The Merchant of Venice 2：the Characters and the Questions

The Merchant of Venice - Part 2 - How Comedy Turns Tragic

《威尼斯商人》——第二部分——喜剧是如何变成了悲剧

The most memorable character inThe Merchant of Veniceis not the merchant of its title, Antonio. It’s Shylock, the Jewish moneylender. The treatment of Shylock brings up tensions and anxieties that haunt the play well after he leaves the stage. In this episode, we speak with Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, about this fascinating character, about religious hatred in the play, and about the problems that shadoweverycharacter, even those whoseemto get all that they want.

《威尼斯商人》中，最令人印象深刻的并不是标题中的“威尼斯商人”安东尼奥，而是放高利贷的那位犹太人——夏洛克。夏洛克的种种遭遇为戏剧制造出了紧张和焦虑的氛围，这种感觉即便在他退场后，依旧久久萦绕着这整个故事。今天，我们将继续对话哈佛大学约翰·科根人文学科校级教授，斯蒂芬·格林布拉特。与他一道，剖析夏洛克这个令人着迷的角色，探寻戏剧中的宗教仇恨，以及每个角色，包括那些得到了想要一切的角色们背后那些躲不开的问题。

The interpretations with which I'm the least sympathetic are the ones that try to wrap the play up in a single, unequivocal, clear package: “this is an anti-Semitic play,” “this is a philo-Semitic play”; “This is a play thatattacksreligious stereotypes,” “This is a play thatembodiesreligious stereotypes”; “This is a pure comedy of fun,” “This is aterriblecomedy that’s actually a tragedy,” and so forth. Anything that tries to tie it all up in a single knot seems not to be in touch with something else that's important in the play. I'm more sympathetic to those interpretations that try to acknowledge the profound ambiguities of this play, the uncertainties of our own responses.

我特别不喜欢那些将这部剧笼统地进行概括的解读。在这类解读中，有的把《威尼斯商人》定义为一部“反犹太主义的戏剧”，但也有的认为它“推崇犹太主义”；有的觉得这部戏剧“抨击了宗教刻板印象”，相反也有认为它“融合了多种宗教模式”；还有的解读认为这“纯粹就是一部逗人发笑的戏剧”，不过也有解读将它定义为“一部披着戏剧外壳的悲剧”。像这样的解读数不胜数。然而，这类妄图用一个概念来总结戏剧的做法让人很容易错过剧中其他一些重要信息。我个人更认同那些对戏剧进行多维度分析的解读，认同承认读者对于戏剧会有各自不同反应的分析。

Many of the play’s ambiguities are generated by the character of Shylock. For Stephen Greenblatt, one of the most notable things about Shylock is how much the playdidn’tneed him -- or at least, didn’t need him to be what he became. Many romantic comedies feature a ‘blocking figure,’ a character who gets the action going by opposing the marriage of the young lovers, as Shylock opposes Jessica’s union with Lorenzo. This was Shylock’s initial, straightforward function in the play. But then something Greenblatt calls ‘the Mercutio effect’ takes over.

而戏剧的多维度性很多来自于夏洛克这个角色。斯蒂芬·格林布拉特教授认为，夏洛克身上最值得我们注意的一点在于这部戏剧有多么不需要他，或者说至少他完全没有必要表现成剧中那副模样。在很多浪漫喜剧中确实都会有这么一个“反派”，他千方百计想要阻挠年轻恋人的婚姻。夏洛克就属于这类角色，他极力反对女儿栒雪格和洛良佐的恋情。这是夏洛克在该剧中最基本、最直接的作用。但是格林布拉特教授认为，随着后续剧情的发展，出现了“茂丘西奥效应”。

Mercutio is a particularly rowdy, wild, fabulous character in Shakespeare’sRomeo and Juliet. He’s not one of the main characters in the play -- he dies halfway through. And Shakespeare’s supposed to have said about Mercutio that he “had to kill Mercutio before Mercutio killed the play.” And I think that this remark reveals something quite significant about Shakespeare, which is that his imagination went out toward things that threatened the structures of the plays he was writing. His imagination didn't stop within the appropriate frame. And I think in the case ofThe Merchant of Venice, the “Mercutio effect” would look like this: Shakespeare began with a story about a comic bully, a father who’s a villainous character in a general, unpleasant and harsh and mean and potentially murderous vein, and has to be stopped. And he is stopped, by the end of the fourth act. But something happened to Shakespeare when he wrote the play, which is that the character of Shylock got bigger and bigger and began to threaten the structure that Shakespeare had embraced. So that would be one way of thinking about how Shakespeare takes a set of cultural and aesthetic materials and how, whether he wished to do so or not, his imagination blew them up.

