關於莎士比亞你不知道的10件事
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.
我們對威廉·莎士比亞所知甚少，以至這位世界上最偉大的詩人兼劇作家幾乎成了一位神祕人物。有些頗具想象力的人甚至得出結論：莎士比亞根本不是我們所瞭解的那個人！
But what we do know about the man and his works is intriguing enough. Snap up these unconsidered trifles:
不過，我們對莎士比亞及其作品的瞭解也足夠精彩紛呈了。以下就是莎士比亞不爲人知的方面：
1. Shakespeare wasn't the only Shakespeare in the theatre.
莎士比亞不只是家裏唯一投身劇場的人。
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...
儘管並未成什麼大氣候，比他小16歲的弟弟埃德蒙也在倫敦做演員。埃德蒙27歲就命喪黃泉，葬禮在南華克的聖救世主教堂舉行，葬禮頗有排場——說明家境還不錯。由此我們可以推斷……
2. Shakespeare was a fat cat.
莎士比亞是個闊佬。
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.
莎士比亞在劇院工作，不僅負責表演、寫劇本，也參與公司利潤分紅，因此他積累了一筆可觀的財富。到了33歲，莎士比亞就能買得起埃文河畔斯特拉特福的第二大宅“新宮”了。後來，他在倫敦和斯拉特福都置了產業。
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.
在遺囑中，他可以留給二女兒朱迪斯300英鎊的財產，何況朱迪斯還不是最大受益人。換算伊麗莎白時代的貨幣並不難，這筆錢在今天應該值5萬英鎊吧。
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，他的同輩劇作家托馬斯·德克爾一生都爲了債務而不斷進出監獄。1632年托馬斯去世時，他的遺孀甚至不願接管他的宅子——說明裏面也確實沒什麼好管的。
3. Shakespeare was a co-writer.
莎士比亞是聯合作家。
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.
在莎士比亞時代，聯合寫劇本很常見。有時一部劇本會是三四個作家共同創作的。雖然莎士比亞貌似喜歡獨自創作，但有些劇本中的有很多篇章是其他人寫的。
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.
他和托馬斯·米德爾頓共同創作了《雅典的泰門》，和約翰·弗萊徹一起寫了《亨利八世》；而且《麥克白》中一些非常有名的片段——詭異的部分，很可能也出自米德爾頓之手，是後來嫁接到戲劇中的。
4. You speak Shakespeare.
你講的都是“莎士比亞詞”。
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.
儘管學文學的學生不喜歡其中的華麗辭藻，但實際上正是莎士比亞創造了大量我們今天使用的英語詞彙。他不僅是史上用詞最廣泛的作家，還自創了很多詞語，比如“眼球”、“血跡斑斑”、“光芒”、“暗殺”和“乏善可陳”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...
莎士比亞的詞語在英語中相當普遍，說不定上週你就用過。比如你“遇到麻煩”、“交到好運”、“染上流感”、“成了笑柄”、不得不“打破堅冰”或“甩掉包袱”等等。
5. Shakespeare's sonnets are not autobiographical.
莎士比亞的十四行詩不是自傳式。
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，這點我們也不確定。但是可以肯定的是，十四行詩的序列方式在那個時代相當盛行。斯賓塞、西德尼等人都曾用過。十四行詩在當時是展示個人技巧的流行方法。寫詩也不一定真得經歷苦苦暗戀。
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.
莎士比亞十四行詩中的俊朗青年和“黑女郎”或許有原型，不過進行了刪減。更有可能的是，莎士比亞在創作十四行詩時發揮了劇作家的潛質，編造了其中的人物和情節。6. Shakespeare's daughter was illiterate.
莎士比亞的女兒是文盲。
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·莎士比亞和安娜·莎士比亞共有3個子女，活下來的有2個：蘇珊娜和朱迪斯。蘇珊娜好像會寫自己的名字，但朱迪斯卻不識字。在那個時代，識字主要是男人在從事某些貿易和行業時所掌握的技能。莎士比亞是生在那個時代的傑出人物，但那個時代並不主張女性識字。
7. Shakespeare didn't care about posterity.
莎士比亞不關心作品的延續傳承。
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
至少對戲劇作品如此。他確實用心監管了《維納斯與阿都尼》和《魯克瑞絲遭強暴記》這兩部敘事詩的印刷工作，但那是因爲它們是爲權貴資助人而準備的浩大作品。直到去世7年後，他的劇院同僚纔將他的戲劇作品編成第一版開本。
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，莎士比亞似乎並不關心自己的戲劇是否得到傳承延續。這一方面可能是因爲當時戲劇在文學界並不被看重。當英國詩人本·瓊森把莎士比亞的戲劇印刷出來並稱之爲“作品”時，人們笑了：微不足道的戲劇怎能稱得上“作品”呢？
8. Shakespeare has no descendants.
莎士比亞沒有後裔。
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.
他唯一的兒子哈姆雷特11歲就夭折了。女兒蘇珊娜沒有子嗣，而二女兒朱迪斯的孩子也全都夭折而亡。他自己的3個兄弟都不曾結婚。整個莎士比亞家族在他死後25年就完全湮滅了。
9. For two hundred years, the theatre made a dog's breakfast of Shakespeare.
200年來，劇院將莎士比亞作品演得面目全非。
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.
劇院在英聯邦重新營業後，便開始肆無忌憚亂演莎士比亞的戲劇。他們刪減片段，改編成音樂劇和啞劇；更可怕的是，他們刪掉了悲劇中的“悲劇”情節，續上了歡樂大結局。這位“吟遊詩人”直到19世紀纔得到正式敬重。
10. Shakespeare has had some heavyweight haters.
莎士比亞有重量級的仇敵。
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!'
不是所有人都認同莎士比亞是偉大的作家。伏爾泰認爲《哈姆雷特》是“醉醺醺粗人”的作品。喬治三世曾說：“莎士比亞哪裏了不起了？說誰都不能說他！”
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.
喬治·蕭伯納在評價《辛白林》時，毫無遮掩地表達了對作者的厭惡：“要是能對他掘屍拋石，我估計會大爲暢快。” 而這句話可是發表在報紙上的。想想莎士比亞要是玩推特會說什麼吧！
