Romeo and Juliet 2: The Characters and the Questions

Romeo and Juliet -- Part 2 -- Love and Loss, Desire and Death (The Characters and the Questions)

《罗密欧与朱丽叶》——第二部分——爱与失，欲望与死亡（角色和问题）

At the end of our first episode, we noted that Romeo and Juliet is not simply a story of love. It’s about how love becomes the origin of tragedy. In this episode, we speak with Simon Palfrey, Professor of English at the University of Oxford, about the play’s intertwining of love, loss, and death, and about the energy and sense of possibility its characters can possess -- especially Juliet.

上集节目结束时，我们提到《罗密欧与朱丽叶》讲述的并不只是一个简单的爱情故事，它还向我们展现了爱情如何一步一步地催生出了一部悲剧。本集节目中，牛津大学英语文学教授西蒙·帕尔弗里将继续带领我们探寻剧中那交错缠绕的爱恨得失、生离死别，领略剧中角色，尤其是朱丽叶所展现出的巨大能量和无限可能。

Simon Palfrey: In the popular imagination, Romeo and Juliet has become the world's most famous and celebrated love story. And that is completely understandable. It is a quite incredible, transcendent love story. But it is romanticized, and it leads to euphemized understandings of play. The history of the play continues to this day -- has been a history of censorship. It's been a history of cutting the play to fit what they think the play should be. And they almost always cut the play so as to make the lovers more normal, more normative, sweeter, more gentle, more romantic rather than dangerous and violent and difficult and perhaps distasteful, because in many ways, both Romeo and Juliet are all of those things.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：人们普遍认为《罗密欧与朱丽叶》这部剧是世界上最著名、最受推崇的爱情故事。产生这种看法完全可以理解。这部剧确实是一个不可思议、超凡脱俗的爱情故事。但如果只是将它看作一个爱情故事的话，我们就无法明晰透彻地解读它了。而且，这种看法一直延续到了今天，就像是在对它进行审查一样，人们习惯性地按照自己的理解对戏剧情节进行删减改动。他们删减一定的内容，从而使得这对恋人更符合常理，更贴近普通人，让他们显得更甜蜜、更温柔、更浪漫，掩去了他们身上那些危险、暴力、艰辛，甚至令人厌恶的特质。可是不论从哪些方面来看，罗密欧和朱丽叶的身上可是真真切切地包含着上面所有的特质的。

Some readers see Romeo and Juliet not as a sweet story of love, but as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when adolescents insist on obeying their own immature impulses. One source for the play was Arthur Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, a text which sometimes suggests that blame for the tragedy rests with the couple’s irresponsible passion. But Simon Palfrey resists interpreting Shakespeare’s play this way.

一些读者虽然没有把《罗密欧与朱丽叶》看作是甜蜜的爱情故事，但他们却认为这部剧是在警醒世人，在提醒青少年如果他们坚持一意孤行，依照自己不成熟的内心冲动行事，是终将会铸成大错的。《罗密欧与朱丽叶》是莎士比亚基于伊丽莎白时期英国诗人阿瑟·布鲁克的叙事诗《罗密乌斯与朱丽叶的悲剧历史》创作而成的。布鲁克的原诗中，在字里行间时不时地透露出这样一种思想，它认为这对恋人的悲剧源自他们不负责任的冲动。但西蒙·帕尔弗里教授对此有着自己独特的解读。

Simon Palfrey: I really dislike the reading of the play which sees it as a kind of didactic play or a hortatory play, which is about the need to mature and the need to grow up. Ttis is completely contrary to the thrust of this play, which is far more wild than that. There's been not enough awareness of what it might mean to be young and to be unfledged like these characters are, and particularly Juliet.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：有的人把这部剧看作是一部说教式戏剧、一部劝诫性戏剧，认为它在教导人们成熟稳重的重要性。我却很不喜欢这种看法。这完全有悖于这部剧的本质内核，戏剧本身可是相当放肆疯狂的。对于剧中人物，尤其是朱丽叶身上的年轻和不成熟，人们其实并没有充分了解和认识。

It is the play’s youngest character who manifests the greatest sense of wildness, in terms of her energy and access to possibility. Thirteen-year-old Juliet has grown up in a clearly defined social world, but she seeks after possibilities that few if any of the people around her can imagine.