茂丘西奥是《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中一个爱惹是生非、无法无天的角色，但同时又他又令人拍手称妙。他不是剧中的主角，因为他在剧情发展到一半的时候就死了。人们甚至认为莎士比亚曾经这样谈论过茂丘西奥，他说：必须“杀死茂丘西奥，否则茂丘西奥就会杀了这部剧”。从这段话中，我们可以看出莎士比亚在创作过程中的一个显著特色，他的思路会延伸到那些威胁了他所创作戏剧的结构的内容上，而不会局限在某个特定框架内。在《威尼斯商人》中，“茂丘西奥效应”也得到了体现，莎士比亚在故事开始时，刻画了一个蛮不讲理的父亲形象，他有着恶棍角色的一切特质——尖酸、刻薄又吝啬，骨子里可能还有杀人嗜血的冲动，所以必须要有人来阻止他。的确，他最终被阻止了。在第四幕，他的种种邪恶欲望被遏制了。然而，随着莎士比亚创作的不断深入，某些不可控的因素逐渐浮现。夏洛克这个角色越来越饱满，甚至开始威胁作者最初所构思的戏剧架构了。莎士比亚在一开始选取了一系列文化素材和文学原型进行戏剧创作，但是不知是有意还是无意，他的创作思路最终却冲破了这些素材。

The way that Shylock seized Shakespeare’s imagination is remarkable for several reasons. As we noted in Episode One, Shakespeare wouldn’t have seen Jewish communities in England. But he would have seen a Jewish character onstage in a play. Shakespeare’s contemporary, Christopher Marlowe, wrote a very successful play calledThe Jew of Malta, featuring a villainous Jewish man named Barabas. Marlowe’s play certainly influences Shakespeare’s--but it’s notable how much the character of Shylockdiffersfrom the cartoonishly evil Barabas.

夏洛克这个角色对于莎士比亚创作思路的影响之所以如此引人注意有多种原因。上集节目中提到，在莎士比亚那个年代，英国并没有犹太人社区。但是，他一定在戏剧舞台上见到过犹太人角色。和莎士比亚同时期的剧作家克里斯托弗·马洛就写过一部非常著名的戏剧——《马耳他岛的犹太人》，剧中主角名叫巴拉巴斯，是个犹太人，他贪婪残忍、诡计多端。很明显，马洛的这部戏剧对莎士比亚的创作产生了一定的影响，但我们要注意，莎士比亚笔下的夏洛克和马洛笔下那个夸张的恶棍巴拉巴斯存在着巨大差别。

The Jew of Maltaby Christopher Marlowe is an astonishingly disturbing and brilliant play. It was probably written only a few years before Shakespeare wrote his play and must clearly have been one of the things behind Shakespeare’s writingThe Merchant of Veniceat all. Marlowe’s play was about an incredibly wicked Jewish villain, an enormously wealthy man named Barabas. And the Christians want to seize this man's property, and the Jew, Barrabas, wants revenge. He does everything in his power to destroy the Christians. He talks about poisoning wells, about going out at night and killing innocent Christians. He's a kind of comic book villain. And Shakespeare is very clearly aware of Marlowe’s play. He is trying to do something with comparable materials inThe Merchant of Venice, but without making Shylock into that kind of stage villain.

克里斯托弗·马洛的《马耳他岛的犹太人》是一部很容易引发人们恐慌不安情绪的优秀作品，年代也许比《威尼斯商人》还要早几年，而且它在某种程度上一定也影响了《威尼斯商人》的创作。马洛这部戏剧的主角是一个极其邪恶的犹太人恶棍巴拉巴斯。巴拉巴斯家财万贯，但却凶残贪婪。基督徒想要夺走他的财产，于是，巴拉巴斯便计划对他们进行报复。他做了自己能做的所有事情去报复基督徒。他说他要往水井里投毒，还要在半夜出门去杀害无辜的基督徒。这是典型漫画式的夸张恶棍形象。莎士比亚也意识到了这一点。因此，他在创作《威尼斯商人》时，虽然利用了类似的描述，但他并不打算将夏洛克刻画成巴拉巴斯那样的舞台剧式的恶棍形象。

Shylock does, of course, pursue revenge on the Christian Antonio. But his motives and feelings go far beyond Barabas’s gleeful delight in his villainy. They render Shylock inescapablyhuman.

当然，夏洛克也确实想报复基督徒安东尼奥。但夏洛克的作恶的动机和他的情绪与巴拉巴斯不同，他作出这些邪恶行径，并不单纯为了获得愉悦快感。所以，我们从中可以感受到夏洛克身上的人性。

You get a character who's clearly marked as a villain, and specifically a religious-enemy villain, and at the same time, you get involved in a more and more complicated relationship with him. For one thing, you see that he has a life history of having to deal with a community that spits on him, mistreats him, curses him, hates him. So there’s that part of the play. But then you also find yourself inside Shylock's house. You see Shylock's relationship with his daughter. It’s not a perfect relationship by any means. But clearly he loves his daughter and wants to protect her -- he overprotects her. And then after she’s left him, you feel the devastation and loneliness of this father, the torment that he feels internally. And you also get a glimpse of his past relationship with his wife, Leah, and his love for her. All of that is much, much more than you need if you're just constructing a comic villain. You get increasingly involved in Shylock's sort of way of feeling. That doesn't mean you forgive it. But you get to understand it. You get to feel it yourself.

