Hamlet 2: The Characters and the Questions

2 - the Characters and the Questions

2- 角色问题：哈姆莱特这个角色为何如此具有魅力？

In our introductory course, we noted that Shakespeare’s plays remain so captivating across the centuries because they have room for us. The plays are full of questions that are posed and never answered--and that make space for each new generation to offer their own response to the plays. To give you a sense of how one work can evoke many different responses, we’re speaking with two different scholars for this course on Hamlet. In episode 1, Professor Paulina Kewes spoke to the play’s political concerns. In this episode, Professor Simon Palfrey takes us inside the protagonist’s mind to think about the play’s philosophical and psychological questions.

在上一集中，我们强调，莎士比亚的戏剧历经数百年一直经久不衰，这是因为它们为我们留出了自由想象的空间。剧中提出了各种各样的问题，但无一例外，所有问题都没有特定的答案，因此，对于每一部莎剧，每个时代的读者和观众都可以有自己独到的见解。为了让听众们更好地感受莎剧是如何激发不同人的不同观点的，我们在戏剧《哈姆莱特》的这个板块，分别邀请了两位学者与我们进行分享。在上集节目中，保利娜·柯斯教授为我们分析了这部戏剧所探讨的政治问题。而在本集节目中，我们又邀请到了西蒙·帕尔弗里教授，他将带领我们进入戏剧主人公的精神世界，带我们去探索剧中所涉及的哲学和心理学问题。

Hi, I'm Simon Palfrey, I'm professor of English at Brasenose College, University of Oxford.

嗨，我是西蒙·帕尔弗里，是牛津大学布雷齐诺斯学院的一名教授。

One of the play’s most perplexing questions concerns the main character. Who is Hamlet? In this play, Shakespeare gives us someone who reveals more about himself than anyone else--he speaks the most lines of any Shakespearean character. And yet Hamlet is also one of the most unfathomable characters we’ll encounter in the plays.

在《哈姆莱特》这部戏剧中，最令读者和观众困惑的问题之一，与戏剧的主角哈姆莱特有关。人们常常会问：哈姆莱特究竟是个怎样的人？在这部戏剧中，莎士比亚对哈姆莱特着墨最多。然而，我们还是会觉得，即便哈姆莱特是莎翁笔下台词最多的一个角色，他依旧是最捉摸不透的。

So with this play Hamlet we've really got to start with the character of Hamlet becausethis play gives us the most mesmerizing, charismatic, intimate, mysterious, infuriating, dazzlingly intelligent, ferociously passionate, terminally damaged character in all of world literature. Never had such a bursting, mercurial, restlessly inventive person been encountered on stage or elsewhere and never had the sleepless and torturing experience of grief and loss and rage been encountered at such length, or depth. The heart of this character's appeal is that Hamlet seems to live or perhaps to relive, to test from the ground up what it means or what it might mean to be a human.

所以，我们对于这部戏剧的探讨，首先要从哈姆莱特这个角色入手。哈姆莱特是世界文学史上最具魅力、最引人入胜、最深刻、最神秘的一个人物形象。他让人愤怒，却也闪烁着智慧的光芒，他情绪澎湃激昂，最终却也无法逃脱被毁灭的结局。在他之前，戏剧舞台上从未出现过像他这样的角色，甚至在现实世界，我们也不曾见过这样的人物。没有人有他那样的爆发力，也没有人如他那般反复无常。他孜孜不倦乐于尝试新鲜事物，但同时又被巨大的悲伤、失落和愤怒情绪折磨，夜不能寐，他所遭遇的是前所未有的苦楚。哈姆莱特这个角色最大的魅力在于他对人生意义的理解似乎不断地在被反驳、被颠覆。

How does Shakespeare create such a complex and mesmerizing figure? His strategy is simple but powerful. In the character of Hamlet, Shakespeare combines opposites.

莎士比亚是如何塑造出哈姆莱特这样一个既复杂又迷人的角色的呢？他的方法其实很简单，但却十分有效，就是把各种矛盾对立的方面全都融合到了哈姆莱特一个人的身上。

And that experience with Hamlet is all the time one of contradictions and paradox and living the contradictions, living the paradox, living the questions that that produces. In Hamlet, we find someone who has reason but is the fool of passion. He seems to have choices, but he's constantly vulnerable to accidents. He has ideals, he believes in the beauty of humankind, and yet he's frankly disgusted by everything he encounters. He's loving and faithful and generous and forgiving and forbearing, he seems to be kind of democrat of the heart, and yet he's also a violent misogynist and an aristocratic snob.

