的“在与不在”

这一天，1616年4月23日，《哈姆莱特》、《麦克白》和《罗密欧与朱丽叶》的创造者挥别大千世界，他馈赠人间的悲剧、喜剧、十四行诗和韵文，流传整整四百年。

“To be or not to be,” said Hamlet, prince of Denmark, “that is the question.” Yesterday, Hamlet’s creator was; today, he is not. Of that there is no question.

“存在还是不存在，”丹麦王子哈姆莱特说，“这是个问题。”昨天，哈姆莱特的创造者是否存在还是个问题，今天，他不是了，这不是问题。

Poet, playwright, actor and theatrical-company shareholder, William Shakespeare died today, April 23, 1616, at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was, more or less, 52. His passing was confirmed by his daughter Judith.

威廉·、剧作家、演员、剧场股东——今天，1616年4月23日，在家乡埃文河畔的斯特拉特福逝世，享年大概其五十二岁。女儿伊迪斯确认了他去世的消息。

Over the course of three decades, Mr. Shakespeare rose from working-class obscurity in Warwickshire to become one of England’s foremost playwrights and poets — acclaimed for his penetrating insights into the human character, his eloquent, flexible and infinitely expressive verse; and his readiness to burst the bounds of the English language (drawing on a vocabulary of more than 25,000 words).

三十载历练，沃里克郡工人阶级家庭的无名小辈一跃成为英格兰顶尖剧作家和诗人，他的名气建立在对人物的深刻洞察，晓畅灵动、极富抒情色彩的韵文以及突破英语界限的意愿（他创造了25000词汇）。

Thanes, Romans, Countrymen

Among the deeply flawed characters who have strutted and fretted their hour on Mr. Shakespeare’s stage, perhaps the foremost is Hamlet, who must decide whether or not to kill the uncle who murdered his father and married his mother. It takes him as much as five hours to decide, depending on the performance.

、忧心忡忡的那些缺陷难掩的人物中，哈姆莱特或许堪居首位：他必须做出抉择，是否该杀掉谋杀自己父亲、迎娶母亲的叔叔。这让他用长达五个小时时间做出决定——视演出时间长短而定。

Had Hamlet never existed, playgoers would still speak of Macbeth, an upwardly mobile and downwardly moral Scottish thane who, with the steady prodding of his wife, who may be mad, lets nothing stand between him and the throne and is defeated only by a combination of a C-section baby and traveling trees.

就算没有哈姆莱特，观众还会把麦克白挂在嘴边，这位政途攀援却道德堕落的苏格兰领主，在可能有点疯癫的妻子的不断怂恿下，扫除通往王位的一切障碍，到头来却被一个剖腹产婴儿和移动的树打败。

译者注：女巫给弑君篡位的麦克白三个警示，提防麦克杜夫；任何被女人赋予生命的人都不能伤害麦克白；只有勃南森林向他移动时，他才会落败。结果从英国请来救兵的麦克杜夫不是自然生产而是剖腹产，在决战中，英军以森林中的树枝为掩护前进，最终打败了麦克白。

Other immortal creations: Julius Caesar, a great Roman leader who gets a whole play named after him but dies in Act III; Romeo and Juliet, two young Veronians from warring families who fall in love the only way teenagers can — for keeps; King Lear, a senescent king who disinherits the one daughter who actually likes him; Othello, a brave Moorish soldier who becomes, after a few well-timed prods and a suspicious handkerchief, the kind of fellow who requires a restraining order.

还有更多不朽的人物：伟大的罗马领袖裘里斯·凯撒，名冠剧本却在第三幕中死亡；来自维罗纳世仇家庭的两个年轻人罗密欧与朱丽叶坠入情网、义无反顾；年迈体衰的李尔王剥夺了最爱自己的一个女儿的继承权；勇敢的摩尔士兵奥赛罗，因时间巧合的多次挑唆和一方勾起疑心的手帕，变成一个需要限制令管理的家伙。

译者注：《奥赛罗》中，手帕是主人公送给妻子的定情物，最后令他产生了诸多误会。

Yet, as indelible as Mr. Shakespeare’s tragic creations are, his comedies have proved every bit as enduring. In “The Taming of the Shrew,” a husband uses a variety of psychological torture devices to make his strong-minded wife compliant.

，经久不衰。在《驯悍记》中，一个丈夫用各种心理折磨手段让驯服他意志坚定的妻子。

In “Much Ado About Nothing,” Benedick, a confirmed bachelor, meets Beatrice, a confirmed bachelorette, and together they create the world’s first rom-com. 

