介绍： It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. 
在莎士比亚的时代，...

介绍： It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. 
在莎士比亚的时代，没有任何一个女性能写出莎士比亚那样的戏剧。假设莎士比亚有一位同样天赋异禀的妹妹，名叫朱迪斯，那会发生什么。因为实际情况难以考证，我们只能想象。
Shakespeare himself went, very probably, - his mother was an heiress - to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin - Ovid, Virgil and Horace - and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighbourhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right.
莎士比亚的母亲很有可能继承了一笔财产，于是她送莎士比亚去了语法学校，他在那里学习拉丁语，阅读奥维德、维吉尔和贺拉斯，掌握了语法和逻辑。众所周知，莎士比亚小时候是个野孩子，偷猎过兔子，也许还射杀过鹿，还迫于无奈，早早地就和附近一户人家的女孩结了婚，那个女孩远远不到生育年纪，却早早地给他生了孩子。
That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practising his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen.
一番折腾过后，他不得不去伦敦寻找新出路。他似乎对戏剧很有感觉，于是开始在剧院门口给别人牵马。很快，他就进入剧院，成为一名成功的演员，从此生活在宇宙中心，结识各种各样的人，他登台演出，上街卖艺，甚至被召见去了女王的宫殿。
Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil.
与此同时，我们假设的那位天赋异禀的妹妹却留在家里。她和哥哥一样有冒险精神、想象力丰富，渴望认识外面的世界。但她没能去上学。她没机会学习语法和逻辑，更别提阅读贺拉斯和维吉尔了。
She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers.
她偶尔有空时会拿起一本书，可能是她哥哥的，读上几页。然后她的父母会突然出现，让她去补袜子或者看锅子，不要沉迷什么读书看报。
They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter—indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of her father’s eye.
他们说得很严厉，却是一片好心，他们都是老实人，明白对于一个女人来说什么是现实，他们爱女儿——当然，她极有可能是父亲的掌上明珠。
Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon,however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighbouring wool-stapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father.
也许她曾偷偷溜进放苹果的阁楼，匆匆写下几页文字，小心藏起，或是一把火烧掉。很快，她还不到十几岁，就被安排和附近一位羊毛商人的儿子订了婚。她讨厌这桩婚事，又哭又闹，结果遭到父亲一顿毒打。
He then ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart?
打完以后，父亲不再责骂她，反倒求她不要伤害他，不要因为这段婚姻丢了他的脸。他含泪说，他可以给她买条珍珠项链或者漂亮裙子。她怎么能反抗？怎么能伤父亲的心？
The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer's night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen.
The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother’s, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre.
但她有才华，因此她做出了决定。一个夏日的夜晚，她带上自己那点家当，沿着一根绳子爬出去，出发去了伦敦。那时她还不到十七岁。树篱上唱歌的鸟儿都不如她的嗓音那样婉转，她和哥哥一样对音韵有着天生的敏感，和哥哥一样对戏剧情有独钟。
She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager - a fat, looselipped man - guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting - no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress.
她来到剧院门口，说她想演戏。男人们笑话她。剧院经理——一个口无遮拦的胖男人——狂笑不止，他大吼，说要是女人会演戏，贵宾犬都会跳舞了。
He hinted - you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways.
最后他说，女人不能当演员。他暗示——你可想而知——她根本没法练习演技。她半夜能去小酒馆吃饭，能在大街上游荡吗？但她有写小说的天赋，她渴望观察男男女女的生活，研究他们的言行，从中获取丰富的素材。
At last—for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows—at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman.
最后——因为她年轻，长相又酷似诗人莎士比亚，灰色的眼睛，弯弯的眉毛——演员经理尼克·格林对她起了怜悯之心；后来，她发现自己怀上了这位绅士的孩子。
And so—who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?—killed herself one winter’s night
and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.
当一颗诗人的心锁进一个女人的身体里，纠缠不清，谁能想到它那么焦灼和激烈？一个冬夜，她自杀了，葬在某个十字路口，就是现在大象城堡旅馆外面公交车停靠的地方。
That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare’s day had had Shakespeare’s genius.
我想，如果一个莎士比亚时代的女人拥有莎士比亚那样的才华，她的结局一定会和这个故事差不多。