一直以来，哈姆莱特都生活在矛盾和对立中，他不得不面对持续的矛盾、持续的对立、以及这些矛盾和对立所引发的一系列问题。在哈姆莱特身上，我们可以看到他理性的一面，但同时也可以感受到他鲁莽冲动的一面。他似乎拥有选择的权力，但面对一次又一次的意外状况时，他却一直处于弱势。他有理想，相信人性的美好，但他也毫不掩饰对周遭某些人和事的厌恶与反感。他仁爱忠诚，慷慨宽容，似乎还主张民主，但同时又对女性怀着深深的敌意。此外，他在待人接物时，也透露着贵族式的自命不凡和高高在上。

Hamlet is loving and generous both to his peers and to his social subordinates. He greets Horatio and the players with joy when they arrive in Elsinore, but he also extends friendship to his servants. When Horatio and the guards depart with the submissive words, “Our duty to your Honor,” Hamlet replies, “Your loves, as mine to you.” He insists that the humble players be treated with generosity, telling Polonius, “The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.” But to Polonius, Hamlet can be sarcastic and cruel, and even jokes after he kills him: “This counselor” he says “Is now most still, most secret, and most grave.”

哈姆莱特不仅对朋友慷慨仁慈，对下层民众亦是如此。当霍拉旭和宫廷演员们来到厄耳锡诺堡时，哈姆莱特热情地接待了他们，甚至还和他们成为了朋友。在一幕戏中，霍拉旭和守望者们正准备退下，他们谦卑地对哈姆莱特说“我们愿意为殿下尽忠”，哈姆莱特则回答道“让我们彼此保持着不渝的交情”。同样，哈姆莱特也坚持认为要以慷慨的态度接待那些地位卑微的宫廷演员，他对御前大臣波洛涅斯说“他们越是不配受这样的待遇，越可以显出你的谦虚有礼”。然而，除了这样慷慨仁慈的一面，哈姆莱特也有尖酸刻薄的一面。在面对波洛涅斯时，他对这位大臣却是极尽嘲讽，态度十分恶劣，甚至在误杀了波洛涅斯之后，面对波洛涅斯一动不动的尸体时，他还可以开玩笑般地说“这一位大臣”“现在变成非常谨严庄重的人了。”

He seems to be endlessly articulate and yet unable to explain his own actions or inaction. He seems to be devoted to truth, to be allergic to lies, and yet to find the possibility of expression and recognition only in play, in disguise and performance.

哈姆莱特似乎很善于言辞，但同时，他却无法很好地解释自己的种种作为和种种不作为。他似乎是一个坚持真理、憎恨谎言的人，然而却又只能通过戏剧、伪装和表演来表达自我、查明真相。

Hamlet has more words than anyone else in the play. And yet he often uses those words to explain that he cannot explain himself. Speaking about his task of revenge, he says “I do not know / Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do,’ Since I have cause, and will, and strength, and means / To do ’t.” He’s disgusted by the thought of people merely pretending to feel certain emotions by putting on a show of sighs or tears: “actions that a man might play,” as he says. But he himself puts on a show in order to find out the truth about his father’s death, saying, “I’ll have these players / Play something like the murder of my father / Before mine uncle.” Performance, in other words, both repels and attracts him.

哈姆莱特的台词是剧中所有角色里面最多的。然而，他的话语却又都无法精准地表达出他内心的想法和观点。谈到复仇计划时，他说“现在我明明有理由，有决心，有力量，有方法，可以动手干我所要干的事，可是我还是在说一些空话，只会说‘我要怎么怎么干’”。他十分反感人们只是为了假装有某种情绪而做出一副叹息落泪的样子，他说“谁都可以做作成这种样子”，但是他自己为了查明父亲被害的真相，却也开始装疯卖傻，他表示“我要叫这班演员在我的叔父面前表演一部跟我的父亲惨死的情节相仿的戏剧”。由此我们可以看出，哈姆莱特一方面十分厌恶排斥“表演”和“假装”，但另一方面却又深深为之着迷。

And so in all these ways, Hamlet lives these impasses, the contradictions of being human … the character of Hamlet and all sorts of ways is fierce and often eccentric. He contains multitudes. He's the fullest character that had ever been written up to this point, the fullest character, and yet he's full of absences and mysteries and unspoken things. He's full of these gaps, these questions which we have to enter, questions which only we can offer answers to.

于是哈姆莱特深陷于这一个又一个困境当中，经历着人生的各种冲突和矛盾。不论从哪个角度看，哈姆莱特都是一个情绪激烈，甚至有些古怪的人，在他的身上展现出了多重性格。他是所有戏剧中人物形象最为丰满的，但是即便有了如此细腻的刻画，我们依旧会觉得在他身上还是有许多留白，他周身散发着难以捉摸的神秘感和许多无法言说的内容。而对于这些留白，这些必须面对的问题，我们只能亲自去寻找解答。

Questions define the very language of Hamlet’s play. Characters are constantly interrogating each other and themselves, in terms that seem simple at first but that speak to deeper problems.