在《无事生非》中，坚定的单身汉培尼狄克和坚定的独身女贝特丽丝一起创造了世界上第一部浪漫喜剧。

In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” scheming fairies make sport with moonstruck lovers, and a queen becomes enamored of an ass, which is not the first time that ever happened.

在《仲夏夜之梦》中，腹黑仙女拿痴心男女开涮，让女王恋上了一头驴，这可不是头一遭。

Mr. Shakespeare devoted nearly a quarter of his dramaturgical output to chronicling his native country’s brawling, bloody past. Though not factual in the most scrupulous sense, his history plays bring to roaring life the full panoply of England’s dynasts and claimants and insurgents, all doing whatever it takes to get or keep a crown.

，有关祖国殴斗、血腥的过去。尽管在最较真的意义上故事并非全合事实，他的历史剧让英格兰那些林林总总的坐江山、打江山和覆江山的人——他们为了夺取或保住王位无所不为——栩栩如生。

Who could forget the deposed Richard II? (“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground/And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.”) Who could forget the malevolent Richard III? (“Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”) Who could forget that great rabble-rouser, Henry V? (“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;/Or close the wall up with our English dead!”) Who could forget Henry VI? Well, we have forgotten him, just a little. Those were early plays.

谁忘得了被罢黜的理查二世？（“看在上帝的份上，让我们坐在地上，讲述君王死去的忧伤故事。”）谁忘得了恶毒的理查三世？（“现在，约克之子(注：与太阳同音)把讨厌的冬天变成了灿烂的夏日。”）谁忘得了大煽动家亨利五世？（“再次扑向巷道吧，亲爱的朋友，再来一次，用英国人的尸体填满它。”）谁忘得了亨利六世呢？好吧，我们有点想不起来他了，那是早期的剧作。

Imaginative breadth, rapier wit, profound psychological depth, the commercial instincts of a bear-baiter — all these qualities descended upon a glover’s son.

充满想象，语带机锋，内心深邃，加上一个虐熊者的商业本能，这些特质赋予一个手套作坊主的儿子。

Glover’s Son and Plot Thief

William Shakespeare was born on April 23rd-ish, 1564. His mother was Mary Arden. His father was John Shakespeare, an aspirational sort who worked his way up the social ladder from glovering to constabling, burgessing, chamberlaining and, finally, high bailiffing.

，母亲是玛丽·亚登，父亲约翰，从手套商一路攀爬，当了治安官、市政官、御前大臣，最后成为地方长官。

Sadly, Shakespeare père was prosecuted four times for wool trading and usury, which may explain why he retired from public life when Will was just 12.

不幸的是，，这也是为何他在小威廉12岁时就退出政坛。

Mr. Shakespeare almost certainly received a fine classical education at Stratford’s local grammar school and may have, at some point, acquired French and Italian. 

，可能还会法语和意大利语。

His grasp of both geography and history was finite. No one seems to have informed him that Milan and Verona are not seaports. With all due respect to “Julius Caesar,” the ancient Romans didn’t own clocks, and “Antony and Cleopatra,” the ancient Egyptians, didn’t play billiards. Cato was born roughly three centuries later than “Coriolanus” suggests. Et cetera.

他对地理和历史的知识有限，貌似没人教会他米兰和维罗纳并非海港。《裘里斯凯撒》写的很好，可古罗马人没有钟表；《安东尼和克里奥帕特拉》中的古埃及人也不打桌球。卡图比剧中的“科里奥兰纳斯”晚生约三个世纪，诸如此类。

At the age of 18, Mr. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who gets a nod in one of his later sonnets (“‘I hate’ from hate away she threw/And saved my life, saying ‘not you’”) but about whom precious little is known except that she was eight years older.

18岁时，·海瑟薇，后来的十四行诗中提到了，但除了知道她比他大八岁，其他信息一概不得而知。

Nor is anyone entirely sure what Mr. Shakespeare was doing from 1585 to 1592, other than, at some point, making his way to London, where his vaulting ambition manifested itself through acting in and writing plays.

，除了知道他设法漂到伦敦，通过演戏和写剧本实现了野心。

By 1592, he was enough of a colossus in the theatrical establishment that a dying malcontent named Robert Greene felt the need to drag him to earth, comparing him to “an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers.”

到1592年，他绝对算得上剧院大佬了，以至于一个叫罗伯特·格林的不满者在临死时想把他打倒，格林把他比作“自命不凡的乌鸦，用我们的羽毛美化自己”。

For most of his career, he wrote for a theater company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, founded in 1594. As a shareholder, Mr. Shakespeare benefited both from the troupe’s financial successes and from its ability to survive the winds of Elizabethan political change. 

