美国人如何将莎士比亚“美国化”
New York has been handed a surplus of Shakespeare over the last six months. To celebrate the 450th anniversary of his birth, there were eight Broadway and Off Broadway productions on offer — enough, surely, for even the most ravenous Shakespearean appetite. But to a 19th-century American, this stuffed schedule might well look like slim pickings.
过去的六个月里，纽约的莎士比亚已经过剩了。为了庆祝他诞辰450周年，举办了八场百老汇和外百老汇莎士比亚戏剧演出——这对于最饥渴的莎士比亚剧迷来说也足够了。但是对于19世纪的美国来说，这样紧密的安排恐怕根本不够。
Two hundred years ago, Shakespeare accounted for one-quarter of all dramatic productions in cities up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Philadelphians, between 1800 and 1835, could see 21 of Shakespeare’s 37 plays. In the decade after the Gold Rush, Californians stood in line to see a raft of them. Some were presented in the palatial Jenny Lind Theater in San Francisco, where miners, the historian Constance Rourke wrote in “Troupers of the Gold Coast,” “swarmed from the gambling saloons and cheap fandango houses to see ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Lear.’ ”
200年前，莎士比亚占据了东海岸城市舞台剧目的1/4。1800年到1835年，费城可以看到莎士比亚全部37部剧目中的21部。淘金潮之后的十年间，加利福尼亚也可以看到很多了。有些剧目是在旧金山宫殿般的詹尼·林德剧场上演，历史学家康斯坦斯·鲁克(Constance Rourke)在《黄金海岸的演员们》(Trouers of the Gold Coast)一书中写道，淘金者们“从赌场和廉价舞厅蜂拥而来，只为一睹《哈姆雷特》(Hamlet)和《李尔王》(Lear)。”
Americans were mad for Shakespeare. For the evidence, look no further than “Shakespeare in America: An Anthology From the Revolution to Now,” to be published by the Library of America next month, just in time for that big birthday.
美国人为莎士比亚而疯狂。若说证据，只需在《莎士比亚在美国：从独立战争至今的选集》(Shakespeare in America: An Anthology From the Revolution to Now)中寻找，这本书将由美国图书馆(Library of America)在下月出版，为了赶上莎士比亚诞辰的日期。
The collection, edited by the eminent Shakespearean James Shapiro, a professor at Columbia, begins with a parody of Hamlet’s soliloquy written by an anonymous Tory in 1776, responding to the Continental Congress’s demand in 1774 that all colonists sign on to a boycott of English goods. It starts: “To sign or not to sign? That is the question.” The book ends with “Nets,” a 2004 work by the poet and visual artist Jen Bervin that highlights selected words in the sonnets, eliciting unexpected meanings and associations.
这部选集由哥伦比亚大学教授、著名莎学家詹姆斯·夏皮罗(James Shapiro)编辑。全书第一篇是对哈姆雷特那篇独白的戏仿，由“无名氏托里”创作于1776年，是为了呼应1776年大陆议会要求所有殖民地居民在抵制英货的文件上签字。文章开头是“签还是不签?这是问题。”全书最后一篇是《网》(Nets) ，这是诗人和视觉艺术家詹·波文(Jen Bervin)的作品，从莎士比亚的十四行诗中选出词语，为它们赋予令人意想不到的涵义和组合方式。
There are discoveries and surprises along the way, like Lord Buckley’s beat-era “Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger-Poppin’ Daddies,” an extended riff on Shakespeare’s most famous speeches (“I came here to lay Caesar out, Not to hip you to him”), and “Shakespeares of 1922,” a vaudeville sketch by Lorenz Hart and Morrie Ryskind. But for many readers the real eye opener will be the heated love affair, richly documented by Professor Shapiro, between ordinary Americans and the most exalted writer in the English language.
全书中有许多发现和惊喜，比如洛德·巴克利(Lord Buckley)在垮掉派时期写的《潮人、冒失鬼和打响指的老家伙》(Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger-Poppin’ Daddies)就是莎士比亚最著名的演说(“我今天是来埋葬凯撒，不是来赞美他”)的延伸乐段;还有《1922年的莎士比亚们》 (Shakespeares of 1922)，是洛伦兹·哈特(Lorenz Hart)和莫里·里斯金德(Morrie Ryskind)创作的歌舞杂耍剧本草稿。但对于许多读者来说，最令人大开眼界的还是夏皮罗教授记载的大量对莎士比亚的炽热爱意，从普通美国人到最有名的英语作家应有尽有。
“The 25-year period around the Civil War was the most extraordinary,” he said in an interview. “You have John Quincy Adams on Desdemona having sex with Othello, Lincoln reading ‘Macbeth,’ and another president, Grant, rehearsing the role of Desdemona at a military camp. You couldn’t make this stuff up. This is how central a preoccupation Shakespeare was at the time.”
