The Arabian Nights is the most popular English title for the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales called أَلْف لَيْلَة وَلَيْلَة‎‎ in Arabic (pronounced "Alf layla wa-layla", and meaning "One Thousand and One Nights"), compiled during the Islamic Golden Age.

The original stories

This title derives from the first English-language edition (1706), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment, in turn based on the first European version (1704–1717) by Antoine Galland, called Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français ("Thousand and one nights, Arab stories translated into French"), and also containing additional material such as the popular stories of "Aladdin's Lamp", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor".

See further the entry in Wikipedia on One Thousand and One Nights[1].

Adaptations and translations

The stories from The Arabian Nights have been the source of many plays, dances, pantomimes, films and TV dramas over the years. What follows below is a list of titles for those that have made their way to South African stages and the local media. Where the entry is not discussed below, click on the appropriate title to go to the particular entry for more detail.

Stage versions of the stories include:

The Arabian Nights by Hal Collier Edwards and F.H. Dudley (This was apparently a comedy , based on a German tragedy called Harun Alraschid by an unidentified author.)

Arabian Nights by Sydney Grundy

Performance history in South Africa

1888: The version by Hal Collier Edwards and F.H. Dudley performed in the Exhibition Theatre, Cape Town, by Hirshfield's Theatre Company as part of a repertoire that also included Sweet Lavender (Pinero), and In His Power (Quinton). The company included the actors J.A. Rosier, Albert Lucas and Joseph Ashman.

1890: The Grundy version presented by Emma Chambers and Company at the Theatre Royal, Johannesburg in September.

1892: The Arabian Nights (version unknown) presented by the Edgar Perkins Company (September) at the Theatre Royal, Johannesburg.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights

D.C. Boonzaier. 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1923. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp. 387.

Greyvenstein, Walter 1988. The history and development of children's theatre in English in South Africa. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Johannesburg: Rand Afrikaans University.

Go to ESAT Bibliography