《书虫》系列 第2级

William Shakespeare

Chapter 7-12

《威廉·莎士比亚》 [英] 芭斯特

Every year we took more and more plays to court at Christmas. In 1598 one of Will's plays was Henry IV. A lot of the play was about the King's son and his friend, Sir John Falstaff. Sir John was old, fat, lazy, drank too much, talked too much, laughed too much. But you had to love him. He was a great favourite with the London playgoers, and there were a lot of Falstaff jokes going round at the time.

After the play, the Queen wanted to speak to Will.

‘Why? What have We done wrong?’ John Heminges said to me in a very quiet voice.

‘We'll find out in a minute,’ I said.

We all watched while Will walked over to the Queen's chair. She was an old woman, she wore a red wig, and she had black teeth. But she was still a very great queen. And if the Queen was not pleased…

She had a good, strong voice—an actor's voice. We could hear her easily.

‘Mr Shakespeare, she began. Then she smiled, and suddenly you knew why all Englishmen loved the Queen. It was like the sun coming out on a spring morning.

‘Mr Shakespeare, you are the best playwright in England. I enjoyed your play, and I thought that Sir John Falstaff was very funny. I have known many Englishmen like him. Will you write me another play? I would like to see Sir John in love.’

When Will came back to us, his eyes were bright, but he was already thinking about it.

‘Don't talk to me,’ he said. ‘I've got a play to write.’

He wrote it in two weeks, and we took it down to Richmond Palace and played it before the Queen on February the 20th. She laughed and laughed at The Merry Wives of Windsor.

She didn't have much to laugh about in 1599. There was a lot of trouble in Ireland, and the Queen sent the Earl of Essex with 20, 000 men to fight a war. Lord Southampton, Will's friend, went with him. All London came out on to the streets to watch when Essex and his men left for Ireland. Will wrote an exciting play about war that summer, and he put in a word or two about Ireland. That was Henry V, about a very famous English King who fought a war in France.

But Essex was not Henry the Fifth. He didn't know how to fight a war, and he ran away back to England later that year. The Queen never spoke to him again.

In September we opened the Globe theatre. It was a grand, new building near the Rose. Will, Richard Burbage, and the others paid for it themselves. It was the best playhouse in London, and soon the most famous. The other companies had good theatres and some good actors, but we had the famous Richard Burbage—and the best plays.

We put on three new plays by will in the next year, and some plays by other writers. One of the new playwrights was Ben Jonson. He was a clever man and he wrote clever plays, but people still liked Will's plays best. Ben couldn't understand it. He was always arguing with Will about how to write plays. He argued with everyone. He went to prison once because he killed a man in a fight. He was eight years younger than Will, but he and Will were very good friends.

Will's next play was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. We all met one day in the Boar's Head to talk about it. There were six of us—me and Will, Richard Burbage, Henry Condell, John Heminges, and Augustine Phillips.

Will put his pile of papers on the table and sat down.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You've all read it. What do you think?’

‘It's very good,’ John Heminges began, ‘but it's too long. It'll take about four hours in the theatre.’

‘We don't have to use it all,’ Will said. ‘We can cut it down to three hours, perhaps two and a half.’

Henry Condell picked up one of the paper from the table. ‘Look at this bit, when Ophelia is talking about Hamlet,’ he said. ‘Hamlet sounds like the Earl of Essex to me. Were you thinking of Essex when you wrote this?’

Will smiled. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘And perhaps not.’

‘Richard will play Prince Hamlet, yes?’ said Augustine.

‘Of course!’ Will said. ‘I wrote the part for him. He's our star actor. I'll play the ghost of Hamle's father. ’He looked at me. ‘Hamlet will wear black, Toby, and Ophelia will wear white.’

Henry finished his beer. ‘It's a good story, Will, with good parts for us all. But will the playgoers like it? It moves very slowly, and they like a play to be fast and exciting. Prince Hamlet knows that his uncle Claudius murdered the king his father. But he doesn't do anything about it for a long time. He just talks about it. And in the end nearly everybody dies, one way or another.’

