Hi everyone, and welcome back to酒馆. Good news, we have another new course!

Yeah!

By the way, hi, 安澜.

Hello.

我们的新专辑【莎士比亚扫盲班】, the Bluffer's Guide to Shakespeare上线了, 璐璐和安澜陪你走进莎士比亚十部最有名的戏剧, 解读文豪笔下的喜怒哀乐, 嬉笑怒骂, 让沙翁的戏剧不再遥远.

I think the last time we did this was to introduce our course the Bluffer's Guide to Literature. 上一次和安澜录发刊词还是在录上一个专辑【英文名著扫盲班】.

Yes, that's right. And as we were doing that course, we realized we didn't actually put any Shakespeare into that particular course. So I thought we should do one on Shakespeare.

The Bluffer's Guide to Shakespeare. I think everyone has heard of Shakespeare even if they have never really read anything that he wrote.

就算你没有读过任何莎士比亚的东西, 但至少也知道莎士比亚这个人.

Exactly.

Famous all around.

Pretty much.

Do you guys actually have to read Shakespeare in school?

Of course, pretty much in every English-speaking country, you have to study Shakespeare.

When I was younger, I had to read, I think it was about two of his plays? and then when I went to college, before going to university, I also read another one of his plays as well.

So a lot of the kids, even if they don't want to, they have to read Shakespeare.

They have to read it, they have to do exams on Shakespeare. Yeah, I would say a lot of kids don't really like it. It is quite old-fashioned.

But for me I personally loved it. I love Shakespeare. Well, put it this way, his works are the second most published in the English speaking world.

是英语世界里出版次数第二多的. What's the first?

The Bible.

Of course. I know the 3rd one is Agatha Christie. 第三名是阿加莎·克里斯蒂.

That’s right.

He wrote many plays and also poems.

Yeah, he's famous for writing 37 plays and 154 sonnets.

Sonnet就是14行诗，是一种特别的诗体.

Yeah, it's a particular form of poetry. Because of his plays and also his poetry, he was regarded as a literary genius from the very moment he died.

中文里也把它叫做“文豪”, 这也是为什么很多时候我们听到说“莎翁”，这个就是对他的一个尊称.

And he also was famously inventing a lot of words.

That's right. It’s difficult to really calculate how many words he invented, but it's around 1,700.

And some of the words you wouldn't imagine was invented by him, was actually invented by him, like ‘advertising’ was invented by Shakespeare.

Yeah, luggage, gossip, and ... I'm a little bit confused about this myself, but apparently Shakespeare invented the word elbow.

就是一个肘部, 手肘, elbow. Gossip, 八卦这个词是莎士比亚创造的, 我能信.

Yeah.

This were obviously things that if you check online, you would find about him, the fact sheets.

Who is Shakespeare?

Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in a small town called Stratford-upon-Avon.

That's why he was known as the Bard of Avon.

That's right. Now Shakespeare's family was, I won't say wealthy, but they were kind of relatively well off, they had money. But when he was a child, his family actually lost a lot of that money, so he was unable to go to university even though that he went to the local school and learnt Latin.

The two facts that I know about Shakespeare's personal life is, first of all, he married early and his wife's name is Anne Hathaway, 就是安妮·海瑟薇, 现在女演员的名字. Her parents probably got it from Shakespeare's wife.

Pretty much. So he married Anne Hathaway when he was only 18. And Anne Hathaway was actually quite a bit older than him.

这也是姐弟恋的先锋.

And also the other fact is one of his kids was actually named Hamlet or Hamnet, something like that.

That's right. His only son was called Hamlet or Hamnet, both forms of the name were used back then. It was when he died that Shakespeare wrote his famous play Hamlet.

So that's a bit of a sad story, background story.

Now of course, everyone knows Shakespeare is a famous playwright, 他是一个非常伟大的剧作家, but he was actually acting himself.

Well, yeah. There are quite a few plays where scholars think Shakespeare was playing maybe the lead or one of the supporting roles.