朱丽叶是剧中年纪最小的角色，但却是最放肆疯狂的，她的身上充满了巨大能量和无限可能。13岁的朱丽叶生长在一个界定明确的社会中，但她却在追寻周围人完全无法想象的可能性。

Simon Palfrey: It's not all characters who are given this access to possibility, to energy, who are given this -- I mean, I think the best word for it is simply intelligence, just unbelievable intelligence. And by intelligence, I mean prescience, alertness, impatience, a kind of linguistic swiftness, but also originality, a sense in which they're always leaping ahead of the moment. In Romeo and Juliet, that kind of leaping premonition, that sort of intelligence, that sense of being alert to futures and being alive to possibilities because they can see the constriction and the dishonesty and the fraudulence and the hypocrisy of what's around them -- that apprehensive power is given to two characters, and they are Mercutio and, in a completely opposite way, Juliet.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：当然，并不是剧中所有角色都有机会获得如此丰富的可能性和这样强大的能量，以及这样的——有一个很简单的词很适合用在这里，这个词就是——智慧，不可思议的智慧。这里所说的智慧，包括预知能力、警觉机敏、焦急渴盼、语言上的敏捷，以及创新能力，创新能力让他们能够跳出当下。在《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中，那种突如其来的对不祥的预感，那种智慧，那种对未来的警觉，以及对于各种可能性的兴奋激动，那种觉察出自己所遭受压迫的能力，那种可以发现身边的狡诈阴险、欺瞒哄骗，以及虚假伪善的能力，这一切能力在两个角色身上展现得淋漓尽致，一个是罗密欧的好友茂丘西奥，另一个则是和他完全不一样的朱丽叶。

Simon Palfrey: T.S. Eliot said that the most telling phrase in the whole play was Juliet, when she said it's “too much like the lightning.” And that's so true. It's like lightning, too. And Juliet is like lightning. She comes. She brightens everything. She brings electrical force, danger, energy -- and then darkness.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：诗人艾略特曾说过，整部剧最动人的时刻是朱丽叶说“正像一闪电光”这句台词的时候。是呀！就像一闪电光。朱丽叶就像一闪电光。她来了。照亮了一切。她带来了电，带来了危险，带来了能量，之后便是无尽的黑暗。

No one apprehends this light-like quality of Juliet more than her lover, Romeo. This play was written in the 1590s, when Shakespeare was experimenting with some of the most beautiful, lyrical verse of his career, and much of this beauty emerges after Romeo falls in love with Juliet and attempts to convey his passionate feelings in poetry. When Juliet speaks from her balcony, for instance, Romeo responds with overflowing lines and hyperbolic celestial imagery: “O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art / As glorious to this night, being o’er my head, / As is a wingèd messenger of heaven / Unto the white-upturnèd wond’ring eyes / Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him / When he bestrides the lazy puffing clouds / And sails upon the bosom of the air.”

没有人比她的恋人罗密欧更能体会她身上所展现出的这种电光般的特性了。该剧创作于16世纪90年代，当时莎士比亚正在尝试用最优美、最动人的韵文体进行戏剧创作。而这种文体的美感在罗密欧爱上朱丽叶之后被运用得淋漓尽致，它试图通过诗歌来传递出罗密欧内心的炙热与激情。当朱丽叶站在阳台上倾述心中苦闷时，罗密欧用热情洋溢的诗句、美妙夸张的天境意象回应道：“她说话了。啊！再说下去吧，光明的天使！因为我在这夜色之中仰视着你，就像一个尘世的凡人，张大了出神的眼睛，瞻望着一个生着翅膀的天使，驾着白云缓缓地驰过了天空一样。”

Simon Palfrey: There's a language all the time which surrounds Romeo and Juliet which is in terms of absolutes, in terms of cosmic absolutes, to do with heaven and hell or light and the sun and the moon and so forth. And in many ways, that is the hyperbole of poetic language, it's the hyperbole of Petrarchan language. But one of the ways that Shakespeare does something different is that he sort of partly juxtaposes, but also partly interpenetrates this sort of cliched language of cosmic absolutes with a much more kind of grounded language of where these characters are connected to the sources of things.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：罗密欧和朱丽叶总是会使用一种绝对化的语言，宇宙的绝对化语言，常常会涉及天堂、地狱、光明、太阳和月亮等意象元素。从很多方面来看，这都是十分夸张的诗歌语言，是夸张的彼特拉克体十四行诗式的语言。但莎士比亚却对这种诗歌语言作了一定的创新，他在一定程度上往这种老旧陈腐的、讲述宇宙绝对性的语言中融入了一种更贴近现实、更接地气的语言，从而使戏剧角色与万物之源有了联系。