“提出问题”是《哈姆莱特》这部戏剧语言上的一大特色。剧中人物常常互相提问，有时甚至还会自己问自己很多问题。这些问题我们在初听的时候会觉得都很简单，但经过一番细思之后，便会发觉它们其实都指向着更深层次的问题。

The play is famously a play of questions, beginning with the very first line of the play “Who's there?” It's a simple question is there's a man there standing in the dark and then he senses some other body and he doesn't know who it is. This is “who is it?” And so it's an immediate, simple, logistical, physical, factual question. And yet it's a question which opens up these most basic questions of existential questions. That is, epistemological questions of knowledge and ontological questions of being, who are you .

这其实是一部以“提问”著称的戏剧。戏剧开篇第一句话就在提问：“那边是谁？”。这问题很简单：一个人站在黑暗中，突然觉察到旁边还有其他人，但却不知道那是谁，于是脱口问道“那边是谁？”。这句话很简单，却很符合当时当下的情景，是人们在那种场景下都会有的正常反应。可实际上，这个问题也开启了存在主义思想中的一系列最基本问题。对于知识的认知、对于存在的本体论，全都源自“你是谁？”这个简单问题。

The play’s apparently simple questions constantly probe beneath the surface to ask who people really are, and whether it is possible to ever really know who they are. The play’s first line, “Who’s there?” is spoken by one guard to another during the night watch. But the question resonates in other moments in the play: moments when it’s not so easy to answer. When the ghost appears, Horatio calls, “What art thou that usurp’st this time of night?” -- essentially asking again, “Who’s there?” And that question of who the ghost is, what kind of being it is, presents an ongoing challenge.

剧中这些十分简单的问题不断地突破表层，直击最深层次的内涵，追问着人究竟是什么，追问人是否有可能真正了解自己。戏剧开篇第一句“那边是谁？”是值夜班的守望者在询问他的搭档。但之后这个问题在戏剧的其他场景中也反复出现。很多时候，这个问题并不好回答。在鬼魂出现的那场戏中，霍拉旭大声问“你是什么鬼怪，胆敢在这样深夜的时分出现？”这里霍拉旭其实也还是在问“那边是谁？”这个问题。不过，这个鬼魂到底是谁，它究竟是个怎样的存在，一直是一个令人困惑的问题。

So does the question of who Hamlet is. In his first scene, his mother asks why his father’s death “seems ... so particularly” distressing to him. This is another apparently simple question that opens up a deeper philosophical puzzle about knowledge. Hamlet insists, “‘Seems,’ madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems.’” But as he goes on, his words suggest an uncomfortable truth: all we can ever know about other people, he implies, is how they ‘seem’ to us--not who they really are. “I have that within which passes show,” he says. His true inner turmoil is not visible at the surface. In other words, a person’s real identity is something hidden --something no one else can ever fully know.

同样地，关于哈姆莱特是谁这个问题也是如此。在哈姆莱特初次登场时，他的母亲就问他，为什么父亲的去世“好像老是”令他郁郁不快。这其实也是一个简单的问题，但同时又是一个深刻的哲学难题，涉及到了我们的认知。哈姆莱特回答说“‘好像’，母亲！不，是这样就是这样，我不知道什么‘好像’不‘好像’。”而他接下来的话说又透露了一个残酷的事实。他表示，我们对他人的了解，全都是这些人所展现出来的东西，这并非他们最真实的样子。他说“我郁结的心事却是无法表现出来的”。我们根本无法从表面上看到他内心的痛苦煎熬。换句话说就是，一个人真实的自我都被掩藏了起来，因此他人无法完全了解。

Seeming to confirm this view, the play also raises many questions about Hamlet that are never resolved. Why is he so melancholy? Does he truly become mad or is it just an act? One of the biggest questions--a question Hamlet asks about himself--is why he delays his revenge. Some readers have wondered whether he simply can’t make up his mind about what to do. But Simon Palfrey finds that explanation doesn’t really account for the complexity of the character and the play.

而似乎是为了证实这个观点，戏剧接着又提出了许多有关哈姆莱特问题，这些问题即便是到了戏剧结束的时候，依旧都没有答案。这些问题包括：哈姆莱特为何会如此郁郁寡欢？他究竟是真疯，还是装疯？以及本剧最为关键的问题之一，这也是哈姆莱特质问自己的一个问题，就是他为什么迟迟不去复仇？有的读者会觉得这是不是因为哈姆莱特下不了决心去复仇呢？不过，西蒙·帕尔弗里教授却认为，这个解释无法真正体现哈姆莱特这个人物以及这部戏剧的复杂性。

It turns Hamlet into a kind of a different of a figure who just kind of perambulators around the issue, who avoids confrontation, who would rather sit there kind of mooning. Also I think that that particular idea that this is a play about a man who cannot make up his mind. The danger there is that you see the play, too, simply as a revenge tragedy, as a tragedy which is defined by a task which is set the hero. And his job is to complete that task. And Hamlet is more of an anti-revenge tragedy than a revenge tragedy.

