莎士比亞

　　對于任何英國人來說，誰是世界上最偉大的詩人和戲劇家似乎不存在任何爭議，因為只有一個人能當之無愧：那就是莎士比亞。對于這位我們國家的偉大作家，每一個英國人都或多或少知道些關于他的事情。我們大家都是用出自啥事比的作品中的詞語、短語和句子，這已經(jīng)成為了說英語的人們的一部分共享的財富了。大多數(shù)時候我們可能沒有意識到我們所使用的語言的來源，這就像是去一場《哈姆雷特》演出的老太太抱怨，“這里邊怎么充滿著盡所周知的俗語和?啊?”

　　相對于其他任何作家而言，莎士比亞也許是把豐富多彩的英語言運用地最好的一個，我們平常使用英語的詞匯量在5000個左右，而在莎士比亞的作品中則有25000詞匯量。對于任何外國人來說(甚至是英國人!)，也許學習豐富多彩的英語的 最好辦法就是學習莎士比亞使用英語的方式。盡管距莎士比亞年代至今，英語使用的很多方面和很多英語詞匯的含義都發(fā)生了改變，這種學習過程還是很值得的。(當然，不推薦初學者這樣做)

　　讓人有點難以理解的是，相對于其作品而言，我們對這位偉大的英國作家生平的了解竟然會這么少。我們知道莎士比亞是在1564年在SOA出生的，并于1616年在此地去世。我們幾乎可以斷定他參加了當?shù)氐奈姆▽W校，但是還是沒有百分百的把握。我們知道他在1582年資SOA娶了AH，并于她有了三個孩子，一個男孩和兩個女孩。我們還知道在倫敦創(chuàng)作占據(jù)了他生命大量時間，但是我們所知道的也只有這么多了。

　　當然，關于莎翁生平的了解重要的并不是他生活中的細節(jié)，而是他的作品，即他的戲劇和詩。很多年以來，一些學者老是向我們所知的少量的莎翁的生平事跡追加一些細節(jié)，另外一些批評家則把莎翁的戲劇理論化，以至于有時候，莎翁的詩歌似乎都要被這些大量評論給淹沒了。

　　幸運的是，這沒有可能發(fā)生。莎翁的詩歌和莎翁筆下的人物(MOHF和其他所有人物)長久以來就不僅僅只是受英國人的追捧，同時也受全世界各地的文學愛好者的追捧，而且在那些學者和評論家以及他們的作品被世人遺忘以后，更會如此。

　　翻譯：

　　Shakespeare

　　For any Englishman, there can never be any discussion as to who is the world’s greatest poet and greatest dramatist. Only one name can possibly suggest itself to him: that of William Shakespeare. Every Englishman has some knowledge, however slight， of the work of our greatest writer. All of us use words, phrases and quotations from Shakespeare’s writings that have become part of the common property of the English-speaking people. Most of the time we are probably unaware of the source of the words we use, rather like the old lady who was taken to see a performance of Hamlet and complained that “it was full of well-known proverbs and quotations.”

　　Shakespeare, more perhaps than any other writer, made full use of the great sources of the English language. Most of us use about five thousand words in our normal employment of English; Shakespeare in his works used about twenty-five thousand! There is probably no better way for a foreigner (or an Englishman!) to appreciate the richness and variety of the English language than by studying the various ways in which Shakespeare used it. Such a study is well worth the effort (it is not, of course, recommended to beginners), even though some aspects of English usage, and the meaning of many words, have changed since Shakespeare’s day.

　　It is paradoxical that we should know comparatively little about the life of the greatest English author. We know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon, and that he died there in 1616. He almost certainly attended the Grammar School in the town, but of this we cannot be sure. We know he was married there in 1582 to Anne Hathaway and that he had three children, a boy and two girls. We know that he spent much of his life in London writing his masterpieces. But this is almost all that we do know.

　　However, what is important about Shakespeare’s life is not its incidental details but its products, the plays and the poems. For many years scholars have been trying to add a few facts about Shakespeare’s life to the small number we already possess and for an equally long time critics have been theorizing about the plays. Sometimes, indeed, it seems that the poetry of Shakespeare will disappear beneath the great mass of comment that has been written upon it. Fortunately this is not likely to happen. Shakespeare’s poetry and Shakespeare’s people have long delighted not just the English but lovers of literature everywhere, and will continue to do so after the scholars and commentators and all their works have been forgotten.