莎士比亚诞辰450周年：聊聊你不知道莎翁的10件事

英语自学网

　　The relatively few facts we know about the world's greatest poet and
dramatist, William Shakespeare, have made him an enigmatic figure. Some
imaginative people have even concluded that he wasn't who he was after all.
        　　我们对威廉·莎士比亚所知甚少，以至这位世界上最伟大的诗人兼剧作家几乎成了一位神秘人物。有些颇具想象力的人甚至得出结论：莎士比亚根本不是我们所了解的那个人!
        　　But what we do know about the man and his works is intriguing enough. Snap
up these unconsidered trifles:
        　　不过，我们对莎士比亚及其作品的了解也足够精彩纷呈了。以下就是莎士比亚不为人知的方面：
        　　1. Shakespeare wasn't the only Shakespeare in the theatre.
        　　莎士比亚不只是家里唯一投身剧场的人。
        　　His brother Edmund, sixteen years his junior, became an actor in London
too, though without making much of a mark. His death at the age of twenty-seven
was followed by a funeral in St Saviour's Church, Southwark, which was an
expensive one - indicating a local relative with money. Which brings us
to...
        　　尽管并未成什么大气候，比他小16岁的弟弟埃德蒙也在伦敦做演员。埃德蒙27岁就命丧黄泉，葬礼在南华克的圣救世主教堂举行，葬礼颇有排场——说明家境还不错。由此我们可以推断……
        　　2. Shakespeare was a fat cat.
        　　莎士比亚是个阔佬。
        　　From his career in the theatre, which included acting, play-writing, and
being a "sharer" in the profits of his company, Shakespeare amassed a
comfortable fortune. By the age of 33 he was able to buy New Place, the second
largest house in Stratford-upon-Avon. Later he bought property in London as well
as Stratford.
        　　莎士比亚在剧院工作，不仅负责表演、写剧本，也参与公司利润分红，因此他积累了一笔可观的财富。到了33岁，莎士比亚就能买得起埃文河畔斯特拉特福的第二大宅“新宫”了。后来，他在伦敦和斯拉特福都置了产业。
        　　In his will he was able to bequeath to his second daughter Judith - not
even his main beneficiary - the sum of three hundred pounds. Converting
Elizabethan money is notoriously tricky, but £50,000 would about do it
today.
        　　在遗嘱中，他可以留给二女儿朱迪斯300英镑的财产，何况朱迪斯还不是最大受益人。换算伊丽莎白时代的货币并不难，这笔钱在今天应该值5万英镑吧。
        　　By contrast, his fellow playwright Thomas Dekker was in and out of debtors'
prison his whole life. At his death in 1632 his widow renounced administration
of his estate - meaning there was nothing to administer.
        　　相比之下，他的同辈剧作家托马斯·德克尔一生都为了债务而不断进出监狱。1632年托马斯去世时，他的遗孀甚至不愿接管他的宅子——说明里面也确实没什么好管的。
        　　3. Shakespeare was a co-writer.
        　　莎士比亚是联合作家。
        　　It was common for playwrights of Shakespeare's time to collaborate.
Sometimes three or four writers would have a hand in a single play. While
Shakespeare seems to have liked working alone, there are passages aplenty in the
plays that were written by someone else.
        　　在莎士比亚时代，联合写剧本很常见。有时一部剧本会是三四个作家共同创作的。虽然莎士比亚貌似喜欢独自创作，但有些剧本中的有很多篇章是其他人写的。
        　　He worked with Thomas Middleton on Timon of Athens, and with John Fletcher
on Henry VIII. As for some of the most famous parts of Macbeth - the witchy bits
- it's likely they were Middleton's work too, bolted on to the play at a later
date.
        　　他和托马斯·米德尔顿共同创作了《雅典的泰门》，和约翰·弗莱彻一起写了《亨利八世》;而且《麦克白》中一些非常有名的片段——诡异的部分，很可能也出自米德尔顿之手，是后来嫁接到戏剧中的。
            
            

