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In dialogue with the social turn in translation studies, this article uncovers the work of invisible agents shaping the translation of performed drama in eighteenth-century England.Unlike other genres, performed drama was subject to a system of state censorship that shaped translation practices in ways that have not been fully accounted for by translation historiography. Using Carlo Goldoni as a case study, the article reveals the intervention of censors and actors in shaping Goldoni's translations, making visible for the first time the central role they played as 'rewriters' in English theatrical culture. In reading translation through the material conditions of eighteenth-century theatre, an argument is made for a re-evaluation of performed drama in the historiographical account of eighteenth-century translation in English.

The last two decades have seen an increasing interest from different quarters in exploring the territory that exists between translation and theatre. Examining discussions of the nature of drama and theatre — that see them as performative rather than representative entities (Worthen 2003; Schechner 2002) — this article argues for a rethinking of the interdisciplinary relations between translation and theatre in the context of wider debates over the value of interdisciplinarity in translation studies (Pym 1998; Chesterman 2010; Bassnett 2012). Drawing on the contributions to this special issue, the social dimension of translation and the performative nature of culture are brought to the fore as productive new ways of studying translation in the theatre as a performative and social as well as a linguistic practice.