Augustine didn't agree with that. ‘You haven't understood the play, Henry. It is exciting, very exciting. The play is inside Hamlet himself. He wants to kill his uncle, but he can't Murder is wrong. But he must kill him, because of his father. We can all understand how he feels.’

All this time Richard Burbage was silent. He was reading bits of the play again. Now he put down the paper in his hand and looked up His eyes were bright, excited.

‘Have any of you really listened to the language of this play? This is your best play yet, Will—the best of them all. Just listen to the language, the poetry!’ He stood up, and his great voice filled the room.

To be, or not to be—that is the question…

We sat and listened, silently, while that wonderful voice brought the words to life. Will watched him, smiling. He knew that Richard, like him, was in love with words. …To die, to sleep—

To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause.

Richard Burbage was right, of course. The people loved the play, they loved Burbage as Hamlet, they cried for poor Ophelia's death, and they shouted for the murderer Claudius to die. I think it was Will's most famous play.

Will's father died in September 1601. In his last years John Shakespeare was a happy man. His son was famous, and the Shakespeare family was important again in Stratford. But there weren't many children in the family. Will's sister Joan was married and had a little boy, but Will's brothers didn't have any children.

Susanna, Will's older daughter, was now eighteen, and Will said to her one day:

‘We must find you a husband soon, Susanna.’

But Susanna shook her head. ‘Oh, I don't want to be married, Father, thank you.’

We all smiled at that, because there was already a young man who was often a visitor at New Place. That was John Hall, a clever young doctor. Will liked him.

Back in London, the theatres were always full, and actors were now important people in the city. Will and I were now living in very fine lodgings in Silver Street, with the Mountjoy family. The Globe and the Lord Chamberlain's Men were doing very well, and the older actors in the company were making money, and buying houses and land. But some people still thought that actors were dangerous, wicked people.

Then Queen Elizabeth died, on the 24th of March 1603, at Richmond. I remember the day well. The theatres were closed—you can't have plays when a queen is dying—and we were all at Henry Condell's house. He and John Heminges lived very near our lodgings in Cripplegate.

We were all very worried. The new King of England was James the First. He was already King of Scotland, and he had a young wife, Queen Anne of Denmark, and three young children. But what was he like? Would he be a good king? And, most importantly, did he like plays?

‘If King James doesn't like plays,’ said Henry Condell, ‘we're finished. There are already a lot of Puritans on the London City Council, and they'd love to close the theatres down.’

Henry always looked at the black side of everything.

‘Well, he's written a lot of books himself,’ said Will ‘Perhaps he'll be interested in plays, too We'll just have to wait and see.’

We didn't have to wait long. On the 19th of May I was underneath the stage in the Globe. I was trying to mend a broken door in the floor of the stage. We used this door when a ghost came on or went off in a cloud of smoke. Suddenly, I heard feet running across the stage. I looked up through the hole, and saw Will and John Heminges and Richard Burbage. They were all very excited.

‘Listen to this, Toby,’ said Will. He was holding a piece of paper in his hand. ‘It's a letter from King James! From today, we are the King's Men! We're working for the King himself, and he wants to see all the plays.’

‘We're going to have new red coats to wear when we go to court,’ Richard said.

‘And,’ John said,’ he's going to pay us 20 for every play at court. What do you think about that, Toby?’

We were all laughing and smiling now. ‘Well, John,’ I said. ‘If we're so rich, can I have a new door? I can't mend this one again—it's too old.’

That summer the plague came back. By July a thousand people were dying every week in London. One of them was the little son of Will's friend, Ben Jonson. By the end of the year there were 33, 000 dead in England. The theatres closed, and the King's Men went on tour.

Will and I spent the summer at Stratford. When Christmas came, the King's Men put on a lot of plays at court. The King was at Hampton Court Palace that year, which was outside London, well away from the plague. I couldn't go because I fell off my horse one day and broke my leg. Stupid thing to do!I had to stay at home, but Will told me all about it when he came back.