enone

        　　4. You speak Shakespeare.
        　　你讲的都是“莎士比亚词”。
        　　In spite of his reputation among literature-averse students for flowery
language, Shakespeare directly created a great deal of the English we use today.
Not only is he recorded as the first user of more words than any other writer,
he also made words up: we owe him eyeball, bloodstained, radiance, assassination
and lackluster, to name but a few.
        　　尽管学文学的学生不喜欢其中的华丽辞藻，但实际上正是莎士比亚创造了大量我们今天使用的英语词汇。他不仅是史上用词最广泛的作家，还自创了很多词语，比如“眼球”、“血迹斑斑”、“光芒”、“暗杀”和“乏善可陈”等等。
        　　And his phrases are so embedded in the language, chances are you've used
some of them in the last week or so: if for example you've been in a pickle,
seen better days, or caught a cold, or been a laughing stock, or had to break
the ice, or said good riddance...
        　　莎士比亚的词语在英语中相当普遍，说不定上周你就用过。比如你“遇到麻烦”、“交到好运”、“染上流感”、“成了笑柄”、不得不“打破坚冰”或“甩掉包袱”等等。
        　　5. Shakespeare's sonnets are not autobiographical.
        　　莎士比亚的十四行诗不是自传式。
        　　OK, we don't know that for sure. But what we do know is that the writing of
sonnet sequences was very fashionable in his day. Spenser, Sidney and many
others turned them out. Sonnets were a stylised way of demonstrating your
technical skill. You didn't have to be actually panting with unrequited love to
write them.
        　　好吧，这点我们也不确定。但是可以肯定的是，十四行诗的序列方式在那个时代相当盛行。斯宾塞、西德尼等人都曾用过。十四行诗在当时是展示个人技巧的流行方法。写诗也不一定真得经历苦苦暗恋。
        　　The beautiful young man and the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets may have
originals, at some remove. More likely is that when Shakespeare wrote sonnets
the essential dramatist in him kicked in, creating characters and drama.
        　　莎士比亚十四行诗中的俊朗青年和“黑女郎”或许有原型，不过进行了删减。更有可能的是，莎士比亚在创作十四行诗时发挥了剧作家的潜质，编造了其中的人物和情节。
        　　6. Shakespeare's daughter was illiterate.
        　　莎士比亚的女儿是文盲。
        　　Of William and Anne Shakespeare's three children, two daughters survived:
Susannah and Judith. While Susannah seems to have been able to sign her name,
Judith could only make her mark. But in this period, literacy was a skill,
useful in certain trades and professions, mainly male. Shakespeare was a man of
his time, and his time didn't value literacy in women.
        　　威廉·莎士比亚和安娜·莎士比亚共有3个子女，活下来的有2个：苏珊娜和朱迪斯。苏珊娜好像会写自己的名字，但朱迪斯却不识字。在那个时代，识字主要是男人在从事某些贸易和行业时所掌握的技能。莎士比亚是生在那个时代的杰出人物，但那个时代并不主张女性识字。
        　　7. Shakespeare didn't care about posterity.
        　　莎士比亚不关心作品的延续传承。
        　　At least, as far as his plays went. He took care to supervise the printing
of his two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, because
these were prestige projects for influential patrons. But it was not until seven
years after his death that his theatrical associates put together the First
Folio edition of his plays. I
        　　至少对戏剧作品如此。他确实用心监管了《维纳斯与阿都尼》和《鲁克瑞丝遭强暴记》这两部叙事诗的印刷工作，但那是因为它们是为权贵资助人而准备的浩大作品。直到去世7年后，他的剧院同僚才将他的戏剧作品编成第一版开本。
        　　n his lifetime, Shakespeare doesn't seem to have cared whether his plays
survived or not. Partly this may reflect the low esteem in which plays were held
as literature. When Ben Jonson printed his plays and called them his Works,
people laughed: how could you call mere plays Works?
        　　在他一生中，莎士比亚似乎并不关心自己的戏剧是否得到传承延续。这一方面可能是因为当时戏剧在文学界并不被看重。当英国诗人本·琼森把莎士比亚的戏剧印刷出来并称之为“作品”时，人们笑了：微不足道的戏剧怎能称得上“作品”呢?
            
            

enfour

        　　8. Shakespeare has no descendants.
        　　莎士比亚没有后裔。
        　　His only son, Hamnet, died at the age of 11. His daughter Susanna had no
children and all his daughter Judith's children died young. None of his three
brothers married. The Shakespeare line effectively ran out within twenty-five
years of the poet's death.
        　　他唯一的儿子哈姆雷特11岁就夭折了。女儿苏珊娜没有子嗣，而二女儿朱迪斯的孩子也全都夭折而亡。他自己的3个兄弟都不曾结婚。整个莎士比亚家族在他死后25年就完全湮灭了。
        　　9. For two hundred years, the theatre made a dog's breakfast of
Shakespeare.
        　　200年来，剧院将莎士比亚作品演得面目全非。
        　　Once the theatres reopened after the Commonwealth, they began a great
tradition of doing whatever the hell they liked with Shakespeare's plays. They
chopped them up and adapted them into musicals and pantomimes. Most notoriously,
they got rid of the whole 'tragic' thing in the tragedies by giving them happy
endings. Reverence for 'The Bard' had to wait until the nineteenth century.
        　　剧院在英联邦重新营业后，便开始肆无忌惮乱演莎士比亚的戏剧。他们删减片段，改编成音乐剧和哑剧;更可怕的是，他们删掉了悲剧中的“悲剧”情节，续上了欢乐大结局。这位“吟游诗人”直到19世纪才得到正式敬重。
        　　10. Shakespeare has had some heavyweight haters.
        　　莎士比亚有重量级的仇敌。
        　　Not everyone has concurred in Shakespeare's greatness as a writer. Voltaire
thought Hamlet the work of a 'drunken savage': George III confided: 'Was there
ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so!'
        　　不是所有人都认同莎士比亚是伟大的作家。伏尔泰认为《哈姆雷特》是“醉醺醺粗人”的作品。乔治三世曾说：“莎士比亚哪里了不起了?说谁都不能说他!”
        　　And George Bernard Shaw, in a review of Cymbeline, got quite carried away
in his detestation of the poet: 'It would positively be a relief to me to dig
him up and throw stones at him.' That was in a newspaper. Imagine if Shakespeare
had been on Twitter.
        　　乔治·萧伯纳在评价《辛白林》时，毫无遮掩地表达了对作者的厌恶：“要是能对他掘尸抛石，我估计会大为畅快。”
而这句话可是发表在报纸上的。想想莎士比亚要是玩推特会说什么吧!