这种观点会让哈姆莱特完全变了样，会让他成为一个旁观者，一个竭力避免冲突、只会坐在一旁唉声叹息的人。而且，我觉得这种观点也会让这整部戏剧变成一部讲述一位优柔寡断的人的戏剧。这对于我们理解这部戏剧有一定的风险，因为这样的话你就会把这部剧简单地看作是一部复仇悲剧。在悲剧中，主人公都会被赋予某项使命，而他要做的就是去完成这一使命。可《哈姆莱特》这部戏剧从本质上看，并不只是一部复仇悲剧，它更是一部反复仇的悲剧。

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet after revenge tragedies became extremely popular onstage. These stories revolved around an initial crime and a revenger seeking to punish the person who committed it. In many of them--such as Shakespeare’s own Titus Andronicus--the focus is on the revenger’s drive for justice and the bloody violence that accompanies it. But in Hamlet, that conventional story becomes the vehicle for a larger philosophical investigation, which questions what revenge can actually accomplish.

莎士比亚在创作《哈姆莱特》这部戏剧的时候，复仇这个主题在戏剧舞台上已经是一个极其热门的话题了。这类戏剧故事往往都是由某一个罪行引发，复仇者一心想惩罚犯下这个罪行的人。许多悲剧重点关注的是复仇者对于正义的追求，以及随之而来的血腥暴力情节。莎士比亚有一部名为《泰特斯·安特洛尼克斯》的戏剧，就属于这个类型。但在《哈姆莱特》这部戏剧中，传统的复仇故事只是一个载体，作者想要借此探究一个更宏大哲学问题，那就是复仇真的能完成吗？

On the one hand, there are straightforward crimes that need answering, that need justice or vengeance, on the other hand, the ghost confirms to Hamlet the fact of questions, the fact of enormity, the fact that there are things happening which cannot be understood, that cannot be countenanced, the fact that there is darkness, the fact that there is this kind of terrifying, an incredible challenge to understand things and all that sort of stuff … the call to revenge, I think, is almost like a kind of a cipher for something more profound if it were remotely possible that the act of sticking a dagger in Claudius heart would solve the problem. Hamlet would have done it straight away, but it wouldn't.

一方面，明确的罪行需要有个了断，要伸张正义，要去复仇。另一方面，鬼魂使哈姆莱特确信，现实中存在怀疑，存在滔天大罪，存在令人无法理解、令人无法认同的事情，现实中也存在黑暗，想要弄明白一件事情就会遇到可怕且令人难以置信的挑战。我认为，复仇的诱因就像是为了解读某些内涵更为深远的事物的密码。其实如果说把匕首插入克劳狄斯的心脏就可以解决所有问题的话，那么哈姆莱特肯定直接就这么做了，但实际情况远没有这么简单。

The question of Hamlet’s delay is intertwined with deep mysteries about the afterlife, about death, about existence. His soliloquies--the speeches he utters in solitude--might seem like they just put off his important task. But they’re also where he confronts those deep mysteries, especially in the speech that begins with the play’s most famous question: “To be or not to be.”

关于哈姆莱特迟迟不去复仇这个问题，其实还交织着他对来生、死亡和存在这些深刻神秘问题的思考。我们可能会觉得是哈姆莱特在独处时说出的话拖延了他那重要的复仇计划，可实际上，正是在这些独白中，他开始正视上述那些神秘问题，尤其是在他最著名的那段以“生存还是毁灭”开头独白中，他开始认真思考这些问题了。

The most famous line in all literature probably is precisely that “To be or not to be. /That is the question” which in this very kind of blandness, its simplicity and its enormity opens up the question of being what is and what is not. And at every point in the play, that question is being mobilized and explored.

在所有文学作品中最著名的一句话也许就是“生存还是毁灭，这是一个值得思考的问题”了。这句话很直白，也很简单，但却非常深刻地提出了有关“存在”的问题：“存在”是什么？“存在”又不是什么？不论剧情发展到哪一步，戏剧都是围绕着这个问题展开的，都在探讨这个问题的真正要义。

There are many questions on Hamlet’s mind. Should he obey the ghost’s command and kill Claudius? Should he relieve his grief by killing himself? But just as the play goes beyond a simple story of revenge, this line goes beyond a simple decision about what to do.