‘The new King and Queen like to enjoy themselves, Toby,’ he said. ‘They're a happy family. Prince Henry, Who's nine, is very a nice little boy, and his sister Elizabeth is beautiful. Little Prince Charles is only two. ’He was silent for a minute. Perhaps he was thinking about Hamnet. Then he went on,’ Qieen Anne likes plays very much. She likes music and dancing, too—she showed her legs in one dance!’

‘My word!’ I said. ‘Things like that never happened at court in Queen, Elizabeth's days.’

‘We live in different times, Toby. A lot of things are going to change.’

But change only comes slowly. The King's Men went from one success to another. At the King's court at Christmas 1604, there were twenty-two plays, and eight of them were Will's. In 1605 there were thirteen plays at court—and ten of them were Will's.

We always did the plays at the Globe first, before we took them to court. Will was writing more slowly now, but during these years he wrote some of his best plays: Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. That was a sad, dark play. When King Lear carried his dead daughter Cordelia on to the stage…Well, every man, woman, and child in the Globe was crying. It's true. Richard Burbage played Lear, of course. What an actor he was!

During the next few years, the plague was always with us. Some years it was bad, other years not so bad. When the theatres in London closed, we went on tour. Well, the King's Men did. Will and I were mostly at home in Stratford in the summers. Will was usually writing, and I did bits of business for him when I could.

Susanna married Dr John Hall in June, 1607, and Will's granddaughter Elizabeth was born in February the next year. We had a very cold winter that year. The river Thames in London froze right up to Westminster. People had parties and cooked sheep over fires on the ice.

Will's brother Edmund died that winter—he was only twenty-seven—and Will's mother died in September the next year.

Will was writing a different kind of play at this time. John Heminges said they were dark, cruel plays, and that Will was only looking at the black side of people. But that was the thing about Will. He was still changing, trying new kinds of poetry and stories in his plays all the time. And suddenly, there was a new kind of play, full of laughing and spring flowers and love: The Winter's Tale.

When we were in London, we often went in the evenings to the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside it was a very good inn, with good beer, and all the writers and poets in London went there.

We were there one evening in the winter of 1610, I think it was. A lot of Will's friends were there—actors, writers. Ben Jonson was there, of course. He was a great drinker all his life. He was writing a lot of plays now and was doing very well. But he never had any money—Will always paid for the beer.

At first, the talk was all about King James and his court. We didn't like the King so much now—he was more interest-ed in horses than in plays. Then Ben remembered something about The Winter's Tale. He knew, really, that Will's plays were the best, but he always liked to find mistakes if he could.

‘Now, why did you put Bohemia by the sea, Will?’ he said. ‘Bohemia's in the middle of Europe! There's no sea for a hundred miles, you stupid man!’

‘Your plays are very clever, Ben,’ Richard Burbage said, ‘but they smell of the schoolbook, don't they, Will?’

Will laughed. ‘How many people are going to worry about that, Ben? What does it matter? They liked the play at court. The Queen said it was a very sweet play, and the King—’

‘The King!’ Ben said loudly. His face was red and angry. King James sometimes fell asleep during Ben's plays. ‘The King,’ he went on excitedly, ‘is a very stupid man! I told him, I said it to his face: ‘Sir, you don't understand poetry!’

John Heminges laughed. ‘Oh my word!’ he said. ‘What a terrible man you are, Ben! I don't know how you've lived so long!’

Will laughed too, but he said, ‘Ben, you must be careful. You don't want the King to be your enemy. Don't forget that he pays twice as much as Queen Elizabeth did—and sees twice as many plays.’

‘Money?' shouted Bed. He loved to argue about anything. ‘We're poets and actors, not businessmen! What does money matter?’

‘It puts bread and meat in your stomach, and a coat on your back,’ said Will, drinking his beer. ‘And you're the first to shout if you haven't got any money.’