Simon Palfrey: When he sees Juliet, his language suddenly changes: “Oh, she teaches her torches to burn bright.” And it's a very simple and rather lovely kind of image -- it's in touch with the sources of energy. “She teaches the torches” -- she's there at the source of energy, of heat and light.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：当罗密欧见到朱丽叶时，他说话的风格就突然发生了改变，他说：“啊！火炬远不及她的明亮。”这句话所使用的意象很简单，却也相当可爱，说的是能量源头。“火炬远不及她的明亮”，朱丽叶就是能量的来源，是热之源，是光之源。

At the ball, Romeo compares Juliet to the torches’ flames. In the balcony scene, he famously declares that “Juliet is the sun.” But what makes Juliet most particularly like lightning is that she possesses not only brightness and energy, but speed. In just a few days, she travels almost the whole span of a human life, from childhood to death.

舞会上，罗密欧将朱丽叶比作火炬。在阳台那场戏中，他说出了那句著名的台词，他说：“朱丽叶就是太阳！”但真正使得朱丽叶像太阳、像电光的不只是她身上的光明和能量，更是她所展现出的速度。短短几天，她便经历了完整的一生，从孩童时期走向了死亡。

Simon Palfrey: Juliet has this wonderful directness and lucidity. But she also has this impatience and this speed and -- so this is partly mental, in the fact that she's just, she's just intelligent. But it's also a speed which means that she lives more, and more lives in one, than anyone else. She experiences more lives, she moves more quickly, in this kind of virtual way, through the possibilities of the human and of life.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：朱丽叶的人生轨迹简单直接、清晰明了。她总是匆匆忙忙，焦急又匆忙。这部分源自精神层面，因为她充满了智慧。而且，这种匆忙意味着她比其他人经历了更多样的人生。她体验着多种生活，一切如浮光掠影转瞬即逝，走马灯似地，朱丽叶体验到了人类以及人生的各种可能性。

When we meet Juliet, the Nurse’s reminiscences and jokes give us an image of Juliet as a baby and a toddler-- she is “the prettiest babe that e'er I nursed.” In this scene, surrounded by her nurse and her mother, Juliet starts off as a meek and dutiful child, who promises to favor Paris to please her mother. But by the time the ball ends that evening, Juliet is imagining marriage with the stranger she just met -- and in her next encounter with Romeo during the balcony scene, she takes over her mother’s job and makes her own choice of husband. The girl who said that morning that marriage “is an honor that I dream not of” now proposes marriage to Romeo.

初见朱丽叶时，她奶妈的回忆和玩笑让我们看到了婴儿时期以及蹒跚学步时期的小朱丽叶，奶妈说朱丽叶“是在她手里抚养长大的一个最可爱的小宝贝”。在这场戏中，陪伴在奶妈和母亲身边的朱丽叶，温顺乖巧，她会为了让母亲开心而答应去试着喜欢帕里斯。但就在同一天的晚上，在舞会结束时，朱丽叶却开始想象与一个刚刚遇见的陌生人结婚。而到了阳台戏，当她再次遇见罗密欧时，她甚至做了一位母亲才应该做的事情——她为自己选好了丈夫。早晨还在说婚姻“是我做梦也没有想到过的一件荣耀”的女孩此刻竟然向罗密欧求婚了。

Simon Palfrey: She insists, she insists that if you want me, you've got to marry me. You know, it's her words, it's not his -- she proposes. It's incredible, and so you have this amazingly fast movement.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：她坚持说，如果罗密欧爱自己，那他就必须和自己结婚。是的，这句话是朱丽叶说，不是罗密欧，求婚的这人是朱丽叶。很难以置信吧！但剧情的发展就是如此迅速。

Juliet’s rapid movement through different stages of life is reflected in her rapid movement on and off the physical stage during this scene, as she leaves the balcony to heed the Nurse’s summons. These repeated transitions back and forth, between the inside of her family’s home and the balcony outside with Romeo, show that she is preparing to leave those family ties behind.

