Macbeth 2: The Characters and the Questions

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Macbeth Part II: Characters, themes, language, interpretation

《麦克白》第二部分：角色、主题、语言和解读

Is Shakespeare’s Macbeth a tragic hero whose death evokes pity and regret? Or does the death of this killer merely bring satisfaction? At the end of the play, the newly crowned king Malcolm certainly wants his audience of Scottish thanes to feel satisfied at the fate of this “dead butcher,” as he calls Macbeth. But do we see Macbeth as a butcher? In this episode, we’ll delve deeper into the complexities of Macbeth’s character with the help of Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford.

麦克白是莎士比亚笔下一个悲剧性人物。利欲熏心的他，为了满足自己的欲望策划了数起谋杀，他的死是大快人心，还是让人心生悲悯呢？全剧结尾处，新加冕的国王马尔科姆自然是希望他手下的苏格兰贵族们相信他口中那位“死了的屠夫”麦克白是罪有应得。但是，麦克白真的是一位“屠夫”吗？在本集节目中，我们将和牛津大学莎士比亚研究所的艾玛·史密斯教授一起，带您深入探究麦克白性格的复杂性。

Emma Smith: There's an attempt to sort of dehumanize Macbeth by the description of him and also by bringing on his head. … But I think that the audience who have been through the play with Macbeth and with Lady Macbeth probably aren't completely aligned with Malcolm at that point.

艾玛·史密斯：从某种程度上说，无论是马尔科姆对麦克白的侮辱性评价，还是将麦克白斩首的行为，其实都是在企图抹杀麦克白的人性。但我认为，看完全剧的观众，并不会完全认同马尔科姆对麦克白以及麦克白夫人的评价。

But why aren’t we aligned with Malcolm? All the terrible portents that fill Scotland after Duncan’s death, from sickness to the darkening of the sun, surely indicate the evil of Macbeth’s reign. And Malcolm returns to Scotland from England, which associates him with the blessed English king who, he says, cures the sick with heavenly powers. But those touch points of good and evil aren’t the only things that frame our response to the play.

但是我们为什么会不认同马尔科姆的评价呢？老国王邓肯被谋杀后，苏格兰被种种噩兆笼罩，不管是肆虐人间的疾病，还是暗淡的天日，无一不在宣告着麦克白的残暴统治。马尔科姆从英格兰返回苏格兰时，同他联手的还有英格兰圣明的君主。据马尔科姆所说，这位英格兰国王可以用神力治愈疾病。但我们对于这部戏剧的评价，不能仅仅局限于那些表面的善与恶。

Emma Smith: And then the theater does allow us. I mean, is a way is a place where we can investigate our ethical positions or our moral positions. But it also is a way of bypassing them in favor of a different set of values, which are to do with entertainment and, you know, vicariously doing the wrong thing or imagining what it would be like to step outside the moral boundaries that we have all the rest of the time.

艾玛·史密斯：这正是戏剧所能赋予我们的。我的意思是，看戏的时候，我们可以审视自己的伦理道德立场。但同时，出于娱乐目的，我们也可以暂时忘记这些惯有立场，接受一套完全不同的价值体系。就像把自己代入成作恶者，或者想象自己跨越了那些我们一生都必须遵循的道德边界后，到底会发生什么事情。

With Macbeth, Shakespeare imagines violating the most absolute moral boundaries you could imagine: killing your king; killing your family; killing your closest friend; killing a child. And so Shakespeare almost sets himself a challenge as an artist. How can you depict someone committing the most inhumane crimes imaginable, and still show him as human? You do it by getting close to him. The play does present us with a character who seems absolutely good: King Duncan, whose “virtues,” says Macbeth “Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against / The deep damnation of his taking-off”. And yet we don’t really sympathize with Duncan because the play doesn’t bring us close to him.