你看到这样一个角色，他被明确标榜为“恶棍”，他还是我们宗教上的敌人，然而，随着剧情的发展，你却发现自己和他之间产生了一种越来越复杂的关系。一方面，你看到他在过去的人生中，他周围的那些基督徒一直在唾弃他、鄙夷他、诅咒他、憎恨他。这些都是戏剧呈现出的剧情。接着，我们来到了夏洛克的家中，又目睹了他和女儿的关系，不论从哪种角度看，他们之间的相处也决算补上融洽。但我们可以清楚地感受到夏洛克深爱着自己的女儿，想要保护她，虽然那种保护欲有点儿过了。接着，她的女儿离家出走，你又体会到了这位父亲的绝望和孤寂，看到了他内心所遭受的沉重折磨。再后来，你又了解到了他和逝去的妻子莉雅之间的关系，你看到了他对已故妻子深深的爱恋。而这些剧情和刻画，对于构造一个漫画式恶棍形象来说是完全没必要的。而且你越来越能理解到夏洛克。也许你依旧不会原谅他，但你慢慢地理解他了。因为你经历了他所经历的一切。

Modern audiences can be especially struck by the pain of thereligiouspersecution Shylock suffers, from the whole Christian community and especially from Antonio. “He hates our sacred nation,” Shylock says. “He hath disgraced me and hindered me … and what’s his reason? I am a Jew.” In Antonio’s language, the Jewish Shylock is little better than an animal. He calls Shylock a “dog” and says that debating with “the Jew” for mercy is like trying to debate a wolf. And Shylock, it must be noted, returns the feeling in kind: “I hate him for he is a Christian,” he says.

对于现代观众而言，大家会对夏洛克所遭受的来自基督教社会、尤其是来自安东尼奥的宗教迫害而震惊。夏洛克说：“他仇视我们的神圣民族”，“他污辱了我，侮蔑我......他可有什么道理？只因为我是个犹太人。”安东尼奥甚至说，他认为信奉犹太教的夏洛克只比动物好一点点。他说夏洛克就是一条“狗”，他说向“犹太人”乞求仁慈，倒不如去跟狼理论。但值得注意的是，夏洛克对安东尼奥也有着类似的憎恨之情，他说：我憎恨他，因为他是基督徒。

One aspect of this play that greatly interests me is the question about religious hatred, about how far people are willing to go with it. How intense is the hatred that Jews and Christians feel for the other group, and what are they willing to do about it? There’s a character, Graziano, who keeps saying they should kill Shylock -- Hang him! And a certain internal logic of the play would suggest that he should indeed be killed as the irreconcilable enemy of the Christians. And the play goes very far in that direction. The Duke threatens to have Shylock executed unless he agrees to convert to Christianity and to dispose of his wealth in the way that he’s ordered to do. But actually, the play doesn't goallthe way. Shylock does agree, and the Christians agree to receive Shylock as one of them. We could say that's painful. It’s painful to me, personally. I think the play can't quite figure out what to do with it all. Shylock goes off to be converted to Christianity and disappears in the fifth act. But it’s not destroying him. In fact, it's making him one ofus, from the Christian point of view. And the reverse is also true. Shylock plots for most of the play to kill his enemy Antonio. He hates Antonio intensely. And then Antonio is bound to a chair, Shylock has a knife poised above his breast, and he could, at that moment, kill him. That’s what he wants. He could be the person who takes revenge, finally, Jewish revenge against the Christians who insult and despise the Jews. All he has to do is to kill him. Of course, he'll be executed himself. That's the logic of suicide bombing. But Shylock doesn't do it. He holds back. So part of the very strange structure of the play is to bring both Jew and Christian to the brink of destroying the other, and then having to step back from that brink. Stepping back is notoriously uncomfortable and unsatisfying. That's a problem that Shakespeare faced as an artist. He had to figure out what to do with ‘not going all the way.’ But it's also interesting, morally, culturally, civilizationally interesting. We have to engage with it.

这部剧令我很感兴趣的一点就是里面所涉及的宗教仇恨，以及人们对于宗教仇恨的接受度。犹太人和基督徒之间的憎恨究竟有多深？他们会采取怎样的态度应对这种仇恨？《威尼斯商人》中甚至还有一个名叫葛拉希阿诺角色，他一直主张说必须杀死夏洛克，必须把他绞死！戏剧的一个鲜明内在逻辑也表明，必须将夏洛克视作是与基督徒们势不两立的敌人，必须将他杀死。戏剧情节也遵循这个逻辑向前发展。公爵威胁要处死夏洛克，除非他同意皈依基督教，并遵从判决放弃他的财富。然而实际上，剧情却又并没有完全按照这个内在逻辑发展。夏洛克同意皈依基督教，放弃财产。基督徒们也同意夏洛克加入基督教。我们会认为这个结局很残酷。我个人也认为，这个结局确实令人无比痛苦。戏剧本身也并不知道该如何调和这些矛盾。夏洛克皈依了基督教，但在第五幕中，他却再也没有出现。基督徒们并没有杀死夏洛克，而是把他变成了基督教中的一员。当然，这是站在基督徒的角度上来评判的。不过，反过来看也是如此。在戏剧的大多数时候，夏洛克都千方百计想要取安东尼奥的性命，因为他对他恨之入骨。当安东尼奥被绑在凳子上时，夏洛克拿着刀子抵在他的胸口上，在这一刻，他原本可以杀死安东尼奥，可以做他一直想要做的这件事情。他可以报仇雪恨，可以报复那些曾经咒骂、鄙视过自己的基督徒。他只要把安东尼奥杀死就可以报仇了。当然，一旦他这么做，他也必须自杀。这最终会引发自杀的剧情。但最终夏洛克却并没有这么做，他退缩了。从这里，我们可以感受到戏剧的一个奇怪的结构，它会把犹太人和基督徒从毁灭对方的边缘拉回来，让他们放弃摧毁对方的行为。退缩令人很不适，令人很不满意，但这是莎士比亚作为一名艺术家必须面对的问题。他必须想好要如何应对“不按常理发展的剧情”。但同时，这这种结构也很有意思，不论是从道德上看，还是从文化文明上看，都很有趣。我们必须理解这种结构安排。

