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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. 我的一个朋友曾经问一个小女孩为什么喜欢莎士比亚，小女孩的回答是：“因为他能快速抓住事物共性特质。”我经常思考莎士比亚对我而言有什么特别之处，说实话小女孩的话可以很好概括。 The big stuff 共性特质 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. 我想我们可能都明白她的意思，但让我们通过列清单把它说清楚：爱、死亡、权力、冲突、恨、复仇、战争、嫉妒、敌对、恐惧、悲伤、愤怒、希望、欢笑和灾难。我是被父母介绍开始接触莎士比亚的，看过学校的戏剧，参观过剧院，还通过电视看过他的戏剧。最令我难忘的是Judi Dench饰演的朱丽叶，最初充满激情、活力和希望，最后却满怀痛苦与失落。 The test of time 时间的检验 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. 但我们不要忘乎所以，如果你快速回顾，莎士比亚的戏剧并不总是占据剧院舞台。演员也时常在舞台演讲、独白，而非整部完整戏剧。18世纪的演员们如David Garrick将这些表演视为过渡，在斯特拉特福德每年都有莎士比亚盛典——尽管也有几年是凄凉的游行 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. 有时，戏剧会对结局有所改编，或者去掉剧中粗俗的部分。就我个人来讲，我很喜欢这些粗俗的内容，因为他们是戏剧有人情味儿的那部分，是我们思想和身体的表达。 Not of an age, but for all time 不仅是一个时代的剧作家，还是永久的伟大剧作家 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. 莎士比亚逝世七年后，他的戏剧巨著《第一对开本》发行出版。如果没有这本书，他的许多戏剧可能会永远消失，而我们如今就可以一字一行一句地细读莎士比亚的作品。这本书的序言是由伊丽莎白时期著名戏剧作家Ben Jonson写的，他向作者致以崇高敬意：“时代的灵魂！掌声、喜悦，舞台上的奇迹！”那么其他剧作家如何呢？Jonson同样写剧本，我也很喜欢他们但或多或少能感受到他们的愤世嫉俗，无法迎合大众市场。另外一位剧作家Christopher Marlowe的作品中有大量诗歌——我很喜欢其中的夸大其词，尽管有些人可能会觉得有点过分。然而莎士比亚措辞巧妙才思敏捷，从那个时代许多戏剧中借鉴情节和思想，创作出更好的作品。他还对人物的情感和动机体察深刻，对光明和黑暗、节奏的变化处理巧妙，对错权衡得体。
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