在《麦克白》这部剧中，莎士比亚挑战了你所能想到的最严重的道德准则：弑君、谋害亲友、杀死儿童。这部剧对于作者而言也是个挑战。在描写一个犯下如此残忍罪行的角色的同时，如何表现出他人性中善的那一面？这就需要你近距离接触麦克白这个角色。全剧中，老国王邓肯代表了绝对的善。麦克白曾评价邓肯的“美德”“将要像天使一般发出喇叭一样清澈的声音，向世人昭告我的弑君重罪”。但我们却很难真正同情邓肯的遭遇，因为在这部戏剧中，我们并没有机会近距离接触这位老国王。

Emma Smith: It puts us at a distance from that character. And we’re at a distance from Duncan, we don't share his view of the world.

艾玛·史密斯：我们和这个角色是有距离感的，所以我们无法看到他眼中的世界。

By contrast, the play keeps us close to Macbeth the whole time. We hear his most intimate thoughts in his speeches and soliloquies. We see the world through his eyes.

相反，我们和麦克白的距离就很近。从他的言语和独白中，我们可以了解他内心最真实的想法。透过他的眼睛，我们可以看到他所理解的世界。

Emma Smith: But what I really think is fascinating about that is that Shakespeare's response to the gunpowder plot is really to think what would it be like to have killed the king? It isn't sort of casting blame. He isn't making the regicide the king killer into a sort of demon or a monster or something that you can't understand. He wants to try and get inside their head and see what it's like to be them.

艾玛·史密斯：但我觉得这部剧最吸引观众的是莎士比亚对于这一起篡位阴谋的态度，他让我们思考麦克白的弑君从头到尾究竟是怎么一回事。莎士比亚没有一味地指责弑君者，也没有将他刻画成恶魔怪兽，或是一种让人无法理解的存在。他试图走进弑君者们的大脑中，去了解他们内心的真实想法。

And it is quite hard to demonize or to be absolutely black and white about somebody who you've been alongside or you know really well … if you're up close with people, you're inside their mind. It's a little bit harder to judge maybe to be judgmental. And I think that's what Shakespeare gives us.

你很难把某个与你长期相处或你十分熟悉的人妖魔化，或是对他做一个非黑即白的评价。对于你所亲近的人，你很清楚他们脑中的一切想法。对他们评头论足着实不容易。我认为这就是莎士比亚的这部剧带给我们的感受。

Shakespeare shows us how Macbeth responds to a host of different characters: Duncan, Banquo, the witches, Lady Macbeth, the physician. Each of these interactions reveals more about his character and situation. When Lady Macbeth is troubled by dark memories in her sleep, Macbeth asks her physician, “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, / Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow … that weighs upon the heart?” We sense here that he’s talking about himself as much as his wife. And of course, we see Macbeth on stage alone, baring the innermost thoughts of his mind. And what we see isn’t a demon. It’s a man whose demons haunt him: he hears voices, he sees ghosts, and his own thoughts seem to turn against him: “O, full of scorpions is my mind,” he says to his wife after Duncan is dead. After the first murder, Shakespeare doesn’t allow Macbeth a moment’s peace.

莎士比亚向我们展示了麦克白与邓肯、班柯、女巫、麦克白夫人以及医生等各个人物的互动。每一次互动，都让我们更加了解他的性格和处境。当麦克白夫人饱受可怕记忆困扰而出现睡眠问题时，麦克白对她的医生说“你难道不能诊治一个病态的心理，从记忆中拔去一桩根深蒂固的忧郁……把那堆满在胸间，重压在心头的积毒扫除干净吗？”从他的话语中，我们明白他不仅仅在说他妻子的问题，也在说自己。我们看到麦克白一个人孤零零地站在舞台上，向我们坦露心声。我们知道他不是恶魔，而是一个被恶魔纠缠的人：他听见说话声，看见鬼魂，似乎连自己的想法都和自己对着干。杀害老国王邓肯后，麦克白对妻子说“我的头脑里充满着蝎子”，自此，莎士比亚便让麦克白再无宁日。

Emma Smith: He gives us a Macbeth who is never comfortable in what he has done. Never so self-congratulatory, always anxious, haunted, worried, desperately trying to run to stand still. There is something. There is a pathos about that. A real pathos about it.