在这场戏中，朱丽叶以极快的速度地经历着人生的不同阶段，这一点是通过她不断地往返于阳台这个情节安排来体现。朱丽叶为了应对奶妈的呼唤，不得不多次离开阳台。她来来回回，不断地往来于卧房和阳台之间，这象征着她在家庭和罗密欧之间的来来去去，也预示着她已经准备好为了罗密欧放弃家族的牵绊了。

Simon Palfrey: You have a physical movement away from others in Juliet. So she begins both physically and verbally crowded by the nurse and her mother -- and then, in the balcony scene, she comes and goes, you know, a number of times, she leaves the stage, she comes back, she leaves the stage, she comes back. And so she has this vestigial kind of awareness of her ties to others, you've got to be careful about being told off by the nurse or by her mother -- it shows she's still implicated in these relationships. But equally, each departure and each return is like another life step, another life move. Each return is like a sort of rebirth -- each departure is a rehearsal for the final departure.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：在朱丽叶身上，我们可以感受到她远离旁人的身体动作。最开始，她身边围着奶妈和母亲，她们在她耳边絮絮叨叨说着话。接着，到阳台戏的时候，她一会儿离开舞台，一会儿又回来，过了一会儿她再次离开舞台，接着又重新回来。她与周围的人依旧有着藕断丝连般的联系，她必须谨慎小心不被奶妈或者母亲发现、告发。她与这些人有着十分复杂的关系。但同样地，她每一次的离开和返回象征着她在人生旅途中迈出的每一步。每次的返回就像一次重生，每次的离开就像是在为最终的离去做彩排。

The balcony scene anticipates all kinds of future departures for Juliet. Her marriage to Romeo will remove her from the husband her parents chose for her. Her soliloquy, in which she offers to “no longer be a Capulet” and ponders, “What’s Montague? … What’s in a name?” removes her mentally from her family and from the whole conceptual framework in which her family exists - one in which the names “Capulet” and “Montague” mean everything. And her farewell to Romeo anticipates their ultimate departure, as she sighs, “I should kill thee with much cherishing.”

阳台上发生的一切已经预示了朱丽叶之后的离开和告别。她和罗密欧的婚姻让她离开了父母为她选择的丈夫帕里斯。不但如此，她在阳台上说的独白中就表示“我不愿再姓凯普莱特”，她在思考“姓不姓蒙太古又有什么关系呢？......姓名本来是没有意义的”。这种想法让她将自己从家族中剥离，脱离出了家族概念存在的框架，因为在这个框架中“凯普莱特”和“蒙太古”等姓氏有着极其重大深远的意义。而之后，她向罗密欧的告别则预示着他们最终的分离，她叹息道：“可是我怕你会死在我的过分的爱抚里。”

Juliet herself anticipates that her rapid movement might carry some dark consequence: “I have no joy of this contract tonight,” she tells Romeo. “It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, / Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / Ere one can say ‘It lightens.’” But all these departures - from social role, from family, from parents - she is ultimately willing to make for Romeo.

朱丽叶自己也预感到这样快的发展速度也许会导致某种可怕的后果，她对罗密欧说：“我不喜欢今天晚上的密约；它太仓促、太轻率、太出人意外了，正像一闪电光，等不及人家一开口，已经消隐了下去。”朱丽叶在与一切告别，她告别了自己的社会角色，告别了自己的家族，告别了自己的父母，并最终与罗密欧告别。

Simon Palfrey: She's moving so quickly. The institutions and the systems that have always surrounded her, she's got, she's gone beyond them. And all she's interested in is them facilitating her movements, like engine oil or something. That's all they are. They're worth nothing other than that.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：她发展得太迅速了。她以极快的速度跨越了曾经包围着自己的社会机制和体系。她对那些可以加快自己的发展速度的事物很感兴趣，它们就像润滑油一样。这就是它们的全部用途。除此之外，它们也没有什么值得注意的地方了。

Perhaps the clearest, most devastating moment of Juliet’s dismissing the structures of her earlier life is in her pretended acceptance of Paris. Her father has commanded her to marry Paris, not knowing she is already married to Romeo. Juliet, with the Friar’s help, plans to take the sleeping potion that will make her appear dead, so she can be buried in the tomb and escape with Romeo. But first, she goes to her parents and tells them that she will marry Paris as they wish, saying: “Pardon, I beseech you. / Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.”