Audiences today must engage with the intense discomfort the play provokes in the post- Holocuast twenty-first century. In its frank depiction of prejudice and hatred,The Merchant of Veniceraises questions around religious difference similar to questions raised byOthelloaround race. Is this a play that simply represents anti-Jewish feeling? Or is it an anti-Jewish play?

在“后大屠杀”时代，21世纪的观众们必须要容忍戏剧所引发的强烈不适感。《威尼斯商人》直白赤裸地刻画了偏见和仇恨，并由此提出了一系列有关宗教差异的问题，就像《奥赛罗》种提出的那些有关种族的问题一样。戏剧仅仅是为了呈现了反犹情绪吗？这真的是一部反犹太人的戏剧吗？

There’s no question in my mind, at least, that the play is saturated with anti-Jewish feeling and stereotypes. Shakespeare has Shylock from the beginning centrally associated with money and money lending -- “three thousand ducats, mmm.” And that’s absolutely characteristic of the anti-Jewish stereotype in the period. And then of course, he’s relentless in his cruelty. As the play builds toward its dramatic climax, Shylock is sharpening that knife. The play is saturated with unbelievably ugly stuff. But what's strange, deeply strange, is that this is not the whole story. The whole story is bigger and more complicated than that. That is why the play is still around after 400 years. If it was simply a play of virulent anti-Semitism, it would have vanished by now. It is a play written in an unapologetic way for people who were unapologetic about their anti-Judaism. But it complicates the feelings in a way that remains completely fascinating. You get to enter into Shylock’s structure of feeling. And conversely, you get to enter into the feeling structure of the persecuting Christians, particularly of Antonio, and Portia as well. You get to see much, much more of them than you would need to see if you were just going to get the plot to play itself out, and that is what is remarkable about Shakespeare’s achievement.

我认为，这部剧毫无疑问充斥着反犹情绪和对犹太人的偏见。从一开始，莎士比亚就将夏洛克这个角色与金钱和借贷牢牢联系在了一起，他叫着“喔，三千个金币”。这是那个年代，反犹太人心中典型的犹太人形象。当然，在后续剧情中，夏洛克也表现出了残忍和残酷。随着剧情不断走向高潮，我们甚至还看到了夏洛克磨刀的场面。这部戏剧充满了各种丑陋的情节，但奇怪的是，这些都并不是故事的全部。相较于这些负面的描写，整个故事更为宏大、更为复杂。这也正是这部戏剧400多年来，依旧深受人们喜爱的原因。如果说这只是一部为了表达对反犹情绪的戏剧的话，那么它很可能早就被遗忘了。戏剧表现了那些毫不掩饰内心反犹情绪的角色。戏剧把这些情绪变得极为复杂，但同时这些情绪依旧具有极强的吸引力。观众可以进入到夏洛克的情绪框架中。同样地，也可以进入迫害犹太人的基督徒，尤其是安东尼奥和鲍西娅的情绪框架中。进入这些角色的情绪框架之后，你将会获得更多的感受，这其实远远超出了了解剧情的需要。而这也恰恰就是莎士比亚的伟大之所在。

It’s also remarkable how Shakespeare builds his play so that some of the painful feelings Shylock suffers as the play’s most despised outsider are shared by some of its most powerfulinsiders. At the end of the trial scene, Shylock’s forced conversion to Christianity leaves him isolated, without a true community. But at the play’s end, when the lovers go off in pairs, there’s another major character who finds himself excluded: Antonio.