艾玛·史密斯：他让我们看到麦克白对于自己所做的一切其实是感到很不安的。他并没有沾沾自喜，而是时刻处于焦虑、惶恐和惴惴不安中，他迫切希望得到安宁与平静。这是一种令人产生悲悯共鸣的力量，这种感染力十分强大。

That pathos--that sense of pity or sadness that the audience feels for Macbeth--comes across most clearly near the end of the play. Shortly before he dies, Macbeth has a poignant awareness of the good things he has lost. Comparing his life to a withered leaf, he says, “that which should accompany old age, / As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have.”

在戏剧接近尾声的时候，这种感染力，这种对麦克白的怜悯和同情愈发震撼人心。麦克白临死之前，痛苦地意识到他所失去的那些美好事物。他将自己的生命比作一片凋谢的黄叶“凡是老年人所应该享有的尊荣、敬爱、服从和一大群的朋友，我是没有希望再得到的了”。

Emma Smith: So it's the fate of the tragic hero of the tragic protagonist to be alone. Whereas it's the fate of the comic protagonists to be joined in with society. And when Macbeth's pretty much alone in the castle, as Malcolm's army carries the wood from but from Burnam towards him, he talks about what he had hoped to have. It's a very moving line about what he thought old age would bring. And it's got this line, troops of friends and the troops are obviously actually the troops of hostile soldiers coming to take his position away from him.

艾玛·史密斯：孤独地死去便是这位悲剧性人物的命运。相对地，喜剧人物的命运则是融入社会。当麦克白一个人孤独地待在城堡中时，马尔科姆的军队伪装成树木从勃南向他逼近。正是在这样的场景下，麦克白说出了自己曾经渴望拥有的东西。他对于老年人该享有什么的这一句独白十分感人。而他在说这句话的时候，一大群朋友和他死敌带领的军队正在赶来，准备夺走他的王位。

A striking, tragic irony about this speech is that Macbeth had had a kind of love that isn’t found anywhere else in Shakespeare. Macbeth is one of the few characters in Shakespeare whose marriage we get to see. And in some ways it’s a very supportive and equitable marriage.

关于这段话，还有一个悲剧性的反讽。麦克白拥有莎士比亚其他戏剧中从未出现过的一种爱。莎士比亚着墨描写婚姻的角色不多，麦克白就是其中之一。从某种程度上看，他在婚姻中和妻子相互扶持，彼此地位是很平等的。

Emma Smith: Some of the powerful ways I think Shakespeare shows the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the early at the end of Act one and in Act two is as real equals evils in this plot. And that's a very striking feature of the way he understands the relationship. My dearest partner of greatness, he calls her. And one uncomfortable element of the play, I suppose, is that this this is the most equal relationship. Marital relationship, relation between men and women that perhaps the plays ever depict.

艾玛·史密斯：在第一幕结尾处和第二幕中，莎士比亚便让我们深刻感受到了麦克白和麦克白夫人之间的关系。在这起密谋中，他们处于平等地位，他们都是十分邪恶的。麦克白对于夫妻关系中的这种平等的态度很令人吃惊，他称呼妻子为“我最亲密的伙伴”。令人不可思议的一点在于，这个关系竟然是整部戏剧中最平等的。这样一种婚姻关系，一种男女之间的关系，在莎士比亚的其他戏剧中未曾出现过。

Some critics interpret the power dynamic in this relationship as very unequal, with Lady Macbeth bullying and shaming her husband into terrible crimes he didn’t really want to commit. 

可是一些批评家认为，他们之间的关系是非常不平等的。因为麦克白夫人一直恐吓丈夫，让他因羞愧而不得不犯下那些可怕的罪行。

Emma Smith: Emma Smith: So there's this is a way of seeing Lady Macbeth as the power behind the throne. The person who really forces Macbeth into an action that he otherwise wouldn't have taken.

