譯/李京倫
For years scholars have debated what inspired William Shakespeare's writings. Now, with the help of software typically used by professors to nab cheating students, two writers have discovered an unpublished manuscript they believe the Bard of Avon consulted to write "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Richard III," "Henry V" and seven other plays.
The findings were made by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, who describe them in a book published this month by the academic press D.S. Brewer and the British Library. The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels," written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth.
多年以來，學者對莎士比亞創作靈感的來源時有議論。如今，拜教授常用以揪出抄襲學生的軟體之賜，兩名作者發現了一份未曾發表的手稿，而且他們認為，有「雅芬河畔的吟遊詩人」之稱的莎翁在創作「李爾王」、「馬克白」、「理查三世」、「亨利五世」和另七部戲本時，應該都參考了這份手稿。
麥卡錫和許魯特在二月問世的書中描述這個發現，此書由學術出版社「D．S．布魯爾」和大英圖書館出版。作者未指莎士比亞剽竊，而是認為他讀過這份題為「叛亂與叛亂者簡論」的手稿並受到啟發。手稿寫於16世紀晚期，作者是英格蘭與愛爾蘭女王伊麗莎白一世宮廷裡一個不太重要的人物喬治．諾斯。
In reviewing the book before it was published, David Bevington, professor emeritus in the humanities at the University of Chicago and editor of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (7th Edition)," called it "a revelation" for the sheer number of correlations with the plays.
McCarthy used decidedly modern techniques to marshal his evidence, employing WCopyfind, an open-source plagiarism software, which picked out common words and phrases in the manuscript and the plays.
貝文頓是美國芝加哥大學人文學名譽教授，也是「莎士比亞全集（第七版）」的主編，他在此書出版前寫了書評指出，書中列出這份手稿與莎翁劇作相關之處多到驚人，堪稱「一大發現」。
麥卡錫用全然現代的技術搜集匯整他的證據，用了一款名叫WCopyfind的開放原始碼抄襲偵測軟體，這款軟體能搜索出這份手稿和莎翁劇作裡共同的字和詞組。
In the dedication to his manuscript, for example, North urges those who might see themselves as ugly to strive to be inwardly beautiful, to defy nature. He uses a succession of words to make the argument, including "proportion," "glass," "feature," "fair," "deformed," "world," "shadow" and "nature." In the opening soliloquy of Richard III ("Now is the winter of our discontent ...") the hunchbacked tyrant uses the same words in virtually the same order to come to the opposite conclusion: that since he is outwardly ugly, he will act the villain he appears to be.
In another passage, North uses six terms for dogs, from the noble mastiff to the lowly cur and "trundle-tail," to argue that just as dogs exist in a natural hierarchy, so do humans. Shakespeare uses essentially the same list of dogs to make similar points in "King Lear" and "Macbeth."
例如，在手稿的獻詞中，諾斯勉勵自覺其貌不揚者努力追求內在美，莫向自然低頭。他用了一連串的詞來表達論點，包括「勻稱」、「鏡」、「容貌」、「美麗」、「畸形」、「世界」、「陰影」和「性情」。在「理查三世」開場獨白裡（第一句就是著名的「現在我們嚴冬般的宿怨，或譯為我們隱忍難堪的嚴冬…」），這個駝背暴君用了相同的一些詞，而且先後次序幾無二致，不過他得到了相反的結論：既然長相醜陋如惡棍，索性行為亦然。
在另一個段落裡，諾斯用了六個詞指稱狗，從高貴的獒犬到卑微的惡犬再到「卷尾毛」，主張就像狗天生就有貴賤之分，人類也是一樣。莎士比亞在「李爾王」和「馬克白」中，用了幾乎一樣的六個詞來指稱狗，並陳述類似的主張。
In 1576, North was living at Kirtling Hall near Cambridge, England, the estate of Baron Roger North. It was here, McCarthy says, that he wrote his manuscript.
The manuscript is a diatribe against rebels, arguing that all rebellions against a monarch are unjust and doomed to fail. While Shakespeare had a more ambiguous position on rebellion, McCarthy said he clearly mined North's treatise for themes and characters.
1576年時，諾斯住在英格蘭劍橋郡附近、羅傑．諾斯男爵的柯特陵莊園。麥卡錫說，諾斯就是在這裡寫出這份手稿。
這份手稿抨擊了叛亂者，主張所有對君王的叛亂均屬不義，且注定失敗。麥卡錫說，雖然莎士比亞對叛亂的態度比較曖昧，但他在構思主題和人物時，顯然借用了諾斯的論述。
說文解字看新聞
16世紀劇作家莎士比亞是西方文藝史上最傑出的作家之一，在英格蘭集市城鎮「雅芬河畔史特拉福鎮」出生長大。他並非憑一己之力編織出所有劇作的情節，有時採用古老的故事，有時借用年代較近的義大利作家（如薄伽丘）的故事，家喻戶曉的故事（如羅密歐與茱麗葉Romeo and Juliet、無事生非Much Ado About Nothing）和罕為人知的（如奥賽羅Othello）都有。創作歷史劇時，以羅馬史為題材的他大多參考諾思翻譯的「希臘羅馬名人傳」，以英格蘭史為題材的大多參考何林塞與霍爾的編年史。
本文說的是兩名研究者使用抄襲偵測軟體，發現莎士比亞的靈感來源很可能是一本未曾出版的手稿。他們發現，莎翁戲本多個段落的關鍵字用字順序，與手稿幾乎一樣。紐時用了「參考」（consult）和「提取」（mine，開採的引申義）描述莎翁的手法。
其實，研究者進一步發現，在手稿和「理查三世」開場獨白裡，文中提到的八個關鍵字「緊密並列」（tight juxtaposition），諾斯在手稿中的77個字內用上這八個字，莎翁在理查三世92個字內用上，研究者搜尋了包含六萬多本早期英格蘭書籍的資料庫，沒有一本在連續200個字內用上同樣這八個字，研究者說，莎翁碰巧（by chance）這麼做的可能性微乎其微。
文/李京倫
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