讀完莎士比亞的詩后會感覺他不是“直男”？.

　　Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, Let me not to the marriage of true minds, has of recent years become as popular a recitation at weddings as recitals of Frank Sinatra’s My Way at funerals.

　　莎士比亞十四行詩之116中首句“呵，我絕不讓兩顆真心遇到障礙”(Let me not to the marriage of true minds )近些年成為婚禮上常引用的詩章，而它的流行度與在葬禮上常用法蘭克·辛納屈(Frank Sinatra)的歌《我的路》(My Way)一樣。

　　將莎士比亞十四行詩和性聯(lián)系在一起，絕不是什么新鮮事了。維多利亞時期的人都很清楚這件事。

　　圖片來源：Leemage/Getty/Universal

　　If wide notice is taken of a current spat over what we can read about Shakespeare’s sexuality into the sonnets in the correspondence columns of the Times Literary Supplement, Sonnet 20 may be a future favourite at civil unions. The opening line, to remind you, is

　　如今泰晤士報文學副刊上“我們是否可以從莎士比亞十四行詩中看出他的性取向”口水戰(zhàn)更是吸引了廣大讀者的注意力。十四行詩之20可能成為今后學者爭論的主角。第二十首首行：

　　你有副女人的臉，由造化親手塑就， 你，我熱愛的情婦兼情郎，

　　(A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted, Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,)

　　And the end couplet is

　　結(jié)束句是：

　　但造化造你既專為女人愉快，讓我占有，而她們享受，你的愛。

　　(But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.)

　　The two TLS spatters are Sir Brian Vickers, wholly sceptical, and Stanley Wells – inclined to read Shakespeare’s own gay feelings into the poems. Vickers’s countering line is that one should assume the poet is the “poet’s persona”, no more Shakespeare than Hamlet is Shakespeare. Wells thinks the sonneteer is, indeed, Shakespeare himself in propria persona (this is, remember, the TLS, not saloon bar at the Dog and Duck).

　　在《泰晤士文學副刊》上展開口水激戰(zhàn)的雙方分別是布萊恩·威克斯爵士(Sir Brian Vickers)和斯坦力·威爾斯(Stanley Wells)。前者對莎翁同性戀的觀點持懷疑態(tài)度，后者傾向于帶著莎士比亞個人的同性戀感情讀他的詩歌。威克斯認為我們應(yīng)該假定詩人就是“詩人身份”，莎士比亞絕不是哈姆雷特。威爾斯則認為莎士比亞實際是代表他“本人”。(請注意，這場口水戰(zhàn)是在《泰晤士文學副刊》上，而不是在狗和鴨(Dog and Duck)這種沙龍酒店的爭論。)

　　These distinguished scholars’ interest in sex and the sonnets is, one may suspect, wholly academic. They are well into that stage of life in which Shakespeare says (rather unkindly) the “heyday in the blood is tame”. There is something rather touching about two greybeards, well into their Polonius years with a combined age of 155, speculating about what was bubbling up in the Bard’s twentysomething gonads and whether it spurts into the poems.

　　可能有人會覺得，這些著名學者在性和十四行詩上的興趣完全是學術(shù)的。他們已經(jīng)步入了莎翁口中的“情欲應(yīng)已被馴服(heyday in the blood is tame)”。這兩個老翁在波洛尼厄斯(Polonius 哈姆雷特中的大臣)的年紀，兩個人加起來已經(jīng)有155歲了，還思考著在巴德(Bard)二十幾歲時候性方面會有什么萌動，而這又是否會體現(xiàn)在詩歌中。這實在是令人感動。

　　Sonnets, one should note in passing, are hard to read – particularly as they move on to the “sestet”, or last six lines. They are also particularly hard to write in English. As George Orwell noted, the cross that English poets have to bear is too few rhyme words (how many for “l(fā)ove”? glove / dove / above – that’s it). There are infinitely more in Italian – the home of the sonnet.

