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Famously, in The Undiscovered Country has this line by Chancellor Gorkon, in response to Spock quoting Hamlet:

You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.

In fiction, there's a 'definite' answer here depending on how trustworthy you think the Klingons are...

But knowing that Shakespeare's Hamlet is inspired by the legend of Amleth of scandinavian origin, first recorded in the 12th century (in Chronicon Lethrense) and later by Saxo Grammaticus in the 13th century made me wonder if David Warner, who was a member of the Royal Shakespeare company was aware of this, and read either Chronicon Lethrense, or Saxo Grammaticus' version in Gesta Danorum?

So 'original klingon' is actually 'original danish', if not where did the line come from - Warner himself or someone else?

AncientSwordRage
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There's no evidence I've found that the line comes from Warner himself, from wikipedia:

Plummer said that while he greatly enjoyed the part of Chang, he regretted that David Warner (Chancellor Gorkon) got what Plummer considered to be the best line in the film, "You've not experienced Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon". Academics have suggested several interpretations of this line, some seeing it as a joke, others as something more serious.
— "How Christopher Plummer Became One of the Best Villains in Star Trek Movie History"
— Kazimierczak, Karolina (2010). "Adapting Shakespeare for "Star Trek" and "Star Trek" for Shakespeare: "The Klingon Hamlet" and the Spaces of Translation"

In fact, from the The Klingon Hamlet wikipedia page there's this very convincing quote

The film's director Nicholas Meyer said the idea for having the Klingons claim Shakespeare as their own was based on Nazi Germany's attempt to claim William Shakespeare as German before World War II. A similar scene appears in the wartime British film "Pimpernel" Smith (1941) in which a German general quotes Shakespeare, saying “'To be or not to be', as our great German poet said." The idea had also already been used by Vladimir Nabokov in his novel Pnin, the eponymous hero of which taught his American college class that Shakespeare was much more moving "in the original Russian."

Emphasis mine.

So it looks less like the actor ad-libbed the line, and more that Meyer was playing off of real-world examples of people claiming Shakespeare's work as coming from their own country.

The film the line comes from, was already inspired by real-world politics, as much of early Trek was:

Nimoy visited Meyer's house and suggested, "[What if] the wall comes down in outer space? You know, the Klingons have always been our stand-ins for the Russians ...".
— Nicholas Meyer: Gorkon is Gorbachev".

So this seems more plausible an inspiration for the line.

AncientSwordRage
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  • Meyer wrote the script, so this has to be the answer. But the Nazi reference seems oddly gratuitous, given that already Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, 2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801) had deemed the German Shakespeare translation by Schlegel and Tieck superior to the original. – Eike Pierstorff Sep 15 '23 at 10:58
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    The USSR had form more generally for claiming to have invented stuff, like Baseball. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/20/world/in-baseball-the-russians-steal-all-the-bases.html#:~:text=Shachin%2C%20citing%20cultural%20historians%2C%20insists,arrival%20of%20Dodgers%20and%20Giants. – Paul Johnson Sep 15 '23 at 11:10
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    @PaulJohnson: Someone from ussr told me that the lightbulb was called something like The Light of Lenin (who in fairness did electrify rural russia but sure did not invent the electric light). The soviets may have done some good stuff for Russia and in some places Lenin and even Stalin are still revered. – releseabe Sep 15 '23 at 11:38
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    There's a James Thurber piece where someone is arguing that "jamais plus" just works better than "nevermore" - the context being French translations of Poe. The next line is, "It loses something in the original." – user888379 Sep 15 '23 at 12:09
  • https://www.redkalinka.com/Russian-Blog/141/_5-Russian-inventions-that-you-didnt-know-exist/ – Paul Johnson Sep 15 '23 at 14:04
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    Wasn't it a recurring joke in TOS that Chekov would occasionally claim that the Russians had invented whatever-topic-was-under-discussion? – Sam Azon Sep 15 '23 at 15:13
  • @SamAzon That was exactly what came to my mind when I first saw that movie. – Michael Richardson Sep 15 '23 at 19:37
  • I have a group of friends from Moscow who did contract work here in the US. One of them claimed in earnest that India Pale Ale (IPA) was created in Russia! – BradV Sep 15 '23 at 20:38
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    @BradV That doesn't sound all that ridiculous - it's called "India" only because British brewers marketed it for export to India, which tells nothing of where and how it was invented before it got that name, let alone how it developed into today's craft beers. (I'm not saying it was invented in Russia, just that it's not a particularly outlandish claim.) – IMSoP Sep 16 '23 at 11:56