“南北战争时期的25年间是最特别的，”他在接受采访时说，“约翰·昆西·亚当斯(John Quincy Adams)写过苔丝特蒙娜与奥赛罗发生性关系，林肯也读《麦克白》(Macbeth)，还有格兰特总统，他曾经在军营里彩排过苔丝特蒙娜这个角色。这些都不是能编出来的。那个时候人们对莎士比亚的迷恋就到这个地步。”
Professor Shapiro, in his introduction, leads off with Grant’s brief turn on the boards, which he rightly calls “one of the more memorable episodes in the history of Shakespeare in America.” The year was 1846, the place was Corpus Christi, Tex.
夏皮罗教授在全书前言一开始就描述了格兰特短暂的登场，他说得很正确：“这是莎士比亚在美国传播史上最值得纪念的时刻之一。”那一年是1846年，地点是得克萨斯的科珀斯克里斯蒂。
To distract the troops, a theater was hastily constructed and a production of “Othello” put into motion. James Longstreet, the future Confederate general, was originally cast as Desdemona, but was judged too tall for the part. The shorter Grant took his place. “He really rehearsed the part of Desdemona, but he did not have much sentiment,” Longstreet later recalled. In the end, Grant was replaced by a professional actress at the insistence of the officer playing Othello, who, Longstreet wrote, “could not pump up any sentiment with Grant dressed up as Desdemona.”
为了给军人们提供消遣，一座剧院迅速建成了，将要上演《奥赛罗》(Othello)。苔丝特蒙娜一角本来要由未来的南部联盟将军詹姆斯·郎斯特里特 (James Longstreet)出演，但人们觉得他个头太高。个头矮一些的格兰特就接替了他的位子。“他真的在彩排中出演了苔丝特蒙娜，但他没多少感情，”朗斯特里特后来回忆。最后，在饰演奥赛罗的军官要求下，一位职业女演员又取代了格兰特，朗斯特里特写道，那个饰演奥赛罗的军官“看到格兰特穿成苔丝特蒙娜的样子，根本没法入戏”。
It was not fanciful to think that ordinary soldiers might enjoy a Shakespeare play. Americans in the 19th century absorbed him whole from earliest childhood. “There is hardly a pioneer’s hut that does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s. “I remember that I read the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.”
普通士兵可以欣赏莎士比亚戏剧，这并不是什么新奇的事。19世纪，美国人从孩提时代就开始全心全意地欣赏莎士比亚。“几乎所有拓荒者的小屋里都会摆上几卷莎士比亚，”亚里克斯·德·托克维尔(Alexis de Tocqueville)在19世纪30年代写道。“我记得自己是在一座小木屋里第一次读到《亨利五世》(Henry V)这部历史剧。”
Shakespeare’s words fell on fertile ground, thanks to the American education system, which stressed public speaking as an essential acquirement in a democracy and regarded Shakespeare’s works as a gold mine of political and moral set pieces.
多亏了美国的教育系统，莎士比亚的语句被播撒在肥沃的土壤上，美国教育视公共演说为民主政治的必要才能，并把莎士比亚的作品当做政治与道德片段的金矿。
Excerpts featured prominently in elocution books like “The Columbian Orator” and “The National Orator” and in the advanced McGuffey’s readers. “Both boys and girls gave recitations and performed excerpts from the plays,” Sandra M. Gustafson, an English professor at University of Notre Dame, said in an interview. “This was an essential part of education.”
《哥伦比亚演说家》(The Columbian Orator)、《国家演说家》中都有显著的莎士比亚选段，高等麦克格雷(McGuffey)教材读本中也有。“男孩和女孩们都会朗诵和表演剧本选段，” 圣母大学的英语教授桑德拉·M·古斯塔夫森(Sandra M. Gustafson)在接受采访时说，“这是教育中不可缺少的一部分。”
Women seized on Shakespeare as a way to construct a homemade version of a college class. In the second half of the 19th century, women’s Shakespeare clubs began popping up all over the United States, from Worcester, Mass., to Waxahachie, Tex., some 500 of them in the peak years from 1880 to 1940.
女人们把莎士比亚当做一种家庭版本的大学课堂。在19世纪后半叶，为女人建立的莎士比亚俱乐部在美国遍地开花，在1880年到1940年这段巅峰时期，从马萨诸塞州的伍斯特到得克萨斯州的沃克西哈奇，共有500多个这样的俱乐部。