也许，朱丽叶为了摆脱之前生活结构束缚所作的最惊人的一个举措就是她假意答应接受帕里斯。她的父亲命令她嫁给帕里斯，但此时他并不知道自己的女儿已经与罗密欧私定了终身。在弗莱尔的帮助下，朱丽叶计划喝下安眠药水假死，这样她在被埋葬进坟墓苏醒后，便可以与罗密欧私奔出逃。但在喝下药水之前，她来到父母面前，对他们说自己将如他们所愿，与帕里斯成婚，她对父亲说：“爸爸，请您宽恕我吧！从此以后，我永远听您的话了。”

Simon Palfrey: And it's this moment of lovely apparent filial obedience. And she does this in the full knowledge that she’ll never see them again, and they'll never see her again. And it's just a devastating thought. I mean, the clarity, the iciness of that is thrilling, but sort of terrifying. Imagine that as your own daughter, it would just break your heart, but of course -- it's necessary.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：此时的朱丽叶一定相当乖巧可爱，很孝顺。但她在说这句话的时候，早已决定永远离开父母，此生再也不与他们相见了。这很可怕。这种清晰明确又冰冷刺骨的感觉令人毛骨悚然，很恐怖。想象一下如果这样的事情发生在你们女儿身上，很令人心碎。但当然，这段情节却也是不可或缺的。

Simon Palfrey: There's something about her being so young which makes life kind of vertiginous, which makes it sudden, and as though every decision is fatal, every decision is for all time, and every decision is absolutely lived. Because there's no mediation, there's no possibility of compromise. And I think her youth allows that because she's so vulnerable.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：朱丽叶年纪很小，因此她的人生充满了变化和不确定，会发生很多突发事件。就好像所有的决定都是灾难性的、是永恒的、也是绝对的，因为这些事情根本没有协调的可能，没有妥协的余地。我认为正是她的年轻导致了这一切的发生，她是如此脆弱易碎。

Juliet’s absolute, uncompromising determination - the determination that makes it necessary for her character to cut off her parents so completely - helps us answer a question about the play that critics often pose: was there ever a chance it could have been a comedy? At the start of the play, some of the ingredients for romantic comedy are there. Shakespeare even used some of those same ingredients in a comedy he wrote around the same time as Romeo and Juliet: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which also features a pair of young lovers who seek to escape after the young woman’s father orders her to marry another man.

朱丽叶有着完全不愿妥协的坚定果敢，这种让她不得不完全斩断与父母之间的关系。她的这个特点，也让我们可以回答很多批评家针对这部剧提出的一个问题：这部剧是否可能变成一部喜剧？其实，在戏剧开场时，它确实带有有一定的浪漫喜剧元素。莎士比亚甚至运用了与《仲夏夜之梦》中一些相同的喜剧元素，《仲夏夜之梦》与《罗密欧与朱丽叶》是莎士比亚差不多时期的作品，女主角的父亲命令她嫁给她不爱的人，于是她便与自己的恋人一同出逃到了一座森林中。

Simon Palfrey: I think it's true that the play has a structure which is in some ways symmetrical, in the first third, or slightly more, first half of the play, perhaps, to comedy. You've got the young couple who rebelled against the authority, the parents who seek to go elsewhere. And in a comedy, what would happen is that there is a recognition, through some kind of exposure of the folly of the elders, that the young couple were right after all. Then you get this accommodation between between young and old -- and that might work.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：我认为这部剧的结构相对来说很对称的，在前三分之一，或者再多一点儿，前二分之一，都是喜剧。一对年轻的恋人勇敢地反抗权威，反抗父母，并试图逃离他们。喜剧往往会通过对愚昧长辈的讽刺，让读者观众们认识到年轻恋人们的所作所为才是合理正确的。我们会在青年人和长辈之间实现调和，这都是有可能的。

But Simon Palfrey thinks it’s a mistake to believe there’s some kind of “swerve” in the play that reroutes it towards tragedy when it could once have gone another way. The play is established throughout as a tragedy, by several elements. One is the character of Mercutio. His puns and bawdy jokes should not lead us to see him simply as an antic form of comic relief.