　　十四行詩讀起來很困難，尤其是到“六行詩節(jié)”(sestet)或者最后六行的時候。用英文寫出來也是很困難的。喬治·奧威爾(George Orwell)說，英語詩人的押韻詞是極為有限的，比如有多少個和“l(fā)ove”(愛)押韻的詞呢?glove/dove/above——也就是這些。意大利是十四行詩的發(fā)源地，意大利語中的押韻詞就無限多了。

　　Although it has supplied some “slow news day” fodder the Shakespeare-sex-and-sonnet issue is by no means new. Victorians were well aware of it; Oscar Wilde cited the sonnets in his doomed trial. It didn’t help.

　　盡管這為信息閉塞時代提供了寫作素材，不過現(xiàn)在莎士比亞的性和十四行詩的關(guān)聯(lián)也絕不是新鮮事了。維多利亞時期的人都很清楚這件事。英國作家奧斯卡·王爾德(Oscar Wilde)在他最后的審判中引用了十四行詩，但是并未起作用。

　　“Sodometries” – particularly in Renaissance (now renamed Early Modern) literature – has been around as a critical approach ever since the rise of the queer theory in the 1970s. Shakespeare’s likely bisexuality has been factored, unexcitedly, into modern biography. In one of the best of the recent ones (Shakespeare Unbound, 2007) René Weis has a cool and illuminatingly open-minded analysis of whether the earlier sonnets (including 20) are directed at the young and glamorous Earl of Southampton, the poet’s patron and possible love object. Weis also discusses whether, in their “madcap twenties”, Shakespeare and the more overtly gay Christopher Marlowe had an affair.

　　自從20世紀70年代酷兒理論(queer theory)興起，“Sodometries”(文藝復(fù)興時期的詞，即sodomy)——尤其是在文藝復(fù)興時期(現(xiàn)在稱為近代早期的)文學——成為一種極為重要的方法。莎士比亞的雙性戀傾向被用到現(xiàn)代文獻中。2007年出版的《解放了的莎士比亞》(Shakespeare Unbound)是最近最好的一部。作者荷乃·維斯(RenéWeis)對前幾篇十四行詩(包括第20首)進行了獨到開放式解讀：這些詩歌是否是為年輕瀟灑的南安普敦伯爵(Earl of Southampton)所作?誰會是詩人描寫的對象呢?讀后使人深受啟迪。維斯也探討了在他們狂妄的二十幾歲的時候，莎翁和當時最公開的同性戀克里斯托弗·馬洛(Christopher Marlowe)的一段情史。

　　Was Shakespeare gay? Was he bisexual? Was he either or both of the above at different times of his life? Would he have divulged the fact? Buggery was punishable by hanging until 1861. And, the biggest question of all: does it matter?

　　莎士比亞是同性戀嗎?還是雙性戀?還是在不同時期有不同的性取向，兩者兼有?他曾透露過這個秘密嗎?在1861年以前，雞奸也都是要受絞刑的。最大的疑問是：這又有什么關(guān)系?

　　I think it does because Shakespeare is a “l(fā)iving” author and how we read him affects how he is performed. Should one make Osric in Hamlet openly gay (and what about Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern)? Should a director accentuate a gay theme in The Merchant of Venice (Weis thinks yes), or in the transvestite subplot in Twelfth Night? Was Shakespeare bisexual? I’d risk Vickers’ wrath by thinking probably yes. Take another look at Sonnet 20.

　　我認為確實有關(guān)系，因為莎士比亞是一個“名垂千古”的作家，我們怎樣解讀影響著他在演出中如何呈現(xiàn)。在演出中，我們應(yīng)該將《哈姆雷特》中的奧斯里克(Osric)公然地表現(xiàn)為同性戀么?羅森·克蘭茨(Rosenkrantz)和吉爾登·斯吞(Guildenstern)呢?導演應(yīng)該在《威尼斯商人》(Merchant of Venice)中強調(diào)同性戀的主題么?維斯對此持肯定態(tài)度。那些異裝癖的次要情節(jié)又該如何處理呢?莎士比亞是雙性戀么?冒著激怒威克斯詛咒的風險，我覺得可能要給出肯定的回答。不信請再讀一讀十四行詩的第二十首。

　　譯注："酷兒"是指在文化中所有非常態(tài)(nonstraight)的表達方式,包括男同性戀、女同性戀和雙性戀的立場，也包括所有其他潛在的、不可歸類的非常態(tài)立場。