It’s possible to fit everything we know about
Shakespeare on to a postcard, right? Wrong.
对我们来说想从明信片上知道关于莎士比亚的一切是不可能的。
In fact we know more about Shakespeare than
almost any of his theatrical contemporaries, from the fact that he
was a serial tax-dodger to the fact that he got Anne Hathaway
pregnant when he was just 18 (she was 26).
实际上，我们知道的可能比他戏剧性的同时代的人多一些，从一系列的逃税案的主角到18岁就使26岁的安妮•海瑟薇怀孕。
But how much do you actually know about the
world’s most famous playwright?
我们究竟知道多少关于这个世界上最有名的戏剧家的故事。
So test your wits with this little lot – and
turn yourself into a expert Bardophile in the process
…
所以用这个小小的标签测试一下你的智慧吧——让自己进入一个莎士比亚的世界。
1. Despite
the recent fuss over the recently “discovered” Cobbe portrait, no
one is too sure what Shakespeare actually looked like: no life
portrait survives, and the two most plausible likenesses, his
funeral bust in Stratford and the engraving on the title page of
the First Folio, were most likely done long after his
death.
1.
虽然最近在爱尔兰科比家族发现的莎士比亚的生前画像折腾的很热闹，但目前没有人确切的知道莎士比亚的长相：没有生前的画像，最著名的似是而非的画像，是特拉福德的他墓地前的胸像和印在第一对开本封面的画像，很可能是他死后很久后才出现的。
2.
Shakespeare had a shotgun wedding. He was just 18 when he got Anne
Hathaway pregnant with their first child, Susannah (she was 26),
and the couple had to obtain a special licence from the Bishop of
Worcester in order to get married.
2.
莎士比亚有一个不甚体面的婚姻。他18岁时和怀着他们第一个孩子的安妮
海瑟薇结婚，这对夫妻不得不从伍斯特主教那里得到特许证结婚。
3. -- but the
second-best bed notoriously bequeathed to Anne might, contrary to
rumour, have been a touching gift instead of a bad-tempered
brush-off – it was possibly the couple’s marriage bed.
3.
而声名狼藉的关于莎士比亚遗赠给妻子安妮“第二好的床”的遗嘱，也许它的含义和那些谣言正相反，是一个感人的馈赠，而不是一个脾气暴躁的莎士比亚对妻子的否定，“第二好的床”很可能是这对夫妇的婚床。
4. Although
Shakespeare wrote plays set in France, Scotland, Italy, Cyprus and
Vienna, among many other locations, it’s entirely possible that he
never left England. That may account for the most embarrassing
geographical cock-up of his career: grafting a sea-coast on to
land-locked Bohemia (part of the present-day Czech Republic) in The
Winter’s Tale. He probably spoke French and Italian as well as
Latin and Greek, though.
4.
虽然莎士比亚写的戏地点经常设置在法国、苏格兰、意大利、塞浦路斯和维也纳，还有其他地区，实际上莎士比亚从来没有离开过英格兰。因为从他的剧本可以看出，他的地理知识实在是一团糟：在《冬天的故事》里会给地处内陆的波西米亚（现在的一部分属于捷克）安一个海岸线。也许他的法语和意大利语说的和拉丁语和希腊语一样好。
5.
Shakespeare coined around 1,700 new English words, his most
successful inventions including “addiction”, “lacklustre”,
“priceless” and “mountaineer”. But not all of them stuck: among the
many Shakespearean words that have passed out of use are
“unsisting” (unhelpful), “immoment” (trifling), “cadent”(falling)
and the frankly awful “plantage” (vegetation). Lucky
escape.
5.
莎士比亚创造了大约1700个新英语词汇，他最成功的发明包括“addiction”, “lacklustre”, “priceless”
and “mountaineer”。但不是所有的都留下来了：很多莎士比亚创造的词汇现在已经不用了，比如unsisting”
(unhelpful), “immoment” (trifling), “cadent”
(falling)，还有十分直白的“plantage” (vegetation)。真是幸运的漏网。
6.
The original ending of King Lear wasn’t performed
for nearly 150 years because it was thought too upsetting. In its
place was a heavy-handed adaptation by 17th-century playwright
Nahum Tate, who blue-pencilled the tragic double death of Lear and
his favourite daughter Cordelia. In Tate's version Lear lives out
his last years in retirement, while Cordelia gets hitched to
Edgar.
6.
《李尔王》的原始结尾在长达150年的时间里没有上演过，因为人们认为它太悲伤了。17世纪，剧作家内厄姆塔特拙劣的修改了它，使得原作中李尔王和他最爱的女儿考狄利娅两人双双死去的悲剧性结尾化为乌有。在塔特的版本里，李尔王在退休后得以安享天年，而考狄利娅则和埃德加终成眷属。
7.
Shakespeare’s bestselling work in his lifetime
was not a play, but the now little-known erotic poem Venus and
Adonis, particularly popular with (male) students. It was written
when London’s theatres were closed because of plague, a period when
Shakespeare’s income looked like it might evaporate.
7.
莎士比亚最卖钱的作品不是他的剧作，而是他少有人知的情诗《维纳斯和阿多尼斯》，这首诗在男学生中间广受欢迎。这首诗是在伦敦的剧场因为瘟疫而被迫关闭期间写的，那个时期莎士比亚的收入迅速缩水。
8.
At least two of Shakespeare’s plays, Love’s
Labour’s Won and Cardenio, have disappeared entirely without trace.
Love’s Labour’s Won is a follow-up to his early romantic comedy
Love’s Labour’s Lost, while Cardenio is thought to have been a
version of Don Quixote.
8.
至少有两个莎士比亚的戏，《爱得其所》和《卡登尼欧》，彻底失传。《爱得其所》是他早期爱情喜剧《爱的徒劳》的续篇，而《卡登尼欧》被认为是《堂吉诃德》的译本。
9. Given the
playwright’s obsession with twins – several of his
plays,
including The Comedy of Errors
and Twelfth Night, feature them –
it’s
interesting to observe that
Shakespeare fathered them in real life. His only son, Hamnet (the
name was relatively common), died at the age of 11, but his sister
Judith lived to be 77.
9.
双胞胎总是在这位剧作家的戏里发挥搅乱乾坤的作用——他的好几个戏，包括《错误的喜剧》《第十二夜》，都重点描绘了双胞胎——我们发现很有趣的是，莎士比亚在现实生活里也确实有一对双胞胎。他唯一的儿子，哈姆奈特（真是相当普通的名字），在11岁时死了，而他的龙凤胎姐妹朱迪思则活到77岁。
10. A scene
from King John, starring the leading British actor
Herbert
Beerbohm Tree, was the earliest
Shakespeare movie ever made (1899, no less). The most recent
mainstream film adaptation is Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like
It(2007), although two new version of King Lear starring Anthony
Hopkins and Al Pacino are in the works.
10.
由英国演员赫伯特 比尔博特
特纳先生领衔主演的《约翰王》，是目前已知的改编的最早的莎士比亚的电影（不晚于1899）。最近的改编自莎士比亚的电影是肯尼斯布莱纳执导的皆大欢喜（2007），还有最新版本的《李尔王》正在拍摄，由安东尼霍普金斯和阿尔帕西诺领衔主演。
（外研社）
青春就应该这样绽放 游戏测试：三国时期谁是你最好的兄弟！！ 你不得不信的星座秘密
