William Shakespeare by Jennifer Bassett

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Chapter 7: Queens, kings and princes

Every year, we took more and more plays to court at Christmas.

In 1598, one of Will's plays was Henry IV.

A lot of the play was about the king's son and his friend Sir John Falstaff.

Sir John was old, fat, lazy, drank too much, talk too much, laugh too much, but you had to love him.

He was a great favorite with the London playgoers, and there were a lot of Falstaff jokes going round at the time.

After the play, the queen wanted to speak to Will.

“Why?What have we done wrong?” John Hemmings said to me in a very quiet voice.

“We'll find out in a minute.” I said.

We all watched while Will walked over to the Queen's chair.

She was an old woman, she wore a red wig and she had black teeth, but she was still a very great queen.

And if the queen was not pleased, she had a good, strong voice, an actor's voice.

We could hear her easily.

“Mr.Shakespeare.” she began, then she smiled, and suddenly you knew why all Englishmen loved the Queen.

It was like the sun coming out on a spring morning.

“Mr.Shakespeare, you are the best playwright in England. I enjoyed your play and I thought that Sir John Falstaff was very funny. I have known many Englishmen like him. Will you write me another play? I would like to see Sir John in love.”

When Will came back to us, his eyes were bright, but he was already thinking about it.

“Don't talk to me,” he said, “I've got a play to write.”

He wrote it in two weeks.

And we took it down to Richmond Palace and played it before the Queen on February 20.

She laughed and laughed at the Merry Wives of Windsor.

She didn't have much to laugh about in 1599.

There was a lot of trouble in Ireland, and the Queen sent the Earl of Essex with 20000 men to fight a war.

Lord Southampton, Will's friend went with him.

All London came out onto the streets to watch when Essex and his men left for Ireland.

Will wrote an exciting play about war that summer, and he put in a word or two about Ireland.

That was Henry V, about a very famous English king who fought a war in France.

But Essex was not Henry V, he didn't know how to fight a war, and he ran away back to England later that year.

The queen never spoke to him again.

In September, we opened the Globe Theatre.

It was a grand new building near the Rose.

Will,Richard Burbage and the others paid for it themselves.

It was the best playhouse in London and soon the most famous.

The other companies had good theatres and some good actors, but we had the famous Richard Burbage and the best plays.

We put on three new plays by Will in the next year and some plays by other writers.

One of the new playwrights was Ben Johnson.

He was a clever man and he wrote clever plays, but people still liked Will's plays best.

Ben couldn't understand it, he was always arguing with Will about how to write plays.

He argued with everyone, he went to prison once, because he killed a man in a fight.

He was eight years younger than Will, but he and Will were very good friends.

Will's next play was Hamlet, prince of Denmark.

We all met one day in the Boar's Head to talk about it.

There were six of us, me and Will, Richard Burbage, Henry Condell, John Hemmings and Augustine Phillips.

Will put his pile of papers on the table and sat down.

“Well,”he said, “you've all read it, what do you think?”

“It's very good,” John Hemmings began, “but it's too long. It'll take about four hours in the theatre. We don't have to use it all.”

Will said, “We can cut it down to 3 hours, perhaps 2.5.”

Henry Condell picked up one of the papers from the table, look at this bit when Ophelia is talking about Hamlet.

He said, “Hamlet sounds like the Earl of Essex to me. Were you thinking of Essex when you wrote this?”

Will smiled. “Perhaps,” he said, “and perhaps not.”

“Richard will play Prince Hamlet? Yes?” said Augustine.

“Of course.” Will said, “I wrote the part for him. He's our star actor. I'll play the ghost of Hamlet's father.”

He looked at me.

“Hamlet will wear black, Toby and Ophelia will wear white.”

Henry finished his beer.

“It's a good story, all with good parts for us all. But will the playgoers like it?It moves very slowly, and they like a play to be fast and exciting. Prince Hamlet knows that his uncle Claudius murdered the king, his father, but he doesn't do anything about it for a long time. He just talks about it, and in the end, nearly everybody dies one way or another.”

Augustine didn't agree with that.

“You haven't understood the play Henry, It is exciting, very exciting. The play is inside Hamlet himself, he wants to kill his uncle, but he can't. Murder is wrong, but he must kill him because of his father. We can all understand how he feels.”

All this time, Richard Burbage was silent.

He was reading bits of the play again.

Now he put down the paper in his hand and looked up.

His eyes were bright, excited.

“Have any of you really listened to the language of this play?This is your best play yet, Will. The best of them all just listen to the language, the poetry.”

He stood up and his great voice filled the room.

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

We sat and listened silently while that wonderful voice brought the words to life.

Will watched him smiling.

He knew that Richard like him, was in love with words.

“To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”

Richard Burbage was right, of course.

The people loved the play.

They loved Burbage as Hamlet, they cried for poor Ophelia's death, and they shouted for the murderer Claudius to die.

I think it was Will's most famous play.