但是西蒙·帕尔弗里教授却认为，那种觉得这部剧中存在某种可以使故事偏离悲剧朝着反方向发展的“转弯”的想法是错误的。这是一部彻头彻尾的悲剧，架构在一系列悲剧元素基础上。这其中一个悲剧元素就是茂丘西奥。虽然茂丘西奥爱说一些双关下流的玩笑话，但我们却不能因此简单地把他看作是喜剧故事中的那种滑稽小丑。

Simon Palfrey: If you look closely at the role of Mercutio, you see that Shakespeare is -- it’s an experiment in tragic characterisation that is not fully realized until later characters such as Hamlet and so forth. I think there's all sorts of ways in which Mercutio means his words, means his language, is a desperately undisclosed, repressed, repressed, but also explosive character. He's, in some ways, the epitome of the city. He kind of embodies the city with its violence, its unrecuperated energies -- he’s got too much energy to be channeled into anything.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：如果仔细分析茂丘西奥，你会发现莎士比亚其实是在尝试创作悲剧人物，这个尝试一直到他创作出了哈姆莱特等角色时才完全实现。茂丘西奥的说话方式十分多样化。他是一个被束缚、被压抑的角色，但同时也非常暴躁。在一定程度上，我们可以把他看作发生这个故事的这座城市的缩影。他的身上有着这座城市的暴力特质，有着极具破坏性的能量。他的精力过分充沛，对任何事情都倾注了大量的能量。

Simon Palfrey: It’s not as though the play was light and breezy and then suddenly becomes dark. That's completely -- it's just not to listen to what Mercutio says.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：这部戏不是从轻松愉快突然变黑暗的。这整部剧就是一个完全黑暗的故事，这一点不只是体现在茂丘西奥的话中。

Another source of darkness in the play is the constraint exerted on all characters by their society -- a constraint from which even the rebellious lovers never quite escape.

戏剧的黑暗还来源于剧中角色所处社会对他们施加的束缚，这种束缚即便是这对进行了勇敢反抗的恋人们也无法逃脱。

Simon Palfrey: Verona is anywhere, it’s everywhere. The simplicity of the setup can stand for any kind of social, political, institutional constraint -- predeterminism, existing in a world where your possibilities are restricted -- obviously about who you can be friends with, who you can marry, who you can intermingle with, but also where you can be, what you can do, and darker than that, what you can speak and what you can think. All of these things are preempted by this world.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：维洛那处处可见，处处皆是维洛那。维洛那的设定很简单，因此它可以指向任何一种的社会上、政治上，以及制度上约束。一切都早已被设定好，在你生活的世界里，一切可能性都受到限制。不仅仅限制着你能和谁交朋友，你能和谁结婚，你能和谁打交道，还限制着你可以去哪里，你能做什么，甚至更黑暗些，限制着你能说什么，你能想什么。这一切，都是你所处的世界已经预先设定好了的。

