Kanoko Okamoto (1889-1939) seems to be influenced by nobody and is a very unique woman-writer in modern Japanese literature. However, Shakespeare casts a shadow on this most original, self-concentrated novelist. One example of this is her short story called Natsu-no-yo-no-yume (1937).

　She is said to have been motivated to write this story by seeing a Shakespearian picture, A Midsummer-Night’s Dream. But what she produced is seemingly utterly different from the Shakespearian play. However when we compare these two works closely, we can discern their similarity as well as their difference. In short, she borrowed the background, the framework, and the romantic atmosphere from the Shakespearian play, but as for the characters and the theme of love, there she introduced herself.

　In the short story, Saiko plies between her brother’s home and her fiancé’s. One night, she meets her brother’s friend, Makise, who is the counterpart of Oberon, and soon comes to talk with him as often as possible in his large and pretty garden. Here, the garden can be compared to the forest on the outskirts of Athens. On the night before Saiko’s marriage, Makise tells her about his philosophy of love, saying that he would like the ideal situation in which a man and a woman understand each other so thoroughly as to be able to live peacefully in the world of love by just exchanging whistles like two birds on a branch, without being immersed in sexual love. He adds that this state of love can be found only in fairy-land. Saiko agrees with him and gives him, through her innocence, naivety, and her romantic way of thinking, what he needs most — that is, the inspiration and encouragement to do the great work of his life — without being his lover.

　Thus, in this short story, Kanoko Okamoto, expressed what she thought of ideal love between men and women, and what she believed to be the true role of a woman towards a man; but within Shakespearian framework. But that she had to depict this ideal state of love in a fairy world shows her grief that after her own troubled life with love, she could not yet reach the ideal state of love, in real life.

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　岡本かの子は、日本近代文学史上どの系列にも属さない特異な作家であるため、他の作家の影響、ことに外国文学の影響は全然受けていないように思われがちである。しかし、彼女の経歴を見ても明らかなように、かの子と外国文学との結びつきは意外に強く、丹念に読み比べてみると、なんらかの関連性が窺われるものがかなりある。そして、かの子の場合、外国文学とは東洋と西欧の二者の文学であり、前者は主として、インドの仏教説話、後者は、英仏独伊露北欧諸国の文学と哲学である。かの子は、このような文学を自己の栄養として、「煩悩即菩提」の大乗仏教の哲理に裏打ちされた独自の「生命」の文学を開花させた。

　従って、この論文では、西欧文学の翻案物として、シェイクスピアの『真

』に触発されて書いたという『』と、D・H・ロレンスの『狐』と関連があると思われる『狐』の二作、仏教説話からの翻案物として『阿難と呪術師の娘』および『鬼子母の愛』をとりあげて、かの子の創作心理の一端を考察してみた。

　すなわち、『

』は、たえまなく愛の歓びと苦しみに引き裂かれた歳月のあと、ようやく到達したかの子の愛の理想像を、夏の夜の妖精の姿を藉りて描き出したものであり、『狐』は、一種の哲学的、社会的視野をもつ、西欧的で清教徒的なロレンスの作品に対して、仏教的な無法、非有の思想に貫かれた非常に東洋的な愛のすがたを描いている。また、仏教説話を飜案した二作品は、『阿難と呪術師の娘』は男女の愛、『鬼子母の愛』は母子の愛を描いたものであって、両者とも煩悩と罪を媒介として悟りに入る愛の浄化過程、換言すれば弁証法的認識の変化によってより高度な新しい愛に生まれ変わる過程が描かれているということができる。(早稲田大学)

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This paper aimed to explain the transition of Hideki Noda’s style through the analysis of Hideki Noda’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1992, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Noda has been an active playwright, director, and actor from the 1980s. Previous studies have indicated that Noda changed his style when he dissolved his theatre company, Yume no Yuminsha. Hideki Noda’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was produced three months before the dissolution of the company. Noda reconstructed the Shakespearean original, altering it in two major aspects. First, Noda’s version was set in Japan. Second, Mephistopheles, the demon of Goethe’s Faust, made an appearance in the play. Mephistopheles contributed catastrophic aspects to the play, creating an episode out of the original story composed of the stolen words from the characters who had dissatisfaction in their minds. Due to the destructive power of the episode by Mephistopheles, the forest where fairies live, fell into crisis. To avoid the crisis, Soboro, originally Helena, created the new episode of reviving the forest, incorporating the catastrophic episode as a part of it. As the episodes were integrated into an inclusive story, the order of the forest was regained. The multiple episodes and their competitive relationship were the subjects of the play. Because the competitive relationship between the episodes inside the story was put in the foreground, this multi-layered structure may be called metafiction. The reason for creating this adaptation can be inferred from the fashion of occultism of the 1970s, particularly the prophecies of Nostradamus that predicted the end of the world in 1999. In this paper, I interpreted the production as an opposition to the eschatological atmosphere at the time. In examining the transition of Noda as a playwright, the metafictional structure is remarkable. During the 1980s, Noda’s works comprised bold images. In these plays, the images are not intended to be integrated at one point. On the contrary, after the dissolution of his theatre company, many of Noda’s works set clear themes, such as national borders and the Emperor. Hideki Noda’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was unique in the feature that the multiple episodes were integrated by the metafictional structure of the play and such a structure itself was set in the theme of this play. In this respect, it is possible to understand a part of Noda’s tradition trying to construct a story integrated into one point as well as the criticism of contemporaries.