同样值得注意的还有莎士比亚架构戏剧的方式。虽然夏洛克是剧中最受人鄙夷的局外人，但他所遭受的某些痛苦在剧中一些最重要的局内人身上也有体现。根据审判决定，夏洛克被迫皈依基督教。但在这场戏结束后，那群基督教徒却全都离他而去，留下他孤零零一个人，并没有给予他归属感。然而很相似地，在戏剧结尾，当恋人们双双离开后，另一个主角也被留在了同样的孤寂中，这个主角就是安东尼奥。

I think that Antonio and Shylock are in some strange way secret sharers, in the sense that they are both, in some profound way, alone, isolated, without the satisfactions that other people look for in this world. They’re both represented as old men whose time in some sense is over -- there's a new generation, a new set of connections in the world, and they are left behind. In that sense, there is a secret, hidden relationship between them. I think that each sees the other as the implacable enemy, but you could say that the enmity is intensified by the sense that in a strange way, they're more like each other than they would ever be able to recognize or understand or acknowledge.

我觉得，安东尼奥和夏洛克之间存在着某些奇怪且难以觉察的共同点。深入去看，我们会发现，他们都是孤独落寂的，缺乏其他人在这个世界上苦苦追寻的满足感。他们都象征着已经过时了的老一辈人。世界上已经有了新生的一代，出现了新的一社会关系，而他们却被抛在了后面。这就是他们之间的那种隐蔽神秘的联系。他们互相将对方视作自己不共戴天的敌人，然而他们之间的相似度比自己所认识、所理解、所承认的相似度还要大，因此他们之间的敌意也在日益激化。

At the play’s end, Shylock has lost the two people dearest to him: his wife, Leah, whose ring he so treasured, and his daughter Jessica. Antonio has also lost the person he loved most: Bassanio.

剧末，夏洛克失去了他最爱的两个人：他的妻子莉雅（他一直珍藏着莉雅的那枚戒指）和他的女儿栒雪格。而安东尼奥也失去了他最爱的人——巴萨尼奥。

Antonio has a deep affection for Bassanio. It is a profound friendship, but a friendship that's been tied up with money for some time. Antonio offers Bassanio, quote, “his purse and his person.” There’s a strange internal rhyme, as if ‘person’ and ‘purse’ were somehow bound up with one another, as they are -- when Bassanio thinks of Antonio’s ‘person,’ we can be reasonably sure he thinks of Antonio's ‘purse.’ But Antonio wants to give Bassanio everything,anythingthat he asks for. It’s something beyond the ordinary measure of generosity. This is a special relationship.

安东尼奥对巴萨尼奥有着很深的感情。他们之间的有着深厚的友谊，但这段友谊曾一度靠金钱维持。安东尼奥给了巴萨尼奥“他的钱囊和身家”。在英文原文中，表示“钱囊”和“身家”的单词发音相似，放在一起读很有节奏和韵律，读起来我们会觉得这两个词关系密切，就像是当巴萨尼奥想到安东尼奥“身家”的时候，我们有充分的理由相信他一定也想到了安东尼奥的“钱囊”。安东尼奥想把一切都给巴萨尼奥，只要是巴萨尼奥需要的，他都愿意给。这已经不是普通的慷慨大方了，他们之间的关系绝对非同一般。

Sometimes in performance, Antonio and Bassanio’s deep affection is played as a homoerotic or physical relationship, with the men exchanging close embraces or kisses. But in the text of the play, Antonio expresses his devotion to Bassanio particularly by lending him money. The play’s language is constantly intertwining love and money. Bassanio says, “To you, Antonio, / I owe the most inmoneyandin love.” When Jessica elopes with her lover, she steals a large quantity of her father’s money; and we hear that Shylock runs through the streets crying, “O my ducats, O my daughter!” as though he laments both equally. Solanio and Salarino mock Shylock for this incident. Butallthe characters speak in terms that link love with economic value, because this world makes it difficult to extricate personal relationships from financial ties.

一些舞台表演会将安东尼奥和巴萨尼奥之间的亲密关系表现成同性之爱或肉体关系。在表演中，他们经常会紧紧拥抱或者亲吻对方。但在剧本中，安东尼奥主要还是通过借钱给巴萨尼奥来表达自己对他的关爱。戏剧语言一直围绕着爱与金钱展开。巴萨尼奥说：“对于你，安东尼奥，我亏欠太大，友爱和金钱同样多。”而当栒雪格和恋人私奔时，她偷了她父亲一大笔钱。我们听到夏洛克在大街上一边跑一边喊：“我的钱、我女儿”，似乎在他心中这两样东西同样重要。萨拉尼奥和萨拉里诺还因此而嘲笑讥讽过夏洛克。不过，剧中所有角色在谈论爱的时候，都会把它与金钱联系起来，因为在这个世界上，很难把人与人之间的关系从金钱关系中脱离出来。

As the play develops, we see that all of these relationships -- the relationship between Bassanio and Antonio, the relationship between Bassanio and Portia, are centrally about large sums of money, as is the relationship between Antonio and Shylock. At the beginning of the play, the only relationship that's freed from this particular nexus is between Shylock and Jessica. But then we see that Jessica runs off with a Christian who’s very interested in the Jew’s money. So every relationship in the play is saturated with money and with the obligations that go with money.

