关于莎士比亚你不知道的10件事

Of William and Anne Shakespeare's three children, two daughters survived: Susannah and Judith. While Susannah seems to have been able to sign her name, Judith could only make her mark. But in this period, literacy was a skill, useful in certain trades and professions, mainly male. Shakespeare was a man of his time, and his time didn't value literacy in women.
威廉·莎士比亚和安娜·莎士比亚共有3个子女，活下来的有2个：苏珊娜和朱迪斯。苏珊娜好像会写自己的名字，但朱迪斯却不识字。在那个时代，识字主要是男人在从事某些贸易和行业时所掌握的技能。莎士比亚是生在那个时代的杰出人物，但那个时代并不主张女性识字。

7. Shakespeare didn't care about posterity.
莎士比亚不关心作品的延续传承。

At least, as far as his plays went. He took care to supervise the printing of his two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, because these were prestige projects for influential patrons. But it was not until seven years after his death that his theatrical associates put together the First Folio edition of his plays. I
至少对戏剧作品如此。他确实用心监管了《维纳斯与阿都尼》和《鲁克瑞丝遭强暴记》这两部叙事诗的印刷工作，但那是因为它们是为权贵资助人而准备的浩大作品。直到去世7年后，他的剧院同僚才将他的戏剧作品编成第一版开本。

n his lifetime, Shakespeare doesn't seem to have cared whether his plays survived or not. Partly this may reflect the low esteem in which plays were held as literature. When Ben Jonson printed his plays and called them his Works, people laughed: how could you call mere plays Works?
在他一生中，莎士比亚似乎并不关心自己的戏剧是否得到传承延续。这一方面可能是因为当时戏剧在文学界并不被看重。当英国诗人本·琼森把莎士比亚的戏剧印刷出来并称之为“作品”时，人们笑了：微不足道的戏剧怎能称得上“作品”呢？

8. Shakespeare has no descendants.
莎士比亚没有后裔。

His only son, Hamnet, died at the age of 11. His daughter Susanna had no children and all his daughter Judith's children died young. None of his three brothers married. The Shakespeare line effectively ran out within twenty-five years of the poet's death.
他唯一的儿子哈姆雷特11岁就夭折了。女儿苏珊娜没有子嗣，而二女儿朱迪斯的孩子也全都夭折而亡。他自己的3个兄弟都不曾结婚。整个莎士比亚家族在他死后25年就完全湮灭了。

9. For two hundred years, the theatre made a dog's breakfast of Shakespeare.
200年来，剧院将莎士比亚作品演得面目全非。

Once the theatres reopened after the Commonwealth, they began a great tradition of doing whatever the hell they liked with Shakespeare's plays. They chopped them up and adapted them into musicals and pantomimes. Most notoriously, they got rid of the whole 'tragic' thing in the tragedies by giving them happy endings. Reverence for 'The Bard' had to wait until the nineteenth century.
剧院在英联邦重新营业后，便开始肆无忌惮乱演莎士比亚的戏剧。他们删减片段，改编成音乐剧和哑剧；更可怕的是，他们删掉了悲剧中的“悲剧”情节，续上了欢乐大结局。这位“吟游诗人”直到19世纪才得到正式敬重。

10. Shakespeare has had some heavyweight haters.
莎士比亚有重量级的仇敌。

Not everyone has concurred in Shakespeare's greatness as a writer. Voltaire thought Hamlet the work of a 'drunken savage': George III confided: 'Was there ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so!'
不是所有人都认同莎士比亚是伟大的作家。伏尔泰认为《哈姆雷特》是“醉醺醺粗人”的作品。乔治三世曾说：“莎士比亚哪里了不起了？说谁都不能说他！”

And George Bernard Shaw, in a review of Cymbeline, got quite carried away in his detestation of the poet: 'It would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.' That was in a newspaper. Imagine if Shakespeare had been on Twitter.
乔治·萧伯纳在评价《辛白林》时，毫无遮掩地表达了对作者的厌恶：“要是能对他掘尸抛石，我估计会大为畅快。” 而这句话可是发表在报纸上的。想想莎士比亚要是玩推特会说什么吧！