艾玛·史密斯：所以从这样一个角度，我们可以把麦克白夫人视作是王位背后的力量。她才是推动麦克白的人物。要不是她，麦克白根本不会作出这些事情。

But there’s another way of seeing Lady Macbeth. When the couple discuss Duncan’s murder, it looks as though Lady Macbeth is the one embracing the idea and Macbeth is only raising objections. But Lady Macbeth may be sensing what her husband is thinking and not saying, and encouraging those unspoken thoughts in exactly the way Macbeth wants them encouraged. And, after all--it is ultimately Macbeth’s greatness that his wife supports. She never says she wants to be queen herself.

但我们还可以从另一个角度来分析麦克白夫人。在商量是否要谋杀邓肯时，麦克白夫人是赞成的，而麦克白对此一直反对。其实她明白丈夫内心的想法，可她并没有明说，而是用丈夫所期待的话来鼓励丈夫。从根本上，麦克白夫人希望麦克白变得伟大，她从来没有说过想让麦克白当国王，是为了自己能当王后。

Emma Smith: and so I really encourage people to do that and to look at the way they've been presented in performance. Because one of one alternative, I think, is that they show a couple who are very, very intuitively able to switch roles to back each other up when needed to express weakness and to have it reassured … it's an interesting way to push back against the other reading, which I think is the reading which has given rise to really misogynistic ideas about Lady Macbeth, that she is more bloodthirsty, more culpable than her husband, and that somehow she is the great, sort of mythic, monstrous woman that emerges from the play. I don't really see her like that.

艾玛·史密斯：因此我真的很希望人们从这个角度来分析麦克白夫妇，看看剧中他们所呈现出的样子。从他们俩身上，我们可以看到，作为夫妻，他们其中一方会在必要时示弱，而另一方则会提供安慰和支持。他们本能地互换角色，互为对方的支撑和后盾。这也抨击了外界对麦克白夫人的另一种解读，我认为那种解读也引发了一些人对于这个女性角色的厌恶，认为她比她丈夫更加残忍恶毒、更加罪无可赦，认为她是剧中一个极其可怕残忍的女性。但我并不这么认为。

And it’s hard to argue that it’s only Lady Macbeth’s ambition and cruelty that propel Macbeth into crime when he commits all his later crimes without her knowledge or help. In fact, he deliberately distances himself from her as the play goes on--and that may be the root of her tragedy.

其实后来，麦克白在妻子不知道的情况下也犯下了许多罪行，所以，很难说就是麦克白夫人的野心和残忍在推动着他去犯罪。实际上，随着剧情的发展，麦克白也在渐渐刻意疏远妻子，这可能也是麦克白夫人悲剧性结局的根源。

Emma Smith: But it's an interesting question in that scene whether Lady Macbeth is, as is often said, broken by guilt about the murder of Duncan or whether she isn't also broken by grief at the loss of her husband. So it's not that she can't cope with her role at his side and encouraging him, it's that she can't cope without it.

艾玛·史密斯：在麦克白夫人死去的那一幕戏中，麦克白夫人的死因也是一个很有意思的问题。她是像人们常说的那样，因为谋害了邓肯心怀愧疚，最终精神失常而亡呢，还是因为麦克白的疏远，最终悲痛而死？这并不是说她无法胜任妻子的角色、在麦克白身边支持他、鼓励他，却正是因为麦克白夫人必须也只能以妻子这个身份待在麦克白身边。

Of course, the play is also dominated by the Macbeths’ sense of guilt and horror over their crimes. The effect of guilt and grief is a central theme of the play. As we mentioned in the first episode, Macbeth isn’t about the long train of decisions leading up to an event. It’s about the long train of consequences afterwards. And Shakespeare depicts those consequences at every level of the play, from the largest structures of plot to the very smallest of words.

