Shakespeare’s sonnets in spanish : rescuing the early verse translations

In 1889 Matías de Velasco y Rojas, who had translated Shakespearean sonnets in prose, published what appears to be the first rendering in Spanish of a Shakespearean sonnet in sonnet form. Further verse translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets followed for over thirty years. However, the early translators into Spanish did not focus their efforts on translating the complete cycle or a majority of the sonnets. Instead, their poetic versions were published in literary journals and collections of foreign poetry in Spain and Latin America, thus complicating the task of documenting them. This article sets out to provide evidence of new early verse translations of Shakespearean sonnets into Spanish that have never been listed in the relevant bibliographies and discuss their first publication, the translators, their characteristics and importance, as well as to add some new facts to the extant information.