哈姆莱特思考着很多的问题，他在思考要不要听从鬼魂的指示去杀死克劳狄斯、要不要通过自杀把自己从悲伤中解脱出来？但是正如这部戏剧并非一个简单的复仇故事一样， “生存还是毁灭”这句台词也不仅仅是一个对于后续计划的简单抉择。

It does speak to the question of suicide or not, of consenting to live or not, of causing the death of another or not. All of those questions are kind of secondary to the more basic question about “being” or “not being”. And I think the play is living on that. It is existing on that line between the two. So, for example, the ghost is a perfect sort of vector of that dilemma because the ghost is both being and non-being. It's not living, and yet it's not dead, it exists in that liminal zone, which embodies the question of “to be or not to be”, and that is the place where Hamlet is, as it were, forced into that space, that space of unknowing, of absolute contingency, of un-decidability.

这句台词探讨的并不是自杀这个问题，当然也不是生存，同样也不是某种引起死亡的原因，都不是。这些其实都是次要问题，这句话更核心的点在“生存”和“毁灭”上。我认为整部戏剧是在这个点上展开的。“生存”和“毁灭”这两者之间的界限和鸿沟是这部戏剧的基础。比如说，剧中老国王的鬼魂就很好地体现了这两者之间的关系，因为鬼魂是既“生存”的，又是被“毁灭”了的，它没有生命，但也不能说它完全死亡了，它存在于阈限空间之中，这是生存和死亡之间的过渡空间。所以说，鬼魂它本身就同时蕴涵着“生存”和“毁灭”这两面。而哈姆莱特也被迫进入了这样的一个阈限空间，进入了这个无意识的、充斥着绝对矛盾、难以进行抉择的空间之中。

And so the simplicity of “to be or not to be” kind of encapsulates and holds within it, these vast and profound questions and all of the questions, big and small, that the play generates. They all in a way kind of return to and can hatch out of that statement of “to be or not to be”.

所以说，“生存还是毁灭”这个简单问题从一定程度上囊括了那些庞大而深远的问题，它是剧中一切大大小小的问题的凝练，在某种程度上，所有的问题全都发源于此，并最终又都回归到了“生存还是毁灭”这个核心问题上。

The play poses all kinds of questions about whether something does or does not exist: Ophelia and Hamlet’s love; Gertrude’s knowledge of her husband’s murder; Claudius’s repentance; Ophelia’s suicide; the ghost’s truthfulness; Hamlet’s madness. The line “to be or not to be” holds all these up as questions for every new performance to grapple with, as actors interpret these characters and events. But the line also encapsulates a puzzle for humans in general. The speech beginning “To be or not be” ends on a word that is crucial for the play: “action.” If Hamlet is an obsessive thinker, he also thinks obsessively about action and whether humans are free to act.

戏剧提出了有关一系列事物“生存”或“毁灭”的各种问题，例如奥菲利娅和哈姆莱特之间的爱情、王后葛特露对于丈夫被谋杀一事的了解情况、克劳狄斯的忏悔、奥菲利娅的自杀、鬼魂的真诚、哈姆莱特的疯癫等等。在之后每一场戏剧中，戏剧演员们在对角色和事件进行表演和诠释时，都会涉及上述这些问题，而“生存还是毁灭”这句台词则很好地概括了这所有的一切。那段以“生存还是毁灭”开头的独白，是以“行动”这个词结束的。如果说哈姆莱特十分痴迷于思考，那么他对于行动、对于人类是否能随心所欲地行事也是同样地着迷。

This character and the play is obsessed with all these words like “choice”, “action”, “will” and so on, all these words which suggest that we, that the individual has some ability to think about things, make decisions and act upon those decisions. But again and again and again, the play shows that choice, freedom, will, all these things are at the mercy of circumstances, the mercy of fortune.

哈姆莱特这个角色以及这整部戏剧都很着迷于“选择”“行动”“意志”这类词语。这些词所传递了这样一种信息，就是我们作为个体的人，都具备一定的思考能力，有能力做出决定，并依照自己的决定去采取行动。但这部戏剧却一次一次又一次地让我们看到这些“选择”“自由”和“意志”全都无法摆脱环境的影响，全都无法抵抗命运。

There’s a particular moment when Hamlet is struck by the impotence of human action. It’s another moment in which the play seems to enter a strange space between being and non-being. It’s when Hamlet contemplates Yorick’s skull and seems to see his own face there.

戏剧中还有一段很特别的情节，它让哈姆莱特深刻体会到了人类的无能为力。同时，在这段故事情节中，戏剧似乎又一次进入到了处于生存和死亡之间的那个古怪空间。在这场戏中，哈姆莱特手持先王的小丑郁利克的骷髅头骨，陷入了沉思，他仿佛从这个头骨上看到了自己的面容。

In some really, really basic way, the skull is a figure of every man, the idea of every man, which is the death that necessarily shadows and attends you from the day you were born until the day you die. His skull that lurks inside you all the time unseen, but always there waiting the skull that will necessarily succeed you, the skull that you already are. And so the skull he holds is himself. But the skull is also everybody. And so I think that that holding the skull is kind of encapsulates perfectly that image of Hamlet as an everyman, that image of Hamlet as someone who's facing sort of fearlessly but also morbidly the inescapable facts of life and death.

