The Shakespeare conundrum: England glory? 莎士比亚的难题：英格兰的荣耀？
今年是威廉·莎士比亚（William Shakespeare，1564-1616）逝世400周年，英国人津津乐道。莎士比亚出生并在埃文河畔斯特拉特福去世。在今年的庆祝活动中，自己的作者身份令人吃惊的事实，自然被回避或消除了。由于几乎没有人知道他的个人生活，所以这是虚弱的，这导致了各种各样的幻想推理和猜想。例如，詹姆斯·夏皮罗（James Shapiro）1599年和1606年的“学术”书籍充斥着“他可能拥有”和“他可能拥有”。
无论对莎士比亚了解甚少的个人事实，与他所作的37部戏剧，两首大诗和150多首十四行诗的作者都无关。 13岁以后没有正规教育的记录;他当然从没去过任何一所大学，根据本琼森（Ben Jonson）的说法，他的“小拉丁少”（Greeke）。他显然知道法语，但没有人知道他是如何通过这种知识来的。尽管他唯一的“全英文”剧本是“温莎的风流妻子”，但他也似乎从来没有离开过英格兰，其他所有人都对外国有直接或间接的暗示。一个女儿是文盲，另一个可能是如此。他的意志不会提到任何书籍或手稿或文学兴趣，他的六个例子是在法律文件上不稳定和不一致的签名。唯一的另外一个写给他的文章是共同编写的Thomas More爵士中的一个高度可竞争的部分。
无论是在他的一生中，还是在几十年后，都没有人对莎士比亚的生活感到困惑。从1577年他离开学校到1588年左右，当他开始写剧本的时候，是什么都不知道和猜测的“失去的岁月”。他的女婿约翰·霍尔在他的日记里没有提到威廉·莎士比亚的文学活动。他的女儿也没有提及他们。直到19世纪才有人质疑莎士比亚的作者身份，但到了20世纪，成千上万的学者们已经钻了数百万份文献，但却通过证据来证明莎士比亚的作品。绝对没有文件痕迹。当代很少有人提到他的名字，直接与剧本联系起来。
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丹麦王子哈姆雷特的千古之问，To be or not to be, that is a question. The Shakespeare conundrum
The Shakespeare conundrum
This year is the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Britain has celebrated the occasion with enormous gusto. Shakespeare was born and died in Stratford-upon-Avon. During this year&’s celebrations, the fact that his case for authorship is surprisingly weak has naturally been sidestepped or elided. It is weak because almost nothing is known of his personal life, and this has led to all manner of fanciful inference and conjecture; for instance, the “scholarly” books on the years 1599 and 1606 by James Shapiro are replete with “he might have” and “he could have”.
Whatever few personal facts are known about Shakespeare have nothing to do with the claim that he is the author of 37 plays, two major poems and over 150 sonnets. There is no record of his formal education after the age of 13; he certainly never went to any university and, according to Ben Jonson, he had “small Latine and less Greeke”. He obviously knew French but no one knows how he came by this knowledge. He also never seems to have left England, though his only “all-English” play is The Merry Wives of Windsor — all the others have allusions, direct or indirect, to foreign countries. One daughter was illiterate and the other probably so. His will does not mention any books or manuscripts or literary interests and the six examples of his writing are shaky and inconsistent signatures on legal documents. The only other writing attributed to him is a highly contestable segment in the jointly written Sir Thomas More.
No one bothered, either during his lifetime or for decades afterwards, with examining Shakespeare&’s life. From when he left school in 1577 to around 1588, when he started writing plays, are “lost years” when nothing is known and much speculated. His son-in-law, John Hall, in his diaries makes no mention of William Shakespeare&’s literary activities. Nor did his daughters leave any reference to them. There was no questioning Shakespeare&’s authorship until the 19th century, but in the 20th century thousands of scholars have pored over literally millions of documents but produced little more by way of evidence connecting the man with the opus. There is absolutely no paper trail. Very few of the few contemporary mentions of his name link him directly with the plays. How did he come to know about the Bermuda shipwreck of 1610 on which he based The Tempest written in 1611 or 1612, when having nothing to do with the Virginia Company directors, who were the only ones to receive the report of the catastrophe?
http://www.thestatesman.com/supplements/the-shakespeare-conundrum-142473.html
