ecent stage versions of Tirso de Molina’s Don Gil de las calzas verdes have departed from traditional cape-and-sword approaches and experimented, more or less explicitly, with psychological traits and gender ambiguities. Interestingly, these departures from canonical staging seem to occur more frequently among productions in English, as if translations served the liberating purpose of releasing tensions between texts and their original contexts, hence facilitating the process of adaptation. The balance between translation and adaptation is reflected in the way in which we prioritize theater over drama, i.e., in how the emphasis on performance over the written words is balanced. Since the means of translation are not intrinsic to the text but come from external sources , it is imperative to assess the product’s function before deciding on the methodological approach to its rendition. Drama implies that the text is to be read like a novel or a poem; therefore the translation should…
