Ivane Machabeli

Who was Ivane Machabeli?

Prince Ivane Machabeli was a Georgian writer, journalist and public figure known for his resonant translations of Shakespeare.

He was born into an old Georgian aristocratic family Machabeli in the village of Tamarasheni near Tskhinvali. Machabeli studied in St. Petersburg, Germany, and Paris. Returning in Georgia, he was closely allied with Ilia Chavchavadze, a leader of Georgian intellectual life of that time, whom Machabeli offered his assistance in all initiatives aimed at reviving Georgian culture and opposition to the Imperial Russian rule. He served an editor in chief of the leading Georgian national magazines Iveria and Droeba. Despite his preoccupation with charities, especially orphanages, and extensive journalism, Machabeli made Shakespeare his life's work. Although, he never visited England, he produced, from 1886 to 1898, the brilliant translations of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, which to this day serve as the standard versions for the repertoire of the Rustaveli Theatre. Machabeli left his apartment in Tbilisi on June 26, 1898, and was never seen again.