Ben banged his beer glass on the table. ‘Now listen, Mr William Shakespeare of Stratford, with your fine big house and your expensive horses, you wrote in your play King Lear that money was—’

‘Oh, do stop it, you two! John Heminges said. He turned to talk to me, but a few minutes later Ben was arguing about another of Will's plays.

‘And what about Antony and Cleopatra? What kind of writing is that? You never know which place you're in! One minute you're in Egypt, the next minute you're in Rome, then you're at sea on a ship, then back in Egypt again—’

Richard Burbage didn't like that. ‘You're wrong again, Ben. It's only you who can't follow the play. You think Londoners are stupid, but they understand more than you do! And another thing…’

I decided to go home to bed. Ben's a fine man, but he does talk so much. He goes on and on. When I left, he was calling for more beer. I knew they would be there in the Mermaid for most of the night.

‘You're losing your hair, Will,’ I said to him one day.

‘We're both getting old, Toby,’ he said. ‘There's no escape from it. Old and tired. ’

‘Don't talk like that,’ I said. ‘You're only forty-seven. There's still some life in you yet. And another twenty plays!’

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘No, I think the poetry is nearly finished. I'm getting tired, Toby. I need a rest. I think The Tempest is going to be my last play. I'm saying goodbye to the stage. Times are changing, and people want a different kind of play now. There are lots of new, younger writers, who know how to please the playgoer. I'm not modern any more.

He never usually talked like this, and I didn't like it.

‘There's only one Will Shakespeare,’ I said, ‘and he'll always be modern. Now, I must get on. I've got to go out and buy all the cloth for the new costumes in The Tempest. Why did you have to put it on an island? When the ship goes down, the actors all have to come on stage in wet clothes. It takes a day to dry the costumes, so that means two lots of clothes for everyone—wet and dry!’

That brought him back to life. ‘Can't you read?’ he said crossly. ‘If you look at Gonzalo's words in Act 2, Toby, you'll see that it's a magic island—and their clothes stay dry all the time. So they'll only need one lot.’

I laughed, and then he laughed too.

But it was true, he was tried. I could see it, and others could see it too. But the company was always wanting new plays, and we had two theatres now. There was the Globe, and now we had the Blackfriars theatre. Plays in the Globe were in the open air and always had to be in daylight, but the Blackfriars was a building with a roof. We could put on plays in the evenings and in any weather. It also made more money, because every playgoer had a seat and paid a shilling for it. In the Globe they paid a penny to stand.

In February 1612 Will's brother Gilbert died in London, and just a year later his brother Richard died in Stratford. That was in February, too. Will was the oldest brother, and he was the only one still alive. We spent most of our time in Stratford these days. Will didn't act in plays now. He went to rehearsals for his new plays, of course, but he was always happy to hurry home again.

We were riding back to Stratford in the spring of 1613 and Stopped for the night at the Crown Inn in Oxford. Will was very friendly with the landlord John Davenant and his wife Jane. The next morning, when we left, their little son, William, came running out to say goodbye to his good friend Mr Shakespeare. He was a bright boy, about seven years old, with much the same colour hair and eyes as Will. Will talked with him for a few minutes, then gave him a penny.

Later, when we were riding along the road, I said, ‘The last time we were in Oxford, I heard some talk in the town. Someone said that you were the father of Jane Davenant's son.’

Will laughed, ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘People say that, do they? What will they say next?’

‘Jane's a nice-looking woman. ’I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. ‘Isn't she?’

‘Come on, Toby. You know that Jane is a good wife to John.’ He was still smiling. ‘You mustn't listen to stories like that.’

I never believed that story myself. But many years after Will died, William Davenant told a lot of people that he was Shakespeare's son. But how did he know? His mother wouldn't tell him!

Will was happy to get home, to see his daughters and John Hall, and little Elizabeth, who was just five then. He was happy to see Anne, I think. He never said much to her, nor she to him. But after more than thirty years together, you've already said everything, haven't you?