从最最根本的角度看，这个骷髅头骨象征着我们每一个人，寓意我们每个人都必须面对死亡。从出生的那一天起，死亡的阴影就笼罩着我们，它时刻跟随着我们直至死亡到来的那一刻。虽然，在平时，这个骷髅头骨被掩盖在了肌肤之下，我们是看不见，但实际上它一直躲在暗处蠢蠢欲动，并最终战胜我们。所以，哈姆莱特手中拿着的那个头骨既是他自己，也是我们每一个人。因此，我认为手握头骨的哈姆莱特这个形象，从一定程度上完美地融合了我们所有人，象征着那种面对不可逃避的生死现实时，既勇敢又有些神经质的人。

Those facts become even more inescapable thanks to the play’s language. It is filled with imagery of sickness, rotting, corruption, and disease. Many of these images come from Hamlet himself, who feels more deeply than anyone that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

这部戏剧的语言令那些关乎生死的现实更加无法回避了。剧中充斥着象征着病态、腐朽、腐败和病痛的意象。这些意象有很多出自哈姆莱特本人之口，在整部剧中，他是最深刻地感受到“丹麦国里恐怕有些不可告人的坏事”的那个人。

He’s death haunted. He's disgusted. So, he has got a perverted imagination, a sickened and nauseated imagination and holding a skull like that and thinking, as he does with in excruciating detail about the way that the living person, that his skull used to be. Now we're thinking about the worms that have eaten it. All that speaks to their very distinctive morbidity, the sort of decadence of Hamlet's imagination.

哈姆莱特被死亡的阴云笼罩着，他感到厌恶。所以他脑中产生了一种病态的想象、一种令人恶心不适的想象。他手拿着骷髅头骨思考着，极度痛苦地想象着这个人、这颗头骨的主人活着时候的样子。我们脑中也有了蠕虫啃噬尸骨的画面。这一切都透露出了一种特有的病态，以及哈姆莱特想象力中的衰败颓废。

But if the skull calls forth Hamlet’s disgust, the fact that it’s Yorick’s skull also calls forth his love.

不过我们要注意，虽然这颗骷髅头骨让哈姆莱特感到了恶心，但是当他得知这是他曾经的熟人郁利克的头骨时，这颗骷髅头骨也唤起了哈姆莱特心中的爱。

And then on the other hand, holding that skull is a perfect image of Hamlet's sympathy for others, his generosity, which is crucial to his to his character, because you know, here is this fellow who he knew as a boy, who died when he was seven years old. He's just a clown. He's a nobody. And yet he's somebody to Hamlet. And so that you got against the other side of the universalising significance and importance or just the universalising reach of Hamlet, is that this person could be anybody you can feel for love, remember, sympathize with anybody.

所以，从另一方面看，哈姆莱特手拿头骨的这个形象也象征着他对他人的怜悯同情和慷慨仁慈，这一点对于哈姆莱特的性格塑造尤为关键。因为，我们知道，哈姆莱特在小时候就对郁利克很要好。郁利克去世时，哈姆莱特只有七岁。郁利克只是先王的一个小丑，地位卑微，但对于哈姆莱特而言，郁利克是独特的存在，是他心中的一个重要人物。从这里你就可以体会到这里所说的“重要性”与普遍公认的那种重要性相反，这甚至是哈姆莱特独有的判断重要性的方式，他认为所谓的重要人物可以是任何你爱的人，可以是你记忆中的任何人，也可以是你同情的任何人。

Another striking feature of this play is that Shakespeare, too, reveals how he can sympathize with anybody, in the sense of bestowing attention on anybody. Some have said his protagonist is the most interesting character in literature. But Shakespeare takes an interest in every character in this play, not just Hamlet--meaning, he gives every character some significant unanswered questions in their history. These questions mean that Ophelia, Horatio, Claudius, and Gertrude also invite our interpretation and attention. Consider Gertrude’s story:

这部戏剧还有另一个令人惊叹的地方，就是莎士比亚成功地让读者和观众感受到：作为作者，他怜悯同情剧中的每一个角色，因为他关注着剧中的每个人。有的人评论说哈姆莱特作为戏剧的主角是这部作品中最有意思的一个人物，但有趣的可不仅仅是主角哈姆莱特，莎士比亚笔下的每个角色都十分生动有趣，他为每个角色都创造了一些悬而未决的大问题。因此，我们也需要关注奥菲利娅、霍拉旭、克劳狄斯、葛特露这些人物，需要对他们进行分析和解读。就拿王后葛特露的故事举例吧：

Was she involved in the murder of her husband? Did she have knowledge of it? Did she have implicit knowledge of it? Did she give her tacit consent to it or not?

