11.
(20) Shakespeare's Sonnets For the First Time Globally Reprinted. A Quartercentenary Anthology 1609-2009, eds. Manfred Pfister and Jürgen Gutsch, Dozwil TG (Switzerland), Edition SIGNAThUR, 2009.
(21) Gerardo Diego, Tántalo. Versiones poéticas, Madrid, Ágora, 1960, p. 47, and "La construcción del soneto shakespeariano," in Obras completas. Prosa, VI, ed. José Luis Bernal, Madrid, Alfaguara, 2000, pp. 712-716.
(22) Miguel Gallego Roca,  op. cit., p. 118.
(23) Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent., 1640. See, however, Margreta de Grazia, "The Scandal of Shakespeare’s Sonnets," Shakespeare Survey, 46 (1994), 35-49.

 

EDITORS' NOTE

See the first translations published between 1889 and 1896.