随着剧情的发展，我们会看到许多这样的关系。例如：巴萨尼奥和安东尼奥之间的关系；巴萨尼奥和鲍西娅之间的关系，他们之间的关系涉及到数额极其庞大的一笔财富；以及安东尼奥和夏洛克之间的关系。在戏剧开始时，唯一一段摆脱了金钱牵绊的关系发生在夏洛克和他的女儿栒雪格之间。但很快我们发现，与栒雪格私奔的那个基督徒却对犹太人的钱财很感兴趣。所以，可以说在这部剧中，每一段关系都与金钱有着千丝万缕的联系，与伴随金钱而来的义务交织缠绕。

Portia’s language, too, reflects this entanglement of love and money. Just after she and Bassanio are betrothed, she learns about his debt to Antonio. She gives him the money to repay the debt and says, “Since you are dearbought, I willloveyou dear.” The repetition of the word “dear” suggests that she will cherish Bassanio in proportion to the expense he has cost her, as though love could be quantified in the same mathematical terms as money. Antonio makes the same suggestion when he urges Bassanio to break his promise to Portia and give his ring to the lawyer: “Let his deservings and mylovewithal / Bevalued’gainst your wife’s commandment.” His words imply that one love can be measured against another and outweigh it.  This is likely Portia’s fear: that Bassanio’s love for Antonio outweighs his love for her. In the courtroom, Bassanio tells Antonio, “life itself, my wife, and all the world / Are not with me esteemed above thy life. / I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all / … to deliver you.” And Portia overhears.

同样，鲍西娅的话语也能体现出爱与金钱的纠缠。她与巴萨尼奥刚约定了婚约后，她就了解到巴萨尼奥欠了安东尼奥的钱。于是，她给了巴萨尼奥一笔钱去偿还债务，她说：“我们这姻缘既然出了这么多代价，我定将对您更恩爱，让它对得起这些代价”。鲍西娅不断重复“代价”这个词，由此可以看出，好像他们之间的爱情，可以像金钱一样用数字来量化。同样，安东尼奥在劝说巴萨尼奥违反对鲍西娅立下的誓言、把戒指交给律师时，他也提出了类似的建议，他说：“请给他这指环，望顾念他的大功，加上我的爱，违犯一次新大嫂的阃闱命令吧”。这段话的意思是，我们可以通过一种爱去衡量另一种爱，有的爱会胜过另一种爱。这正是鲍西娅所担心的：她担心巴萨尼奥对安东尼奥的爱会超越他对自己的爱。在法庭上，巴萨尼奥对安东尼奥说：“生命本身，我的妻，这整个世界，我珍惜他们，并比不过于珍惜你。我宁愿失去这一切，嗳，牺牲掉他们给这个魔鬼，来将你拯救”。这段话刚好被鲍西娅听见了。

Part of the particular emotional poignancy of the play is that Portia, when she finally gets what she wants, when she finally gets Bassanio -- Portia thinks that she's formed a bond with a man who loves her. But then she discovers that Bassanio has, as it were, an emotional pre-contract, an emotional bond to a man back in Venice. And then she has to set in motion a very complicated set of actions in order to free herself from this pre-contract by freeing Bassanio from it. If Antonio dies because he has borrowed the money from Shylock for Bassanio to use, then Bassanio’s emotional bond to Antonio will last forever. So Portia is in a very difficult position. Imagine it for yourself. You marry someone; you’re madly in love with him; and then you discover almost immediately a whole history you had no idea of -- an emotional, perhaps a physical history that’s completely new to you. And it changes everything in your relationship. Portia is someone who, as much as the other characters in the play, is in a kind of emotional trouble. And that emotional trouble is what all of the characters, each of them in a different way, all of the characters are trying to solve for themselves.

这部剧酸楚的点就在这里，当鲍西娅最终得到了她想要的，最终得到了巴萨尼奥这个人时，她本以为可以和自己深爱的这个男人之间产生一条牵绊彼此的纽带。但她很快发现巴萨尼奥与远在威尼斯的一个男子在此之前就有了一段情感契约。于是，她不得不开展一系列复杂的行动，将巴萨尼奥从这段契约中解脱出来，因为只有这样，她自己才不会受那段关系的影响。如果安东尼奥因为为巴萨尼奥向夏洛克借钱而丧命，那么巴萨尼奥对安东尼奥的情感契约将会永远持续下去。所以，鲍西娅处于一个非常复杂的境地之中。大家自己也可以设身处地地想一想。你和一个人结婚了，你疯狂地爱着这个人。可很快，你却发现了这个人有过一段你完全不知道的历史，他与另一个人有着千丝万缕的关系，也许是情感关系，也许是肉体关系，但你此前对于这段关系根本一无所知。这段历史改变了你们关系中的所有。和剧中其他角色一样，鲍西娅也处于某种情感困扰中。这种情感上的困扰，也许不同角色的困扰会各不相同，但是他们所有人都在试图解决这些困扰。

Portia tries to solve her emotional trouble by breaking the bond--a bond that is financialandemotional--between Antonio and Bassanio. When Antonio put his money and his life at risk for Bassanio, then Bassanio owed his greatest debt tohim. But with her intervention in the trial, Portia saves Antonio’s life and secures him Shylock’s fortune, which puts both Antonio and Bassanio in debt toher. And to ensure that Bassanio owes her even more, Portia also arranges the trick with the rings. When she gets Bassanio to give her the ring he promised never to give away, she places him in a moral and emotional debt to her that he must repay with lifelong faithfulness, as he promises, “by my soul I swear / I never more will break an oath with thee.”