当然了，麦克白对于自己所犯罪行的愧疚和恐惧也是本剧的重点。内疚和悲痛之情所引起的后果是本剧的中心主题。我们在上一集中讲到，《麦克白》这部剧关注的不是最终导致某个“果”的一系列“因”，而是这一系列“因”所引发的一系列“果”。不管是这部剧的整体大框架，还是台词，都淋漓尽致地描绘了这一系列“果”。

When Macbeth gives his first extended speech about the possibility of killing Duncan, he doesn’t talk about “the killing of my kinsman” or “the murder of the king.” He talks about it: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly.” Likewise, Lady Macbeth tells us that her husband is on his way to murder the king by saying, “He is about it”-- meaning, he’s going about it, he’s doing it. After the murder, Macbeth refuses to go back to Duncan’s chamber to return the bloody daggers as Lady Macbeth demands, because, he says, “Look on ’t again I dare not.”

在麦克白第一次提到想杀害邓肯的时候，他并没有说“杀害我的同族”，或是“谋害国王”。他说的是：“要是干了以后就完了，那么还是快一点儿干。”同样地，麦克白夫人在麦克白去杀国王的时候说道，“他在那儿动手了”，意思是他要去杀国王了。麦克白杀死国王之后，没有按照麦克白夫人的要求，回到邓肯的卧室拿回带血的刀子。他说，“我没有胆量再去看它一眼。”

Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth plead that their crime will be hidden from heaven. And their language is a way of hiding it from themselves--refusing to name it, refusing to think about it, so that guilt will not overpower them with the horror of what they have done. They also constantly use the words “done” and “deed” to refer to the murder. The repetition of these words seems to perform on a micro level the larger themes of equivocation and guilt that animate the play. It’s as if these actions, these done deeds, will somehow be absolved of their bloody horror if they are not named or described.

麦克白和妻子请求上天不要揭发他们的罪行。他们提到这件事的时候言辞也颇为隐晦，甚至不直接说出这件事，这样，他们就不会感到愧疚。他们用“干”和“做”来暗指谋杀。好像这样讲，他们的恶行就会被赦免似的。这些词在剧中重复出现，在微观上，体现了本剧犹豫不决和愧疚难当的主题。

Emma Smith: And that sense that I think is a really good tip about Shakespeare more generally, that often the larger themes of the play that we see in the interaction between characters or the way the plot works. Often we can really sort of bring those focus those right back down on the way, adjectives and nouns were called the way the syntax of lines work. And so we can get the sense that the play is aligned from its smallest details to its largest kind of structure. What are the words we keep getting in its different forms is do, done, deed.

艾玛·史密斯：我认为这一点可以让我们更好地了解莎士比亚，让我们在人物的互动或剧情的发展方式中看到戏剧更广大的主题。我们真的可以经常关注这一点。再回到表达方式，形容词和名词就是台词句法的一个方面。我们可以看出，从最小的细节到最大的结构框架，整部戏都是统一的。一些词它们所指的内容一样，但是形式却十分不同，就像“干”、“做”、“做过”某事。

That's as characters, particularly Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, try to suppress thought, I guess, into action and say all that matters is what we do. It's the lexical equivalent. It's the verbal equivalent of Lady Macbeth says. Well, Lady Macbeth says “a little water clears as of this deed.” She says, you know, “the deed”, “the deed” is the word there. But she's saying we just need to do something practical. And it's fine. Stop thinking about it. Stop, stop, stop going on about it. And there's an attempt to do that throughout with this kind of emphasis. And I guess that's correlated to the absence of nouns and the substitution of pronouns where nouns have not been specified. There's a moment when the witches ask each other, what is it you do a deed without a name and that deed without a name feels as if it's the governs. A lot of the language of the play. It can't be spoken. Words can't be spoken to describe at the murder of Duncan. Language is sort of inadequate to approach what's happening. Macbeth can't say to himself what he's doing.