他一生大部分时间为建于1594年的宫廷大臣剧团写作。，从剧团的财政成功中获利，。

With the accession of James I, the players changed their name to the King’s Men and performed before His Majesty on 187 occasions, more than all rival companies put together. The king loved his men.

詹姆士一世登基后，剧院改名国王剧团，剧团187次御前演出，比竞争对手加起来都多，詹姆士喜欢这些演员。

Before he died, Mr. Shakespeare saw his plays performed at Blackfriars Theater, at the Globe (which burned down during a performance of “Henry VIII,” an event perhaps more exciting than anything that happens during “Henry VIII”), at the Inns of Court and at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. 

去世前，，后者上演《亨利八世》时被焚毁，这一事件比剧中的任何情节都令人激动。还在律师学院、牛津大学和剑桥大学上演。

His audience extended beyond the bounds of Albion. In 1607, it is reported, the English crew of the Red Dragon merchant ship performed “Hamlet” for local leaders in Sierra Leone. To no small amount of bafflement, one might wager.

他的观众远超英国国界。据报道，1607年红龙商船上的英国船员给塞拉利昂的地方领袖表演了《哈姆莱特》。可以打赌，听众有多大惑不解。

In all, Mr. Shakespeare wrote between 38 and 40 plays, depending on whom you ask. Some he wrote in collaboration. “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” for instance, does not make sense as the work of a single playwright; in fact, it makes little sense at all. 

，这要看你问的是谁。有的作品是与人合写的。例如《泰尔亲王佩利克尔斯》，那不像一个剧作家的作品，事实上，前言不搭后语。

Only 18 of Mr. Shakespeare’s plays were published over the course of his life — in flimsy little quartos that practically dissolve if they’re looked at too closely. 

，写在轻薄的小四开本上，要是看得太狠就会烂掉。

“Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar” are still waiting, but sources say that seven years hence, two of Shakespeare’s acting colleagues will reassemble almost all of the plays into a quasi-definitive First Folio.

《麦克白》和《裘里斯-凯撒》还没有出版，但有消息说，七年后莎剧的两个演员会把所有剧本拼成准权威的第一对开本。

Mr. Shakespeare didn’t hesitate to steal plots — from Seneca and Plutarch and Ovid, from Spenser and Chaucer and Holinshed’s Chronicles. Nor did he hesitate to alter those plots. (According to Holinshed, Macbeth’s witches were originally nymphs.)

，被拿来的有塞涅卡、普鲁塔克、奥维德、斯宾塞、乔叟、霍林斯赫德的编年史。他也毫不犹豫地改编故事，霍林斯赫德一书中，《麦克白》的巫师本是仙女。

Nor did he hesitate to coin new words. More than 2,000 received their first recorded use in his work, including barefaced, assassination, excellent, frugal, eyeball, auspicious, swagger, zany, summit, moonbeam, obscene, cold-blooded, hot-blooded, epileptic, fashionable, gossip, lonely, grovel, torture, manager, well-read, buzzer and rant.

他更毫不犹豫地造新词。超过2000个词第一次在他的作品中出现。

Mr. Shakespeare will be survived by Mr. Shakespeare.

，。

As long as we speak of “star-crossed lovers” or “cold comfort” or “a pound of flesh” or “a laughingstock” or “a wild-goose chase”; as long as we call imps “puckish” and morbidly obese people “Falstaffian” and refer to jealousy as “the green-eyed monster”; as long as we use phrases like “It’s Greek to me” or “To thine own self be true” or “Clothes make the man” or “The lady doth protest too much” or “Give the Devil his due,” Mr. Shakespeare will be shaping our everyday speech.

只要我们说到“苦命鸳鸯”、“无用的宽慰”、“一磅肉”、“笑柄”、“徒劳的追逐”；只要我们把小孩子叫做“小淘气”，把肥贼大胖的人比作“福斯塔夫一样”，把嫉妒比作“绿眼怪物”；只要用到“犹如天书”、“忠于自己”、“人靠衣装”、“女人矫情”和“平心而论”，。

And as long as we wrestle with what it means to be human, Mr. Shakespeare will be our companion and our lodestar. The words of Hamlet serve as fitting epitaph for his creator: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!”

我们纠结“何为人？”时，。哈姆莱特的话正是人物创造者的座右铭：“人类是一件多么了不起的杰作！多么高贵的理性！多么伟大的力量！多么优美的仪表！多么文雅的举动！在行为上多么像一个天使！在智慧上多么像一个天神！”

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