鲍西娅试图通过打破契约，打破安东尼奥和巴萨尼奥之间金钱和情感上的契约来解决自己的情感困扰。当安东尼奥为了巴萨尼奥冒着损失金钱和丢失性命的危险时，巴萨尼奥就亏欠了他许多。不过，由于鲍西娅介入了法庭审判，她救了安东尼奥，并为他争取到了夏洛克的财产，这样一来，就变成安东尼奥和巴萨尼奥对她有所亏欠了。为了让巴萨尼奥亏欠得更多一些，鲍西娅还设计了送戒指这个环节。当她迫使巴萨尼奥交出他曾经承诺绝不离身的戒指时，她就使得巴萨尼奥在道德和情感上都亏欠了自己，这样巴萨尼奥就不得不用一辈子的忠诚来弥补，这就像他后来承诺的那样：“凭我的灵魂我发誓，我将决不再违反我对您的誓言”。

So Portia gets, in a sense, what she wants. Many of the characters seem to. Bassanio has his wife -- and his fortune. Lorenzo and Jessica have Shylock’s wealth. Antonio has his life and the good news that his ships have unexpectedly returned bearing riches. Plotwise, we have the ingredients for a comedy. And yet, the final act never quite feels like a comic happy ending.

这样一来，鲍西娅终于完全得到了她想要的。剧中很多角色似乎最终也都得到了自己渴望的东西。巴萨尼奥得到了一位妻子，和财富。洛良佐和栒雪格得到了夏洛克的财产。安东尼奥也保住了自己的性命，同时还收到了好消息说他的船只竟然满载着财富回来了。这一切全都是喜剧的要素。然而，我们却依旧觉得这最后一幕并不是喜剧的圆满结局。

It's exquisitely uncomfortable for virtually everyone. Sometimes it's played that Jessica and Lorenzo are having a very unpleasant conversation, or that Graziano and Nerissa are already revealing theirs to be a disastrous marriage. Sometimes it's played that Portia is alienated already from her husband. You can play it in a mournful way, with Jessica secretly melancholy because she misses her father, or you can feel this burden is over all the characters because of what has been done to Shylock. It’s even played sometimes as a kind of farcical comedy. But nothing quite works with those rings. And that's because the meaning of those rings is bound up with the connection between matter and emotion, in a way that symbolically focuses something that has been troubling from the very beginning: what is the relationship between ducats and love? Money is not simple. It's a complicated symbolic object. And those rings aren't simple bands of metal. They're emotional gauges. Portia puts Bassanio through a kind of trial, which he inevitably has to fail, in order, basically, to break Bassanio’s bond to Antonio. If her strategy works, that leaves Antonio, how shall we say, as a pleasant memory and an honored guest, but he cannot get too close to the emotional center of the house any longer. Some of the most successful versions I've seen of the play had Antonio at the end of the fifth act left alone on stage, in the way Shylock was left at the end of Act Four, in a state of abandonment or emotional devastation. That is a peculiar way to end a comedy. But that's the cost of Shakespeare doing the strange thing that he did.

几乎所有人都会对这一幕感到有些的不适。在演出的过程中，戏剧有时候会以栒雪格和洛良佐的一段不愉快的对话结束，有时候则是展现出葛拉希阿诺和纳丽莎婚姻灾难性的前兆。还有的时候，演出结尾会表现出鲍西娅对新婚丈夫的疏离。我们可以用悲伤的方式来呈现戏剧的结局，例如让栒雪格独自黯然神伤，因为她思念着自己的父亲。或者可以表演出所有角色因为对夏洛克的一切所作所为而背负的重担。甚至，可以把它演成一部荒诞喜剧。但这些都比不上那几枚戒指所发挥的作用。因为这些戒指代表着物质与情感的羁绊关系，象征着从戏剧一开始就困扰着人们的一个问题，即金钱和爱之间到底是什么样的关系？金钱不简单。它是一个相当复杂的意象。而那些戒指也绝不仅仅是简单的金属环。它们是情感的度量衡。鲍西娅通过一场巴萨尼奥本来一定会输的审判，将他从与安东尼奥之间的契约中解脱出来。如果她的计划有效，那么安东尼奥就会变成为一段美好的记忆，成为一位尊贵的客人，但他再也无法走进巴萨尼奥的情感核心区域。我看过很多相当成功的《威尼斯商人》的演出，有些演出在第五幕结尾，会安排安东尼奥独自一人留在舞台上，那情形就像第四幕结尾中的夏洛克一样。这样的设计会给人一种被抛弃的感觉，一种情感崩塌的感觉。这种结尾方式对于一部喜剧来说是很怪异的。但是这就是莎士比亚为这怪异创作的所作的努力。

Shakespeare actually ends the play with a lowbrow comic joke, almost as if to drive home how veryun-comic the rest of the play has turned out to be. The characters left onstage have looked for the traditional rewards of comedy, and they have mainly got them. But Shakespeare seems to remind us, that even if we get what wethinkwe want, perfect happiness is not guaranteed.