她有没有参与谋害自己的丈夫？她知不知道丈夫是被谋杀的？她有没有得到暗示？对于这起谋杀她究竟是默许还是反对？

Has she committed a crime? If she hasn't committed a crime? These sorts of questions.

她犯罪了吗？还是说她并没有犯罪？有很多诸如此类的问题。

We also see Hamlet’s struggles mirrored in other characters. Hamlet’s feigned madness becomes Ophelia’s real madness; Hamlet loses a father, Laertes loses a father. Act 4 is almost an abbreviated version of Hamlet’s story, replayed through other characters.

同样，我们在其他角色身上也能看到哈姆莱特所经历的那些痛苦折磨。哈姆莱特装疯，最终却导致了奥菲利娅的真疯；哈姆莱特失去了父亲，但他却又杀死了雷欧提斯的父亲波洛涅斯。戏剧的第四幕几乎就是其他角色重演的精简版哈姆莱特的故事。

Ophelia comes in mad and then Laertes comes in mad in his own way, and both of them in different ways, suffering from Hamlet and suffering with Hamlet. There's something happening there. The speed, the pace, the intensity, the trouble. And in a way, the kind of unfairness of the play there in not giving quite enough space and time to the grief, the madness, the fractured minds of Laertes and Ophelia, who are experiencing the most profound things that anybody can ever experience, whether it's loss of love or loss of a father or loss of mind. 

奥菲利娅疯了，雷欧提斯也疯了，但是他们发疯的方式不一样。奥菲利娅因哈姆莱特而痛苦万分，但雷欧提斯则是和哈姆莱特一起经历着痛苦的折磨。有事情正在酝酿发生，那种速度、那种节奏、那种紧张感、那种麻烦，都在酝酿发生。戏剧压根就没有给我们留足够的时间和空间来感受雷欧提斯和奥菲利娅的悲伤、疯狂以及他们那些支离破碎的思绪。从某种程度上看，这似乎很不公平。要知道他们所经历的是任何人都可能会经历的最深切的情绪，爱人的离去、父亲的逝去、以及理智的丧失。

These stories play out while Hamlet is absent from Denmark. The scenes that dramatize his return encapsulate Shakespeare’s strategy of combining opposites to create this character. On the one hand, Hamlet seems newly in touch with a transcendent kind of spiritual insight. He invokes God’s providence and assures Horatio that “there’s a divinity that shapes our ends.” On the other hand, he is still just as tormented by the inescapable facts of material death and decay.

刚才这些故事都发生在哈姆莱特离开丹麦的那段时间里。而接下来描写哈姆莱特重返丹麦的那几场戏，体现出了莎士比亚在塑造哈姆莱特这个人物形象时对于矛盾对立的运用。一方面，哈姆莱特似乎寻得了一种全新的超然精神状态，他援引上帝的天意，对霍拉旭说“我们的结局早已有一种冥冥中的力量把它布置好了”。但另一方面，他对于肉身无法避免的死亡和腐烂依旧感到痛苦烦扰。

Now, what we get when Hamlet returns is a mixture. There's no question that when he comes back he does have certain statements like that: “Readiness is all this providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it will be, it will be above…” all this sort of stuff.

此时我们可以感受到哈姆莱特重返丹麦时，他的内心充斥着这样两种不同的情绪。毫无疑问，他回到丹麦时他说过“一只麻雀的死生都是命运预先注定的”。

But Hamlet also makes jokes about the bones in the graveyard--just as he joked earlier about worms eating Polonius after he killed him. When Claudius asks where Polonius is, Hamlet replies, “At supper … not where he eats, but where he is eaten …  we fat all creatures else to fat us, we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes but to one table.”

但是哈姆莱特也会嘲讽墓园中的那些尸骨，那种挖苦的语气就像他杀死波洛涅斯后说蛆虫会啮噬他的尸体一样。在哈姆莱特杀死波洛涅斯后，克劳狄斯问他波洛涅斯在哪儿，哈姆莱特回答说“（波洛涅斯）吃饭去了……不是在他吃饭的地方，是在人家吃他的地方……我们喂肥了各种的牲畜给自己受用，再喂肥了自己去给蛆虫受用。胖胖的国王跟瘦瘦的乞丐是一个桌子上两道不同的菜——不过是这么一回事。”

He talked about the beggar and the king sharing this worm, these kind of grotesque and taunting jokes he makes about that as precisely the same imagination that's at work when he's imagining Alexander's skull. You know how Alexander is now kind of the water in a toilet. This sort of stuff is this kind of degrading, disgusted, fatalistic imagination.