我猜，一些人物，尤其是麦克白和麦克白夫人，试图压制住自己，努力不把内心想法付诸行动。剩下的就是我们要做的事情了。这些麦克白夫人说的同义词，比如，“一点点水就可以洗净我们做的这件事儿。”你看，她说的是，“这件事儿”。但是，她又说我们要有一些实际行动。好吧，别这么想了，别想了，别想了，快停下。她一直用这种强调在推动事情的发展。我认为，这与用代词代替名词是很相似，因为这样就不需要说出具体名词了。剧中有这么一幕，女巫们互相问对方这样一个问题：“如果你做了一件没有名字的事，而这件没有名字的事似乎又在支配着你，这是什么一种感觉？”《麦克白》中有很多地方都体现了这种语言特色。有些话是不能说的，语言不足以描述谋害邓肯的行为。对于自己的所作所为，麦克白自己都说不出口。

Which brings us to a central mystery of the play: if Macbeth is so horrified at the idea of killing the king that he can’t even name the act, how does he actually do it? Why people do things, what makes things happen, is one of the larger questions that the play asks.

而这就让我们想到整部剧的一个核心谜题：既然麦克白对于谋杀国王这件事如此恐惧，甚至都不敢直呼这个行为，那他是怎么犯下这个罪行的呢？“为什么”和“怎么做的”是该剧提出的一系列更为重大的问题。

Emma Smith: One of the dominant questions it raises for me is a question about why things happen. Why do things work out the way they do or why do people commit certain kinds of actions? So it's really interested in things we're still interested in. The question of evil is the idea. Is there such a thing as evil? Do people do bad things for contextual reasons? Are they persuaded by the people? Do they do bad things for the right reasons? Those kind of moral, ethical questions, I think are really pressing in Macbeth.

艾玛·史密斯：这让我想到一个很重要的问题：那就是这一切究竟是如何发生的呢？这一切为什么会这样发展？剧中人物为什么会做出这样的事情？我们对这些都十分感兴趣。很多人认为这是由“恶”引起的，那么真的有“恶”存在吗？剧中人物作恶有没有前因后果？他们是被别人怂恿的吗？他们是出于善意而作恶的吗？我觉得那些道德伦理的问题在麦克白身上也是无法被忽视的。

One way of understanding tragic action is through the notion of the tragic flaw, an idea drawn from the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He said that the hero of a tragedy often makes one error of judgment with far-reaching consequences that lead to his downfall. Some critics see this fatal action less as a simple mistake and more as evidence of some deeper fault in their character.

我们还可以从悲剧性缺陷这个角度来认识悲剧性行为。这个概念源自希腊哲学家亚里士多德。他说，悲剧的产生往往是因为一个错误的判断所导致的，这个错误判断影响深远，并最终导致了主人公的毁灭。一些批评家认为，这个致命行为不仅仅只是一个简单小错误，更体现出了主人公性格上的缺陷，是必然会发生的。

Emma Smith: I think we've become used to an idea of the tragic hero in Shakespeare, which is perhaps a little bit of a stereotype, and the stereotype probably goes something like this. The tragic hero is a basically decent person who has one flaw and that flaw somehow trips him up and he ends up doing something that's really bad, but probably hurts him as much as anybody else. And that's pretty sad. It's kind of sad decline from somebody who's seemed as if they were in other circumstances could have been can good people and having a good life? I'm not completely sure that's ever relevant. It's certainly not relevant here.

艾玛·史密斯：我觉得我们对于莎士比亚笔下的悲剧人物已经很熟悉了，甚至都觉得这些人物的经历很公式化。一般都是这样的：一个受人尊敬的人物，由于性格上的缺陷犯了个小错误，而最终酿成大错，最终害人害己。这很令人难过。他们的堕落毁灭，让人不禁想：如果换种情况，他们是否就可以做个好人，过上幸福生活呢？我不知道这样想是否有意义，但在这里，我敢肯定这种假设是毫无意义的。

What makes this model inadequate for understanding Macbeth is that the play depicts many different sources of agency, many different kinds of forces at work in the world that could be causing things to happen. And that makes it hard to say exactly what does cause them.