Simon Palfrey: As to whether the young characters are rebelling against this -- I think the answer is both yes and no. Obviously at a really instinctive level, the play's about rebellion, it's about dissidence, it's about saying no to unfair prevention, coercion, prescription. I think that Romeo and Juliet stand for freedom of choice, liberty, expressing your own truth -- that's all true. But we need to qualify that. They still work in recognisably the same world as everybody else in the play, and there’s all sorts of symmetries and repetitions and echoes. You know, one of the very few things we know about Juliet's mother is that she was married off at the same age as Juliet. We see this figure who is kind of a little bit edgy and maybe a bit neurotic and a bit fidgety and a bit dissatisfied -- and so if you actually began to sort of, tot up the characteristics or qualities of Juliet's mother, you think, actually, how is it different from Juliet? She's impatient, she's tetchy, she's resistant, she's been married off at thirteen. Juliet leaps into liberty, and then gets married off at thirteen. Of course it's different, it's radically different in its emotion and its kind of emotional and sort of almost tactile appeal. But there are all kinds of ways in which Juliet moves into something which is no more free -- it's caught. And there's no future in it. It's both. It's -- as always with Shakespeare, it's not either/or, it's and/and/and. So yes, to the emotional excitement of their resistance and their rebellion and their independence. That's really, really important. But the play's very, very hard-nosed and un-illusioned about the cost of that and the difficulty of that.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：那么剧中的年轻人们是否在同这样的束缚作斗争呢？我认为是既有又没有。我们就可以很明显地看出来，这部剧在讲抗争，在讲那些持有不同观点者的故事，它讲述了对不公平的阻拦、不公正的胁迫，以及不平等规训的反抗。罗密欧和朱丽叶象征着选择的自由，象征着表达自我内心真理的自由。这是都是毋庸置疑的。但我们要注意，罗密欧和朱丽叶也与剧中其他的角色一样，他们生活在同一个世界中。他们之间有着很多相似之处，有重叠，也有呼应。例如，对于朱丽叶的母亲我们所了解到的为数不多的一个细节就是她在朱丽叶一样的年纪嫁做了人妇。我们会觉得朱丽叶的母亲有点儿泼辣，有点儿神经质，同时还有点儿焦虑急躁。如果总结了朱丽叶妈妈的性格特点后，你也可以想想，朱丽叶和她又有什么不一样呢？她也是个暴躁脾气的人儿，爱发怒，很固执。而且，她也在13岁的时候结了婚。朱丽叶追求自由，但却和母亲一样在13岁结婚。当然，她的婚姻不同于她母亲的婚姻，它们在情感完全不一样，朱丽叶的婚姻炙热浓烈，透着肉体上的吸引力。可即便如此，我们依旧可以感觉到朱丽叶在很多方面还是陷入了不再自由的境地，她是被束缚着的。她没有未来。这都是已经确定的。这是莎士比亚一贯以来的风格，他的作品中不存在二选一，只有“还有，还有，以及”。所以说，他们的抵抗，他们的反叛，以及他们的独立确实给我们带来了情绪上的激动与兴奋。这一点非常非常重要。但同时，这部剧对于他们所要付出的代价以及他们面对的困难的描述也是非常残酷真实的，它无情地击破了人们的幻象。

Simon Palfrey: The play does have this deep inevitability about it. And that's the inevitability of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, which is a relationship which is, from the very start, even before it starts, you've got characters and desires which are absolutely indentured to death. The play is interested in what happens if you commit to desire -- if you commit absolutely, without equivocation or hesitation, compromise -- absolutely to the satisfaction of desire.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：戏剧展现出了这一切不可避免的必然性。罗密欧和朱丽叶之间的关系就带有这样的必然性。他们的关系从一开始，甚至在开始之前，就让我们我们感受这两个角色，以及他们的欲望是注定会走向死亡。戏剧十分关心人忠于内心的欲望会时，会发生什么。它关注如果你完全地，毫不含糊、毫不犹豫、毫不妥协地全身心地投入到对内心欲望的追求中，会发生什么。

The feature that marks this story most indelibly as a tragedy is Romeo and Juliet’s commitment to desire in a play that never forgets the connection between desire and death. The language constantly makes this connection. When Juliet meets Romeo, she says, “If he be marrièd, / My grave is like to be my wedding bed.” Before the Friar marries them, Romeo declares, “love- devouring death do what he dare, / It is enough I may but call her mine.” When Juliet urges the banished Romeo to linger after their wedding night, he says, “Come death and welcome. Juliet wills it so.” And when he descends from Juliet’s room, she tells him he is so pale that he looks “dead in the bottom of a tomb.” Romeo replies, “trust me, love, in my eye so do you.”

这个故事之所以是悲剧，最不可磨灭的一个印记就是罗密欧和朱丽叶对欲望的追索中，戏剧却一直在提醒人们欲望和死亡之间的联系。剧中的语言也在不间断地加固着这个联系。朱丽叶遇见罗密欧时，她便说道：“要是他已经结过婚，那么坟墓便是我的婚床。”在弗莱尔宣布他们成婚前，罗密欧也宣称：“不管侵蚀爱情的死亡怎样伸展它的魔手，只要用你神圣的言语，把我们的灵魂结为一体。”而当朱丽叶恳求被放逐的罗密欧在逗留一会儿，待到婚礼夜之后时，罗密欧说：“来吧，死，我欢迎你！因为这是朱丽叶的意思。”在罗密欧从朱丽叶卧房的窗口下降时，朱丽叶对他说，他的脸色是如此苍白，“仿佛像一具坟墓底下的尸骸。”罗密欧则回应道：“相信我，爱人，在我眼中你也是这样。”