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Richard Powers’ The Gold Bug Variations, like his other works, has a style unique to the author, who always connects disparate ideas to foreground hidden, global networks beyond our local perception. In this monumental third novel, however, his authorial style of connecting many variegated motifs that are usually perceived as unrelated is highlighted to such an exceptional degree that it self-reflexively seems to become a thematic motif: translation. Although some scholars have analyzed this feature from different perspectives, such as the theme of encoding, narrative ecology, and intertextuality, the novel’s repeated allusion to A Midsummer Night’s Dream has not attracted enough attention for its significance in the thematic motif of translation, which unites apparently unrelated ideas such as Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and genetics. This essay aims to analyze the novel’s allusion to the quoted dialogue between the mechanicals from the perspective of the novel’s uniting motif.
Several correspondences between The Gold Bug Variations and A Midsummer Night’s Dream indicate that Jan’s repeated allusion to Quince’s question about the representation of moonlight on stage should not only be considered in the context of the quoted dialogue but also in the context of the whole play. The problem of representation discussed by the mechanicals in the scene quoted in the novel is later picked up by Theseus, whose argument on theatrical representation shares the idea of collaboration with Jan’s theory of translation. To Jan, translation in an ideal sense is a bi-directional act performed by two defective languages in collaboration with each other to achieve meaning in the purest form. This theory of translation applies to Powers’ treatment of the disparate motifs in The Gold Bug Variations. It could be argued that the hierarchical structure Jay A. Labinger discovered in the novel is based on the principle of translation.
One representative example of Jan’s theory of translation is her own repeated allusions to Quince’s line about how to represent moonlight on stage. They are not intended simply as alluding to a specific element of the quoted dialogue; as she repetitively alludes to Quince’s question, they become adapted into the context of the novel by various degrees. First, the allusions to Quince’s question reflect the context of the original play; however, as the novel progresses, Jan begins to apply the spatial model of Quince’s question to the metaphorical and often cryptic description of her desire. This “translation” of Quince’s question, “to bring the moonlight into a chamber” into the novel’s context is finally achieved in the scene of Jan and Franklin’s reunion. The theme of translation suggested in the reunion scene hints to a reading of the metafictional twist at the very end of the novel. Examining A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a pivotal intertext will shed some light on how disparate motifs in The Gold Bug Variations are intertwined through the principle of translation to form a sense of coherent unity.

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In the Middle Ages " a fool's glass" was used as a tool for self-reflection. Shakespeare handled it skillfully in his works. In A Midsummer night's Dream, that skill is found in the way which is quite immature. Let us look at that handling of the fool's glass in some other works before we search that skill in " A Midsummer night's Dream." And Comparing the result of our discussing with it, we conclude it as follows : Shakespeare uses a fool's glass as the means which can pass into another world. In Hamlet that another world is the world of Death. And when the gap of time arises, the gate between two worlds is opened. In Macbeth wWeird Sisters come into our world from their supernatural world. They place the gate and make it open like this. "When shall we three meet again?" In Hamlet the fool's glass is Ophelia's eyes. Hamlet can enter into another world-death world-through her eyes. Hamlet can enter into another world-death world-through her eyes. His reflected figure on her eyes is his own another self. the name of Hamlet means "fool". When he gazes his own figure, he gazes his foolish self. His father's name is Hamlet. dead Yorick he speaks to was once a court fool. ophelia's pupils are a fool's glass and function as the passing gate of some supernatural existance. In " A Midsummer Night's Dream", we can observe the immature origin of those elements. Through the hole of Wall, Pyramus and Thisby meet each other. they are fools. But they are not those who appear in Shakespeare's later works. They are not educated, so they appear to be foolish in the eye of Theseus Hippolyta and us. Their foolishness is not so serious, compared with that of Hamlet. Bottom's group think themselves as great actors, so they are foolish. The audience notice them foolish, but Bottom's group don't and never try to notice it. Hamlet asks himself what he and torments himself. So the foolishness of Bottom's group is more supericial. In Macbeth, Weird Sisters enter on the stage by using a placed time, When we search A Midsummer Night's Dream, we find the same situation, but in this play, the word "when" equals "if". The definite word of time becomes more vague and fantastic. And such a fantastic and vague word "if" introduces supernatural element into the stage. And so the hole of Wall opens, as Birnam wood moves.In this way, we observe the beginning of using a fool's glass in A Mid summer Night's Dream.