His money came from writing plays, but also acting in them, and in many cases actually owning the theater.

Oh, the Globe Theatre, 环球剧场. 现在在伦敦泰晤士河岸的 Globe Theatre是当年吗?不是, 是重建的.

That is not the original.

It's four hundred, five hundred years ago, so there's no way that the original would have survived, the original was burnt down. It was only in the 1990s, it was rebuilt;

but it's not actually on the site of the original Globe Theatre. They moved it a little bit closer to the river.

But they were trying to make it like the original one.

Yeah, except with better fire exits and fire safety.

So that's a little bit about the background, about Shakespeare.

I think most people the reason why they can't really start reading Shakespeare's plays, it's because most people think it's too高大上, it's too difficult, it's too obscure, weird language.

So back then, was it supposed to be more like for learned people当时是不是也是很高大上的那种很有文化的人?

Of course not.

Back then if they really want to make it for the educated elite, they would have use Latin or French, but Shakespeare wrote in English, and he wrote in the language of the time.

I know that Shakespeare has this reputation for being kind of very difficult, very obscure, kind of very elitist. But actually the stories are very simple in many cases. And that's what we're gonna show in our course is that some of these stories are very simple to understand.

而且那些剧情说的基本上都是一些, 人世间天天都在发生的事儿, 这些喜怒哀乐, 包括这些悲欢离合.

They are pretty much timeless.

That's right. I would say the thing that really makes Shakespeare “Shakespeare” are the characters. Because even with the worst villain like Richard III, Shakespeare portrays different sides to him.

用文学分析的话来说就是说沙翁笔下的角色都是round characters, 都是有血有肉的, 有很多侧面的, 不是那种扁平化, 脸谱化的角色.

Maybe, some of them are, but the main characters are never just black or white, good or bad.

And that is also what is special about Shakespeare is, and what makes him so timeless is because a lot of the themes are pretty much the same as today.

And because of his characters been so rounded, we can interpret them in different ways, and interpretations of Shakespeare have changed so much. Like for example, the Merchant of Venice, which we will discuss in our course.

比如说《威尼斯商人》, 随着不同的时代, 我们对它的解读也会不同, 绝大部分它讲的故事, 它讲的主题都是会永远不过时的, 只是会根据时代不同, 我们有不同的视角和不同的理解.

The other misunderstanding most people have about Shakespeare, I think, is because nowadays if you say, “This weekend I'm going to the theater to watch a Shakespearean play.” People would think you're so pretentious!

好装啊, 你装文化人，就很文艺. But back then it wasn't the case at all.

No. The Globe Theatre when Shakespeare was actually performing these plays was not this kind of elitist高大上的. It was smelly ... Because there were not enough toilets. Well, there were no toilets. Wow.

Everyone used to come to the theater because that was one of the principal forms of entertainment. If you were rich, you could actually dress in your finest clothes and sit on the stage so that people could watch you as well.

对, 这个很奇葩, 就是有钱人当时去看莎士比亚剧, 他们可以直接坐台上. Yeah, 但是不参演就是坐在台上.

But for the poorest of poor, they can also get in with a tiny amount of money, and then stand right next to the stage.

They would stay in the pit. They would be called the groundlings. And what they would do is when they want to go and see a play, they would put their money into a box, that is why in English we call it a box office.

对, 就现在说票房或者售票的那个地方叫做box office, 是因为当时他们买票那个钱就丢到一个box里.

That’s right.

如果大家没有去看过环球剧场, 可能不知道环球剧场和环球剧院, 它是一个O型的, 中间是中空的, 中间是没有凳子的, 那些老百姓去看戏的时候, 直接是站在那，站一整场戏.

What if it rains?

They get wet. But I don't think they really would have cared that much. Because one of the things about the theatre is that they would normally show these plays in the afternoon, most of the people that would go to the theatre, they probably spent the afternoon in the pub, many of the people attending the theatre were probably drunk.

Wow.