Simon Palfrey: She does genuinely end up in the places that Romeo invokes in his metaphor. She does end up in a tomb. She is headed directly for this, this annihilation.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：后来，朱丽叶也确实如他口中的隐喻那样，躺在了坟墓中。她死在了坟墓中。她义无反顾地朝着那个地方奔去，直直地撞进了死亡。

Simon Palfrey: I don't think it's a play that in any simple way conforms to Freudian death drive -- but it is aware of that, it's aware that we die, it's aware that things pass, it's aware that children disappear.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：我认为这部剧并非简单的弗洛伊德所说的死亡本能，戏剧意识到了任何人都会死去，知道任何事物都会消散，明白任何一个孩子也都会消失。

As this play sees it, to desire something -- to love someone -- is to bind yourself to something that you will inevitably lose. And that is how love becomes the origin of tragedy.

戏剧认识到了这一点，它明白渴望得到某个东西，深爱着某个人，都是在自己和某些终将逝去的东西之间建立一道联系。它向我们展现了爱情是如何一步步催生出悲剧的。

Simon Palfrey: I think part of the way the play is so moving is because it's so alert to the sacrificial economy of life. The play taps into the knowledge that life is arranged so that people we love will pass from us, that there is no such thing as permanence -- that to fall in love, whether that's for a sexual erotic partner or a child -- to fall in love is to know in your bones that this is not forever, that this will pass, and that love is premised upon a kind of terrified, though very rarely expressed, recognition of transience. And I think that the play absolutely pivots on that the whole way through. There's a recognition which Shakespeare has all throughout his career of how every achievement is also a loss -- it's a tragedy of growing up, it's a tragedy of maturation, and it's a tragedy of leaving behind.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：我认为，这部剧之所以如此感人，部分原因在于它让人们意识到了生活中的牺牲性。它让我们明白，人生都是被安排好的，所以我们爱的那些人最终都会离我们而去，根本不存在什么所谓的永恒。爱上某个人，不论是爱上诱发我们性欲望的对象，还是单纯地爱上一个孩子，一旦爱上了某个人，我们必须从心底明白这种爱必然不会永远存在，它终会消逝。爱的前提就是承认事物的转瞬，这种认知是很可怕的，而且少有人提。但我认为整部剧的剧情的绝对就是围绕这个认知展开的。莎士比亚在他整个戏剧创作生涯中，都秉持着这种认知，他认为每一次收获都是一次失去。这是一部关于长大的悲剧，是一部关于成熟的悲剧，也是一部关于失去的悲剧。

Simon Palfrey: And this is one of the reasons the parents are so important in this play. Of course they're foolish and misguided and perhaps even contemptible, but they do love their daughter. They do love their son. “My child is yet a stranger in the world” -- the father's very beautiful way of speaking. This child is precious. She's extraordinary. She's a kind of a gift. But - she's not going to be here for long.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：而这也正是父母们在这部剧中发挥着重要作用的原因之一。当然，剧中的父母们都很愚蠢，很糊涂，甚至有些卑劣，但不可否认，他们确实也深爱着自己的孩子。朱丽叶的父亲用优美动人的语言向别人形容着自己的女儿，他说“我的女儿完全是一个不懂事的孩子。”这个孩子是珍宝。她很特别。她是上天赐予我们的礼物。但是，她注定不会长久地留在我身边。

Simon Palfrey: Shakespeare's laying the ground for what's going to happen in the play. “My child is yet a stranger” -- it's telling you that this child is going to pass, you know? So I think, I think this is why it's always a tragedy. It's always a tragedy.

西蒙·帕尔弗里：在这句话中，莎士比亚已经为后续剧情的发展做好了铺垫。“我的女儿完全是一个不懂事的孩子”，这句话也在向我们预示这个孩子很快将不久于人世，不知道大家有没有意识到这一点？这正是我们为什么一直以来都会将这部剧看作一部悲剧的原因。它从一开始就注定是悲剧了。

In the next episode, we’ll look more closely at the strangely tragic figure of Mercutio. We’ll also hear both the passion and the tinge of melancholy in Juliet’s words as she prepares to leave behind her childhood and her family for the sake of her love for Romeo.

下集节目，我们将更加深入地去了解茂丘西奥这个古怪的悲剧人物。同时，我们还将欣赏朱丽叶决定为了深爱的罗密欧走出自己的孩童世代、丢下父母时所说的那些浓烈热情但又透着些许忧伤的台词。