这种思路，不能帮助我们全面认识麦克白。因为，在这部剧中，作者描写了许多不同的推动力，各种力量在共同作用，引发了最后的结局。因此，很难说清楚究竟是谁导致了谁。

Emma Smith: It starts with the witches. So they look as if they precede everything else that's happening or oversee everything that's happening. But the witches kind of disappear. We don't get them back at the end. It's a striking feature of major productions on film and in the theater that they very often feel that they want to bring the witches back at the end to finish things off, either with the suggestion the witches are still around and therefore some notion of evil or wickedness is still there to attach itself to weak or ambitious people or to say the witches have done their work.

艾玛·史密斯：最开始是那些女巫。所以，乍一看好像她们预先就知道事情的发展路径，能够预见未来。但是后来女巫们却消失了，到最后她们也没有再出现。很多电影或戏剧作品总是想让女巫们在故事的结尾再次出现，为一切画上句号，这些作品要么让观众觉得女巫阴魂不散、邪恶依旧存在，仍在找机会攻击那些脆弱或贪婪的人，要么就说女巫已经完成了她们的任务。

Emma Smith: So one aspect of the question of agency in the play, I think, is the question about the witches. The other is the obvious question about Lady Macbeth. Would Macbeth have done this without Lady Macbeth? …  So does Lady Macbeth make him do something that he wouldn't otherwise have done? And how far is this an aspect of Macbeth himself?

艾玛·史密斯：所以，我认为，在这部剧中，在推动事情发展的动力上，一方面是这些女巫，而另一方面很明显就是麦克白夫人了。如果没有麦克白夫人的煽风点火，麦克白会做犯下这些罪恶吗？……所以是否就是麦克白夫人迫使麦克白作出了那些他本人绝对不会做的事情呢？麦克白自己在这里面又发挥了多少作用？

Emma Smith: I think when Macbeth uses in his first soliloquy the idea of vaulting ambition. That's obviously a part of his initial motivation. But it doesn't really seem to explain it's not sufficient sort of psychologically or situationally, perhaps to explain what happens after that.

艾玛·史密斯：我想，麦克白自己第一段独白中就引用了“膨胀的野心”这样的表达。毫无疑问，这是他原始动机的一部分。但不论是从心理上还是从当时当境的现实因素上，这似乎也不能完全解释此后发生的种种事情。

I think my take on this play is that it really embodies the qualities I most value about Shakespeare's drama. I think it's a really interrogative place. I think it asks loads of questions. I think it asks the question, would Macbeth have done this without the witches? Would he have done this without Lady Macbeth? I think he wants us to think about how far we understand human agency to be at the center of the world, how far we think we are sort of puppeteer or influenced by things outside ourselves. So the takes on the play, which are very sure about the answers to those questions. I feel skeptical about it. I don't think that for me is where the power of the play lies.

艾玛·史密斯：我认为，这部剧所呈现出来的种种特质，正是莎士比亚戏剧中我最看重的。我觉得这部戏剧里面充满了疑问，它提出了非常多的问题。这部剧像是在问：没有那些女巫，麦克白会这么做吗？没有麦克白夫人，他会这么做吗？这部剧让我们思考，在世界上，他人的作用究竟有多大？我们对别人的作用又有多大？外界因素会对我们产生多大影响？在这部剧中，我们可以找到这些问题的答案吗？我不敢保证。对于我而言，这绝不是这部戏剧真正的魅力所在。

 Many of the play’s questions arise from the magic of its language: words, like the witches themselves, are powerful tricksters that both drive actions, but also leave the characters--and the audience--with many unanswered questions. In the next episode, we’ll look closely at some of the key speeches of the play to see how Shakespeare fills his language with such power and mystery.

这部剧中很对疑问都源自语言的神奇力量：文字，就像女巫一样，坑蒙拐骗，在推动剧情发展的同时，也给主人公和观众留下许多无法解答的疑问。在下期节目中，我们将近距离了解这部戏剧中一些关键的对话，一同探索莎士比亚是如何为自己的语言注入力量和神秘感的。