哈姆莱特说乞丐和国王都会变成蛆虫的食物，他说这类怪诞的嘲讽笑话时，他的那种想象力就跟他评论亚历山大大帝的骷髅头骨时一模一样，就好像在说：你看亚历山大大帝最后还不是变成了厕所里的水吗？这话里带着一种贬损的意味，是一种会令人产生不适感的对宿命论的想象。

And so, even in the last act of the play, Hamlet’s character still raises questions. Is Hamlet guided more by his idealism or his disgust? After death, does he expect to find God--or nothing?

而且即便是在戏剧的最后一幕，哈姆莱特这个角色依旧让我们产生了新的疑问：他究竟是更屈从于自己的理想还是更屈从于自己的憎恨？他是否期待过在死后寻得上帝，还是说他认为死后一切不过都会化作虚空？

As much as we might understand, Hamlet's a kind of stoicism or taking the long view or a kind of a Christian sense of whatever will be will be, we might also see it as a form of nihilistic fatalism.

虽然我们都知道，哈姆莱特是一个坚忍克己的人，他会从长远的角度看问题，而且对于事物的发展都抱有基督教的态度，但是我们同样也可以从他身上看到虚无主义的宿命论。

There’s also the question of whether or not the play’s events change and mature Hamlet.

因此，接下来的问题就是：戏剧中发生的一系列事件是否改变了哈姆莱特，让他更加成熟，更加深谙世事了呢？

I think what I might my conclusion is that there is certainly an access to a form of calm wisdom which can, at certain points be spoken with memorable, pithy, aphoristic, self-collected kind of rhythm, a sort of genuine wisdom. But you have to extract that from a much more turbulent and erratic kind of stream of consciousness. And I think this is absolutely characteristic of Hamlet throughout the play is that he's there's never been a character who speaks with so many different registers. And that never changes. That simply doesn't change. You have a kind of imperfect maturation, you have a kind of incipient possibility of a world view, which is perhaps resigned or perhaps more mature, but it's still struggling in a context of extraordinary inward conflict.

我觉得一定有某种方式可以传递平和的智慧。在某些特定的时刻，剧中人物的确可以用既好记又精简的格言式沉稳的节奏把这种纯粹的智慧表达出来。但是，在这里我们却需要在一种更加混乱、难以捉摸的意识流中提炼这样的智慧。我认为这恰恰就是剧中哈姆莱特的性格特点。在整部剧中，他是语言风格最丰富、最多变的。这一点从来就没有变过，一直都没变。你可以感受到他成熟的过程并不完美，他的世界观仍在形成的初期，它可能就此消失，也可能变得更加成熟完善，但是毫无疑问它一直经受着巨大的内心精神世界的冲突与碰撞。

It’s that sense of extraordinary conflict that has kept this character and this play alive around the world for more than four hundred years. And so Hamlet provides a good sense of how to think about all of Shakespeare’s plays. What large questions does the play open up? And how does Shakespeare keep them open? The plays suggest many answers but rarely settle on one--which is why each generation can keep asking those questions again and again.

从这个观点来看，正是这样不寻常的冲突使得哈姆莱特这个角色以及整部戏剧历经400多年时光，依旧为世人所喜爱。不仅如此，《哈姆莱特》这部戏剧还为我们理解莎士比亚其他的戏剧提供了一个很好的思路。在欣赏其他莎剧时，我们也可以思考，戏剧提出了哪些大问题？莎士比亚是如何保持这些问题的开放性的？戏剧给出了很多可能的解答，但很少会给一个确定的答案，也正是这个原因，每一代的读者和观众都可以反复不断地问出这些问题。

He leaves gaps everywhere, he leaves things unexplained, which allows us to enter. There's a  mixture in Shakespeare off … Gaps and lacuna eye and unexplained things were weakened. Our imagination or our sympathies can enter into these gaps and supply what he doesn't supply. And this applies to readers and to actors, to audiences. So there's these spaces in which we can enter and as it were, clarify things or fill things out.

莎士比亚在各种地方留下了值得思考的空白。对于一些内容，他没有给出明确的解读，而是让观众和读者自己去思索、去探究。一方面，莎士比亚融合了这些留白，这些缺漏，另一方面，这些未言明的事情都被弱化了，因此我们的想象力、我们的同理能力就得以进入这些空缺当中，把作者的留白完全填补上。读者可以这样做，演员可以这样做，观众同样也可以这样做。所以说，剧中有这样的空间供我们去探索、去发现，在这里我们可以凭借自己的经验和理解去弄明白那些事情，去把缺漏补全。

In the next episode we’ll examine some of the gaps and ambiguities in Hamlet’s soliloquies. We’ll see how Shakespeare uses the simplest of tools--a syllable, a line-break, a pause--to transform words on the page into a living, thinking mind.

下集节目我们将分析哈姆莱特几段独白中的留白和语焉不详之处。我们将亲身感受到莎士比亚是如何运用音节、断行、停顿这一系列最简单的写作手法，让纸上的文字拥有了生动鲜活的思维。