读完莎士比亚的诗后会感觉他不是“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.

　　莎士比亚十四行诗之116中首句“呵，我绝不让两颗真心遇到障碍”(Let me not to the marriage of true minds )近些年成为婚礼上常引用的诗章，而它的流行度与在葬礼上常用法兰克·辛纳屈(Frank Sinatra)的歌《我的路》(My Way)一样。

　　将莎士比亚十四行诗和性联系在一起，绝不是什么新鲜事了。维多利亚时期的人都很清楚这件事。

　　图片来源：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

　　如今泰晤士报文学副刊上“我们是否可以从莎士比亚十四行诗中看出他的性取向”口水战更是吸引了广大读者的注意力。十四行诗之20可能成为今后学者争论的主角。第二十首首行：

　　你有副女人的脸，由造化亲手塑就， 你，我热爱的情妇兼情郎，

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

　　And the end couplet is

　　结束句是：

　　但造化造你既专为女人愉快，让我占有，而她们享受，你的爱。

　　(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《泰晤士文学副刊》上展开口水激战的双方分别是布莱恩·威克斯爵士(Sir Brian Vickers)和斯坦力·威尔斯(Stanley Wells)。前者对莎翁同性恋的观点持怀疑态度，后者倾向于带着莎士比亚个人的同性恋感情读他的诗歌。威克斯认为我们应该假定诗人就是“诗人身份”，莎士比亚绝不是哈姆雷特。威尔斯则认为莎士比亚实际是代表他“本人”。(请注意，这场口水战是在《泰晤士文学副刊》上，而不是在狗和鸭(Dog and Duck)这种沙龙酒店的争论。)

　　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.

　　可能有人会觉得，这些著名学者在性和十四行诗上的兴趣完全是学术的。他们已经步入了莎翁口中的“情欲应已被驯服(heyday in the blood is tame)”。这两个老翁在波洛尼厄斯(Polonius 哈姆雷特中的大臣)的年纪，两个人加起来已经有155岁了，还思考着在巴德(Bard)二十几岁时候性方面会有什么萌动，而这又是否会体现在诗歌中。这实在是令人感动。

　　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 “love”? glove / dove / above – that’s it). There are infinitely more in Italian – the home of the sonnet.

　　十四行诗读起来很困难，尤其是到“六行诗节”(sestet)或者最后六行的时候。用英文写出来也是很困难的。乔治·奥威尔(George Orwell)说，英语诗人的押韵词是极为有限的，比如有多少个和“love”(爱)押韵的词呢?glove/dove/above——也就是这些。意大利是十四行诗的发源地，意大利语中的押韵词就无限多了。

　　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.

　　尽管这为信息闭塞时代提供了写作素材，不过现在莎士比亚的性和十四行诗的关联也绝不是新鲜事了。维多利亚时期的人都很清楚这件事。英国作家奥斯卡·王尔德(Oscar Wilde)在他最后的审判中引用了十四行诗，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.

　　自从20世纪70年代酷儿理论(queer theory)兴起，“Sodometries”(文艺复兴时期的词，即sodomy)——尤其是在文艺复兴时期(现在称为近代早期的)文学——成为一种极为重要的方法。莎士比亚的双性恋倾向被用到现代文献中。2007年出版的《解放了的莎士比亚》(Shakespeare Unbound)是最近最好的一部。作者荷乃·维斯(RenéWeis)对前几篇十四行诗(包括第20首)进行了独到开放式解读：这些诗歌是否是为年轻潇洒的南安普敦伯爵(Earl of Southampton)所作?谁会是诗人描写的对象呢?读后使人深受启迪。维斯也探讨了在他们狂妄的二十几岁的时候，莎翁和当时最公开的同性恋克里斯托弗·马洛(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?

　　莎士比亚是同性恋吗?还是双性恋?还是在不同时期有不同的性取向，两者兼有?他曾透露过这个秘密吗?在1861年以前，鸡奸也都是要受绞刑的。最大的疑问是：这又有什么关系?

　　I think it does because Shakespeare is a “living” 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.

　　我认为确实有关系，因为莎士比亚是一个“名垂千古”的作家，我们怎样解读影响着他在演出中如何呈现。在演出中，我们应该将《哈姆雷特》中的奥斯里克(Osric)公然地表现为同性恋么?罗森·克兰茨(Rosenkrantz)和吉尔登·斯吞(Guildenstern)呢?导演应该在《威尼斯商人》(Merchant of Venice)中强调同性恋的主题么?维斯对此持肯定态度。那些异装癖的次要情节又该如何处理呢?莎士比亚是双性恋么?冒着激怒威克斯诅咒的风险，我觉得可能要给出肯定的回答。不信请再读一读十四行诗的第二十首。

　　译注："酷儿"是指在文化中所有非常态(nonstraight)的表达方式,包括男同性恋、女同性恋和双性恋的立场，也包括所有其他潜在的、不可归类的非常态立场。