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1. Weit entfernt von dem Genie
Die moderne Literaturauffassung, die großen Wert auf das Genie legt, hat dem begabtesten Dramatiker des deutschen Barock, Andreas Gryphius, den zweiten Rang zugewiesen. Es war sein Unglück, daß er als Zeitgenossen zwei unvergleichliche Genies, Shakespeare und Calderón hatte, die unsere Aufmerksamkeit umso mehr auf Gryphius' Mediokrität lenken. Aber glücklicherweise hat der Schlesier selbst Shakespeare nicht gekannt und ganz bequem in seinem Herrn Peter Squentz jenen Sommernachtstraum bearbeitet, der später vielen Künstlern wie z.B. Mendelssohn, Max Reinhardt, Woody Allen oder Botho Strauß schöpferische Anregungen gegeben hat. Wir müssen seine tapfere Unwissenheit beneiden, da das Thema _"Shakespeare-Rezeption in Deutschland“ selbst leider nicht mehr so originell scheint. Gryphius konnte, ohne vom Originalitätsgedanken gequält zu werden, der den Barockmenschen noch fremd war, anonyme paneuropäische Motive aufnehmen. Er verdankt ja dem Genie Shakespeares nichts, er ist sogar ein unschuldiges Opfer des Themas _"Shakespeare-Rezeption in der deutschen Literatur“.
2. Kein Problem (-drama)!
Gryphius fand die Handwerkerszenen, d.h. das Motiv des Scheiterns einer Aufführung schon isoliert vom Sommernachtstraum vor. Für den sehr belesenen Dramatiker, der in seinen Dramen fast immer vorhandene Texte bearbeitet und daraus typische (oder banale) Barock-Figuren oder -Themen herauskristallisiert hat, muß es leicht gewesen sein, in dem damals beliebten Squentz-Stoff jenes allzu bekannte Sein-Schein-Schema zu finden. Aber die sogenannte Absurdität des menschlichen Daseins, die im modernen Drama (z.B bei Pirandello oder bei Thomas Bernhard) oft durch diesen Stoff zum Ausdruck gebracht wird, ergreift weder Shakespearesche noch Gryphiussche Handwerker. Man kann sagen, daß es in dieser heiteren Problemlosigkeit der Handwerker der einzige gemeinsame Punkt der beiden Dramatiker liegt. Mit dem Verschwinden des Possenspiels im Feenreich muß auch _"Shakespeare our Contemporary“ von der Bühne abtreten.
3. Vom Wald zum Hof
In beiden Komödien spielt der Hof eine entscheidende Rolle: Nicht nur das Spiel im Spiel, sondern auch die Komödie selbst war für die Mitglieder des Hofes. Von diesem Standpunkt aus gesehen, die billige Satire auf die Handwerker (Meistersinger), die den guten Opitz-Schüler vom freien Genie zu unterscheiden scheint, bildet nicht mehr den Kern der komischen Momente. Denn die auf den Hof abgestimmte Komödie zielt nicht auf das Verlachen des nicht einmal verlachenswürdigen Pöbels, sondern darauf, den Zuschauern am Hofe einen _"Schauplatz“ anzubieten, wo sie über sich selbst lachen können. Dabei zeigen sie, wie groß und großmütig sie den über sie selbst gemachten Scherz erlauben. Die lächerliche Verwirrung der Liebe im Feenwald, in die die Standespersonen im Sommernachtstraum verwickelt werden, stellt einen solchen Scherz dar. Und diese Einstellung der Hofmitglieder als spielender Zuschauer läßt sich auch bei Gryphius erkennen, obwohl die unmittelbare Vorlage des Squentz (die Komödie von Daniel Schwenter) wahrscheinlich kein aristokratisches Publikum in und vor dem Spiel hat, d.h. das Gryphiussche Spielpublikum keine direkte Verbindung mit dem Shakespeareschen hat. In dem _"deutschen Sommernachtstraum“ ohne (Alp-)Traum, nämlich ohne jenes tragikomische Liebespossenspiel im Feenwald tritt aber das Motiv des Todes der Tragödie umso stärker in den Vordergrund. In der Figur des Königs, der bewußt über die Degradierung der Tragödie, über die Entlarvung des Tragödienhelden lachen kann,

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