实际上，莎士比亚在戏剧结尾，讲了一个低俗的笑话，他似乎就是故意想让读者和观众感受一下这部戏剧的其他内容是多么得“不喜剧”。离开舞台的那些角色寻找的是传统喜剧所具备的回报，并且他们最终也确实都得到了自己想要的。但莎士比亚似乎还想提醒我们，即便我们得到了我们自以为想要的东西，可实际上，这也不意味着我们可以得到真正的快乐与幸福。

What do we want from a comedy? We want to laugh. We want to go out feeling happy, feeling that the problems have been resolved and the happy young lovers are going off to bed. We want a glimpse of sexual satisfaction. Shakespeare and his culture understood this very well. All the comedies drive toward the idea of going to bed with the person that you've been longing for. And sure enough, Shakespeare ends the play with a speech by Graziano saying “While I live, I'll fear no other thing / So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring.” That is a dirty joke. Shakespeare decides to endThe Merchant of Venicewith a dirty joke. Now, we could say, well, he’s just fulfilling his contract. We applaud and we laugh and we go out. But I think no one over the last four hundred years who has seenThe Merchant of Venice feels that this is what the play is finally all about, making sure that Graziano and Nerissa and Portia and Bassanio have a good night in bed together. It’s totally inadequate to what we've just seen. And Shakespeare absolutely knew that. So what he's giving you in this comedy is something more complicated, more bittersweet, something that says, Look, you can have that. I'll give you that as comedy gives it to you. But actually, life is more complicated. Married life, sexual life, our emotional life, our connections to our parents -- these are all, even in the happiest of circumstances, more complicated than that. And you don't have to dwell on the complication if you don’t want to. You don't have to be miserable about it. But you can season your laughter with a deeper form of understanding. And the play offers you that. Understanding doesn't mean shrugging it off or forgiving and forgetting. It just means getting that our lives are braided together with sweet and sour, with sadness and with happiness, and that even what look like the happiest relations, that we can celebrate in the comedies, have their shadows. Let's put it that way. There are many, many shadows, hidden histories, that we've become aware of by the end ofThe Merchant of Venice.

我们想从喜剧中得到什么呢？我们想得到欢乐。我们希望走出剧院的时候，自己是开心的，知道一切问题都被解决了，也知道欢乐的新婚夫妇们即将走向自己的婚床。我们甚至想要一丝性欲上的满足感。莎士比亚和他背后的文化对此都十分了解。当时所有的喜剧都是以爱人们走向婚床为结局。在戏剧结尾，莎士比亚也很明确地表现了这一点，在结尾葛拉希阿诺说：“我活着什么东西都不怕，只怕丢了纳丽莎的指环祸事大”。这其实是个黄色笑话。这里的“指环”不仅仅指的是那枚戒指，也暗喻女性的阴道。莎士比亚决定用这个黄色笑话来结束《威尼斯商人》这部剧。现在我们可以说，他很好地完成自己的任务。我们鼓掌，我们大笑，我们走出剧院。但我相信，在过去的四百多年中，没有人会认为这是《威尼斯商人》真正的结局，不会以为它最终就是要让葛拉希阿诺和纳丽莎，以及鲍西娅和巴萨尼奥一块儿上床睡觉。这不是我们所感受到的全部。莎士比亚本人绝对也明白这一点。在这部喜剧中，他想要传递的东西远比这个要复杂，那是苦乐参半的内容。这就好像他在说：看，你可以从中读出什么来呀！我可以给你其他喜剧给你的一切，但实际上，生活远比这要复杂得多。婚姻生活、性生活、情感生活，我们与父母的关系等等，这一切即便是在最欢乐幸福的氛围中，也是十分复杂的。如果你不愿意纠缠于这些复杂的问题，你也可以选择无视它们。你不必为它们感到悲伤痛苦。但你可以将你的欢声笑语升华，从更深层的角度去理解它。这才是这部戏剧想要传递的。理解并不意味着甩掉问题，也不意味着原谅或遗忘。理解指的是要接纳苦乐并存的人生，要承认生活中有悲伤也会有欢乐，要明白即便是看起来最幸福的关系，即便是喜剧中最让我们欢喜的关系，也有着它们的阴暗面。甚至可以说，我们要意识到，在《威尼斯商人》的结尾就存在着很多很多的阴暗面，以及许多隐秘的不为人知的故事。

In the next episode, we’ll explore how Shakespeare starts to reveal those “hidden histories” in particularly impassioned speeches from Shylock and Antonio, and we’ll look at how he brings the play to its wrenching climax in the trial scene.

下集节目，我们将探讨莎士比亚是如何展现那些“隐秘故事”的，尤其是如何通过夏洛克和安东尼奥那些慷慨激昂的台词进行描写与刻画的。同时，我们还将一起欣赏莎士比亚是如何在法庭审判这场戏中将剧情推向高潮。