翻译

第七章：女王、国王与王子们

每年圣诞节，我们进宫为女王演出的剧目都越来越多。
1598年，我们演了威尔的一出戏——《亨利四世》。
这出戏很大一部分是在讲国王的儿子和他的朋友约翰·福斯塔夫爵士。
福斯塔夫爵士又老又胖，又懒又贪杯，话多、笑也多，但你就是会忍不住喜欢他。
他深受伦敦观众的喜爱，当时街头巷尾都在流传关于福斯塔夫的段子。

演出结束后，女王点名要见威尔。
“怎么回事？我们做错什么了吗？”约翰·赫明斯压低声音问我。
“马上就会知道了。”我说。
我们全都注视着威尔走到女王的座椅前。
她是一位年迈的女王，戴着红色的假发，牙齿也是黑的，但她依然是一位极其伟大的君主。
而且，如果女王不高兴，她可是有一副洪亮的好嗓子的，那绝对是演员级别的嗓音。
我们在台下都能听得清清楚楚。

“莎士比亚先生，”她开口唤道，随后微微一笑。那一刻，你突然就明白了为什么全英格兰的子民都深爱着女王。
那感觉，就像春日的清晨拨云见日，阳光普照。
“莎士比亚先生，您是英格兰最杰出的剧作家。我很欣赏您的戏，觉得约翰·福斯塔夫爵士非常有趣。我认识许多像他这样的人。您能再为我写一出戏吗？我想看看陷入爱情的福斯塔夫是什么模样。”

当威尔回到我们中间时，他双眼闪烁着兴奋的光芒，但他显然已经在构思了。
“别跟我说话，”他说，“我得去写戏了。”
他只用了两个星期就写完了。
2月20日，我们带着这出戏去了里士满宫，为女王献演。
看《温莎的风流娘儿们》时，她笑得前仰后合。
在1599年，她确实没多少值得笑的事情。
爱尔兰爆发了叛乱，女王派埃塞克斯伯爵率领两万大军前去平叛。
威尔的朋友南安普顿伯爵也随军出征了。
当埃塞克斯和他的军队出发前往爱尔兰时，全伦敦的人都涌上街头观看。

那年夏天，威尔写了一出激动人心的战争戏，里面还顺带提了一两句爱尔兰的事。
那就是《亨利五世》，讲述的是一位在法国征战的著名英格兰国王的故事。
但埃塞克斯可不是亨利五世，他根本不懂怎么打仗，后来在那一年直接逃回了英格兰。
女王从此再也没有跟他说过一句话。

9月，我们开设了环球剧院。
那是一座宏伟的新建筑，就在玫瑰剧院附近。
威尔、理查德·伯比奇等人是自费建造的。
它是伦敦最好的剧院，很快也成了最著名的剧院。
其他剧团也有不错的剧场和优秀的演员，但我们拥有大名鼎鼎的理查德·伯比奇，还有最好的剧本。
第二年，我们不仅上演了威尔的三部新戏，还演了其他作家的作品。
其中一位新晋剧作家是本·琼森。
他是个聪明人，写的戏也很巧妙，但观众最喜欢的始终是威尔的戏。
本对此百思不得其解，他总是为了怎么写戏和威尔争论。
他跟谁都吵，甚至还因为打架杀了人进过一次监狱。
他比威尔小八岁，但两人是非常要好的朋友。

威尔的下一部戏是《哈姆雷特，丹麦王子》。
有一天，我们六个人在野猪头酒馆碰头讨论这出戏。
在场的是我、威尔、理查德·伯比奇、亨利·康德尔、约翰·赫明斯和奥古斯丁·菲利普斯。
威尔把一叠稿纸放在桌上，坐了下来。
“好了，”他说，“你们都已经看过了，觉得怎么样？”
“非常好，”约翰·赫明斯开了口，“但是太长了。在剧院里演完大概要四个小时。我们没必要全演。”
威尔说：“我们可以把它删减到三个小时，也许两个半小时。”

亨利·康德尔从桌上拿起一页稿纸，指着奥菲莉亚谈论哈姆雷特的那一段说：
“我觉得哈姆雷特听起来有点像埃塞克斯伯爵。你写这段的时候，想到的是埃塞克斯吗？”
威尔笑了笑：“也许是，也许不是。”
“理查德来演哈姆雷特王子，对吧？”奥古斯丁问。
“当然，”威尔说，“我就是为他写的这个角色。他是我们最红的台柱子。我来演哈姆雷特父亲的鬼魂。”
他看向我：
“托比，哈姆雷特要穿黑衣，奥菲莉亚要穿白衣。”

亨利喝完了他的啤酒。
“故事很好，大家也都有好角色演。但观众会喜欢吗？这戏的节奏太慢了，他们喜欢看节奏快、情节刺激的戏。哈姆雷特王子明明知道他叔父克劳狄斯谋杀了他的父亲——老国王，但他却迟迟没有采取行动。他只是不停地谈论这件事，而到了最后，几乎所有人都以各种方式死去了。”

奥古斯丁不同意他的看法。
“亨利，你没看懂这出戏。它很精彩，非常精彩。戏剧的冲突全在哈姆雷特的心里。他想杀他的叔父，但他做不到。谋杀是罪恶的，但为了父亲，他又必须这么做。我们都能体会他的感受。”

在整个讨论过程中，理查德·伯比奇一直沉默不语。
他一直在反复默读剧本的片段。
这时，他放下手中的稿纸，抬起头来。
他的双眼闪烁着兴奋的光芒。
“你们当中有谁真正听懂了这出戏的语言吗？威尔，这是你迄今为止最好的一部戏。所有戏里最好的一部！你们听听这语言，听听这诗意。”

他站起身，洪亮的嗓音瞬间充满了整个房间：
“生存还是毁灭，这是一个问题。”
我们静静地坐着，听着那美妙的嗓音赋予文字以生命。
威尔微笑着注视着他。
他知道，理查德和他一样，对文字爱得深沉。
“死了；睡着了；睡着了：也许还会做梦；嗯，阻碍就在这儿；因为当我们摆脱了这具朽败的躯壳，在那死亡的睡眠里，究竟会做什么样的梦，这不能不使我们踌躇顾虑。”

理查德·伯比奇当然是对的。
观众们爱极了这出戏。
他们迷恋伯比奇饰演的哈姆雷特，为可怜的奥菲莉亚之死落泪，并高喊着让凶手克劳狄斯偿命。
我想，这是威尔最著名的一部戏了。