A friend of mine once asked a young girl why she liked Shakespeare. She replied: 'Because he gets to the big stuff, really quickly.' I’ve often thought about what makes Shakespeare special for me and, to be honest, I couldn't sum it up any better than that.

我的一個朋友曾經問一個小女孩為什么喜歡莎士比亞，小女孩的回答是：“因為他能快速抓住事物共性特質。”我經常思考莎士比亞對我而言有什么特別之處，說實話小女孩的話可以很好概括。

The big stuff

共性特質

I think we probably all know what she meant but let’s spell it out: love, death, power, conflict, hate, revenge, war, jealousy, rivalry, fear, sadness, rage, hope, laughter and disaster. That's quite a list. I was introduced to Shakespeare by my parents, seeing school plays, going on trips to the theatre and watching the plays on TV, but I'll never forget seeing the wonderful Dame Judi Dench playing Juliet, so full of passion, energy and hope – and then so full of misery and loss at the end.

我想我們可能都明白她的意思，但讓我們通過列清單把它說清楚：愛、死亡、權力、沖突、恨、復仇、戰(zhàn)爭、嫉妒、敵對、恐懼、悲傷、憤怒、希望、歡笑和災難。我是被父母介紹開始接觸莎士比亞的，看過學校的戲劇，參觀過劇院，還通過電視看過他的戲劇。最令我難忘的是Judi Dench飾演的朱麗葉，最初充滿激情、活力和希望，最后卻滿懷痛苦與失落。

The test of time

時間的檢驗

But let’s not get carried away here, if you whizz through time, you don’t always find whole Shakespeare plays filling theatres. There were times when great actors would just perform the big speeches, the soliloquies and not the entire plays. 18th Century actors such as David Garrick did them as turns, and in Stratford there was always the annual Shakespeare pageant – though even that, some years, saw some pretty forlorn parades.

但我們不要忘乎所以，如果你快速回顧，莎士比亞的戲劇并不總是占據劇院舞臺。演員也時常在舞臺演講、獨白，而非整部完整戲劇。18世紀的演員們如David Garrick將這些表演視為過渡，在斯特拉特福德每年都有莎士比亞盛典——盡管也有幾年是凄涼的游行

Sometimes the plays were 'improved' with new endings, or by taking out all of the rude bits. Personally, I love the rude bits. They’re part of what makes the plays so human. They’re about our minds and our bodies.

有時，戲劇會對結局有所改編，或者去掉劇中粗俗的部分。就我個人來講，我很喜歡這些粗俗的內容，因為他們是戲劇有人情味兒的那部分，是我們思想和身體的表達。

Not of an age, but for all time

不僅是一個時代的劇作家，還是永久的偉大劇作家

Seven years after Shakespeare's death, a giant edition of his plays, known as the First Folio, was published. Without this, many of the plays would probably have been lost forever, and we can now pore over every word, line and speech. The book's preface was written by another of the leading Elizabethan dramatists, Ben Jonson, who paid him a fulsome tribute: 'Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!” But what of the other playwrights? Jonson wrote wonderful plays too. I really like them but I can see that they are perhaps a bit too cynical to grab the popular taste. Christopher Marlowe was another. His plays are full of great poetry – I really like the bombast in them – but perhaps some find them a bit excessive. Shakespeare, however, had the wit and wisdom to steal plots and ideas from a lot of the plays of that era and top them with better poetry. He also had more insight into characters’ feelings and motives, and cleverer handling of light and dark, change of pace, and the weighing up of right and wrong.

莎士比亞逝世七年后，他的戲劇巨著《第一對開本》發(fā)行出版。如果沒有這本書，他的許多戲劇可能會永遠消失，而我們如今就可以一字一行一句地細讀莎士比亞的作品。這本書的序言是由伊麗莎白時期著名戲劇作家Ben Jonson寫的，他向作者致以崇高敬意：“時代的靈魂！掌聲、喜悅，舞臺上的奇跡！”那么其他劇作家如何呢？Jonson同樣寫劇本，我也很喜歡他們但或多或少能感受到他們的憤世嫉俗，無法迎合大眾市場。另外一位劇作家Christopher Marlowe的作品中有大量詩歌——我很喜歡其中的夸大其詞，盡管有些人可能會覺得有點過分。然而莎士比亞措辭巧妙才思敏捷，從那個時代許多戲劇中借鑒情節(jié)和思想，創(chuàng)作出更好的作品。他還對人物的情感和動機體察深刻，對光明和黑暗、節(jié)奏的變化處理巧妙，對錯權衡得體。