I think Judith was Will's favourite daughter. Susanna was brighter and cleverer, but Judith was Hamnet's twin, and Will still remembered his son. He wanted a son, or a grandson, so much. Judith was twenty-eight now, and still no husband. But Will told her not to hurry. She must find the right man first.

Will worked hard all his life, and I think it was all for his family. I remember some lines from his play The Tempest, when Prospero is talking to his daughter Miranda.

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

Of thee, my dear one, thee my daughter…

Will did write another play, of course. That was Henry VIII and he wrote it because the King's daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was getting married. The King's Men had to have a new play for a special day like that.

We were in London for rehearsals at the Globe, and the actors put on the new play for the first time on the 29th of June, 1613. I remember the date well.

It happened soon after the play began. Richard Burbage was on stage and he suddenly looked up and stopped in the middle of a word.

‘Fire!’ he shouted. ‘The theatre's on fire!’

Wooden buildings burn fast, and Henry Condell shouted, ‘Everybody out! Quickly!’

The crowd of playgoers began to hurry to the doors, and I ran round to open them. We could all see the smoke now, and John Heminges shouted to Will, ‘The playbooks! We must get the playbooks out!’

Everybody got out and no one was hurt. One man's coat caught fire and his friend put the fire out with a bottle of beer. But the Globe burnt right down to the ground in an hour. Poor old John Heminges just stood there and cried.

But you can't kill a theatre that easily. A year later there was a new Globe in the same place. Bigger and better than the old one. People said it was the finest playhouse in England.

We didn't often go to London in those last years. Will was happy at home in Stratford with his family. He had time for his garden, time to talk to his Stratford friends, time to play with his granddaughter Elizabeth. He read his plays again, and he and I talked and laughed about the old days.

Judith got married at last in February 1616. She was thirty-one then, and married a man called Thomas Quiney, who was twenty-six. Will wasn't too happy about it.

‘Judith loves him very much,’ he said quietly to me. ‘But I'm not sure about him. I think she's making a mistake.’

He was right, of course. Will was usually right about people. Thomas Quiney was lazy, drank too much, and went with other women.

But Will didn't live to find that out. In March he went to London for a party at the Mermaid Tavern. Ben Jonson was now the play wright for the court of King James. The King was paying him some money every year, and Ben wanted to give a party for his friends.

It was a good party, I heard. But Will caught a fever and then rode home through the cold spring rain. When he got back to New Place, he was not a well man.

He died on the 23rd of April, in the year 1616.

They put his body in Holy Trinity Church, down by the river Avon. It was a bright, windy day, I remember. Ben Jonson came down from London, and cried in the church. He was a wild man, was Ben, always fighting and arguing about plays and poetry. But he loved his friend. He came up to me outside the church.

‘Toby,’ he said. ‘Will was a good, true man, and I loved him. We'll never see another poet like him in England.’

Well, all that was thirty-three years ago. I'm an old man, and everyone is dying around me. Anne Shakespeare died in 1623, and John Hall went about twelve years later, fighting the plague Susanna's still alive, and Judith. She had three sons, but they all died. So there's no boy in the family to keep poor Will's name alive. Susanna's girl Elizabeth has had no children, and she's forty-one already…Susanna still comes to visit me sometimes, and we talk about the old days.

We live in sad times now; the Puritans cut King Charles's head off last January. But one day we'll have a king again. Then there'll be singing and dancing and plays.

You'll see. Oh yes. People won't forget William Shakespeare. In 400 years' time, the theatres will still be full. People will still laugh, and cry, over his plays. He was the finest poet that ever wrote in the English language. I think he knew that himself. There's some lines in one of his sonnets, I remember…

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments.

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme…

——The End——

[书虫 第1级] 系列—— 

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03、The Witches of Pendle：213230、228831

04、The Phantom of the Opera：653889、622687

05、The Monkey's Paw：856702

06、The Elephant Man：716293

07、The Coldest Place on Earth：486109

[书虫 第2级] 系列—— 

08、William Shakespeare：423705、408104（本集）