莎翁失傳劇作將出版 曾被斥爲僞作

The discounted claims of an 18th- century author to have re-shaped the words of Shakespeare into a play are finally being taken seriously by a respected publisher of the Bard's works nearly 300 years on.

Double Falsehood, a play written by Lewis Theobald and first performed in 1727, was based substantially on another work co-written by William Shakespeare more than a century earlier, a leading academic said on Tuesday.

Adding weight to the claim of Professor Brean Hammond of Nottingham University is the fact that the respected Arden Shakespeare publishers will release it in print on March 22.

Its appearance, and the attribution to Shakespeare, is likely to trigger another round of scholarly debate over what the English-speaking world's most famous and influential playwright wrote and what was falsely attributed to him.

For Hammond, the publication of the play next week will be the culmination of years of research. "I started working on it in the 1980s and wrote a couple of articles on the play," he said.

Theobald always claimed his play was based on a lost version by Shakespeare that was in turn based on the story of Cardenio, taken from the novel Don Quixote, by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes.

Hammond said modern scholarship had established that the early work, performed in 1613, was co-written by Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Theobald then substantially re-worked and cut it, meaning the presence of three hands in the present version.

"Shakespeare wrote most of the first half (of the original) and Fletcher wrote most of the second half - you could detect a new hand from the style of writing," Hammond said.

Theobald's work, a story of love and betrayal, was popular with 18th-century audiences, but the playwright was widely dismissed as a fraudster for claiming he had used the words of Shakespeare.

"The play has been rubbished in the past," Hammond said. "It did have a successful theatrical run when it came out, but soon after people began asking questions and thought that it was not a single author play by Shakespeare and we know that it's not."

That interpretation became widely accepted and the play has languished in relative obscurity until now, when the work will be widely accessible for the first time in more than 250 years.

"What's left in it now for the modern reader is Shakespeare's DNA," Hammond said.

日前，一部據稱爲18世紀一名作家根據莎士比亞作品改編而成的戲劇終於在近三百年後被莎士比亞作品權威出版商驗明真身。

據一名主要研究人員本週二介紹，這部名爲《愛情騙徒》的戲劇由劉易斯•希爾包德改編，並於1727年被首次搬上舞臺。經考證，這部戲劇大部分根據一個多世紀以前威廉•莎士比亞與人合著的另一劇作改編而成。

莎士比亞作品權威出版商“亞頓”將於本月22日出版該劇作，這爲諾丁漢大學布里恩•哈蒙德教授有關這一問題的說法增加了籌碼。

這部劇作的面世及其爲莎翁所創的說法將可能激起新一輪有關哪些劇作爲這位英語文學界最著名和最具影響力的劇作家真正所創，哪些又確爲贗品的學術爭論。

對於哈蒙德來說，下週這部作品的出版將使多年來有關這一問題的研究達到頂峯。他說：“我從上世紀80年代開始研究這部劇作，就此寫了很多文章。”

希爾包德當時一直聲稱這部劇作改編自莎翁一部失傳的劇作，而莎翁的原創又取材於西班牙文學巨匠米格爾•德•塞萬提斯名著《堂吉珂德》中的卡登尼歐的故事。

哈蒙德稱，現代研究已證實，這部於1613年首演的作品爲莎士比亞與約翰•佛萊契爾合著。之後，希爾包德對其進行了大量的改編和刪減，導致目前的版本中出現了三種筆法。

哈蒙德說：“莎士比亞主要撰寫了原著的前半部分，佛萊契爾則主要寫了後半部分。這可以從文風上看出來。”

希爾包德改編的這部關於愛情和背叛的作品在18世紀時很受觀衆喜愛，但由於他稱其根據莎翁作品改編而成，因此被斥爲騙子。

哈蒙德說：“這部劇作一直受到貶損。它最初被搬上舞臺時非常成功，但不久之後人們開始提出疑問，認爲這不是莎翁獨創的作品，現在我們知道它的確不是。”

這種說法逐漸被廣泛接受，而這部劇作在250年後的今天才得以重見天日，與廣大讀者見面。

哈蒙德說：“現代讀者還能從中找到莎翁的影子。”

Vocabulary:

discount：to leave out of account; disregard（懷疑地對待，漠視）

the Bard：莎士比亞的別稱，也稱爲the Bard of Avon，bard一般用來指吟遊詩人。

fraudster：one who commits fraud（騙子，犯欺詐罪者）