My excellency : comedy in three acts / Luis Rechani Agrait ; translated from the Spanish by William Carlos Williams ; edited and with an introduction by Jonathan Cohen ; foreword by Julio Marzán ; afterword by José Luis Ramos Escobar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rechani Agrait, Luis, Author.

Contributor:

Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963, translator.

Cohen, Jonathan, 1949 May 4- editor, writer of introduction.

Marzán, Julio, 1946- writer of foreword.

Ramos Escobar, José Luis, writer of afterword.

Standardized Title:

Mi señoría. English http://id.loc.gov/resources/hubs/ae416c20-71db-00c4-adf0-ca866309ba75

Language:

English

Spanish

Genre:

Comedy plays.

Drama.

Physical Description:

xviii, 126 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : Swan Isle Press, [2025]

Summary:

"William Carlos Williams's "lost" translation of Luis Rechani Agrait's masterpiece. William Carlos Williams's passion for his matrilineal Puerto Rican roots led him to visit Puerto Rico for the first time in 1941. There at a writers' conference, he befriended the playwright Luis Rechani Agrait, who gave him his play Mi señoría, staged to acclaim the previous year. My Excellency, as Williams calls the play in his translation, is a political farce set in an "imaginary country" that resembles Puerto Rico during the Great Depression, with its high unemployment and labor unrest. The play focuses on the plight of an idealistic but naive man, Buenaventura Padilla, in a completely corrupt political system. Through an unscrupulous election, he becomes the nation's leader. The play is successful as a satire largely because of Buenaventura's hilarious language-recreated by Williams-with its pompous style combined with stunning malapropisms and clownish errors in history and grammar. The play's very title is a laughable malapropism. My Excellency shows the corrupting power of success and the tragic flaw of materialism. Driving the comedy in Williams's translation is his firm command of the play's dialogue interwoven with popular idioms in which the charm of pure nonsense abounds. This edition is Luis Rechani Agrait's debut as a playwright in English"-- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Other Format:

Online version Rechani Agrait, Luis My excellency

ISBN:

9781961056114

1961056119

OCLC:

1534574209