The Wooden O and the Iron Throne: “The Way They Were in the Songs”

1Episode 1 - The Wooden O and the Iron Throne – History

第1集 — 环形剧场与铁王座 - 历史

1. “The Way They Were in the Songs”

1.“他们在歌中的样子”

[horses] Richard III: Let us to't pell-mell, if not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell. [clashing swords]

[马的嘶鸣声]理查三世：混战吧！如果去不了天堂，就一起下地狱吧！[刀剑打斗声]

This is a clip from Richard III,the final episode of The Hollow Crown. This 2012/2016 BBC Two adaptation of Shakespeare’s two cycles of history plays featured cinematic battle scenes, graphic violence, and an epic historical scale. In this series, wrote theatre critic Michael Billington, “Shakespeare outdoes Game of Thrones.” The groundbreaking HBO television series Game of Thronesis similarly known for its gorgeous production, unflinching depictions of violence, and sense of historical realism. George R.R. Martin, the author behind the series, has even released a book called Fire and Blood, devoted entirely to the “history” behind his fictional world of Westeros. Game of Thrones is based on Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Martin said this about his writing process: “You look at Shakespeare, who borrowed all of his plots. In A Song of Ice and Fire, I take stuff from the Wars of the Roses and other fantasy things, and all these things workaround in my head and somehow they jell into what I hope is uniquely my own.”

这是电视剧《空王冠》最后一集《理查三世》中的一个片段。《空王冠》是BBC二套在2012年至2016年间播出的一部迷你剧，改编自莎士比亚的两部历史剧。剧中充满了宏大的战争场面和血腥的暴力场景，是一部史诗级别的历史剧。戏剧评论家迈克尔·比灵顿在评论这部迷你剧时写到“莎士比亚的创作胜过《权力的游戏》”。《权力的游戏》是HBO推出的一部极具开拓性的剧集，它同样以恢弘的制作而闻名，剧中也充斥着赤裸裸的暴力和历史现实主义。乔治.R.R.马丁是这部电视剧原著的作者，他甚至还出版了《火与血》一书，全面介绍了他虚构的世界“维斯特洛”的“历史”。电视剧《权力的游戏》改编自马丁的史诗奇幻系列小说《冰与火之歌》。2014年，马丁在接受《滚石》杂志采访时介绍了自己的创作过程，他表示：“你看莎士比亚，他作品中的情节都是从别人那里借鉴来的。我在创作《冰与火之歌》时，也借鉴了玫瑰战争的历史和其他一些奇幻元素。这些内容在我的脑中盘旋，慢慢地融合成了我想要的那种独一无二的东西。”

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[主题音乐开始，并伴着下一段台词继续]

As Martin suggests, and The Hollow Crown demonstrates, there are all kinds of powerful inspirations, parallels, and resonances at work between Shakespeare’s plays and Game of Thrones. That’s what we explore in this special bonus course of Shakespeare For All, entitled “The Wooden O and the Iron Throne: Game of Thrones and Shakespeare.”

从马丁的这段采访，以及《空王冠》这部连续剧中，我们可以发现莎士比亚的戏剧与《权力的游戏》有着相似的灵感来源，它们之间有许多相似的事件和共鸣。这就是本专辑特别节目将要探讨的内容，欢迎来到“环形剧场与铁王座之《权力的游戏》和莎士比亚”。

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[旁白结束后一会儿主题音乐随之结束]

In this first episode, “The Way They Were in the Songs,” we’re talking about how Martin and Shakespeare use history. We’ll dive into the real-life history of the Wars of the Roses--an inspiration for A Song of Ice and Fire and for Shakespeare’s history plays. We’ll discuss the different ways that Shakespeare and Martin transform history into art and ask why history is so powerful as a source of stories.

“他们在歌中的样子”是此次特别节目的第一集，我们将探讨马丁与莎士比亚是如何将历史运用到自己的作品当中的。我们将深入讨论玫瑰战争这段真实的历史，它是《冰与火之歌》以及莎士比亚历史剧的灵感源泉。我们还会分析莎士比亚和马丁不同的将历史融入艺术作品的方式，并探寻历史作为故事来源为什么能发挥出如此强大的力量。

Wilson: Warrior queens, child kings, royal bastards, scheming uncles, feuding families, shifting allegiances, usurpation, decapitation, incest, toxic masculinity, toxic monarchy, a sprawling cast of characters, genealogical charts, ardent fans, a global literary event. So you take Shakespeare, you add dragons, zombies, naked people and corporate interests, you take away the verse and you getGame of Thrones. So it's widely acknowledged that the hit franchiseGame of Thronesis based on the Wars of the Roses, a bloody 15th century battle between feuding English families. But I'm interested in how that connection is mediated by Shakespeare and how knowledge of the Shakespearean context enriches our understanding of the literary elements of Game of Thrones.

威尔逊：女王战士、年幼的国王、皇室的私生子、阴险狡诈的叔父伯父、家族世仇、变节与背叛、篡位、斩首、乱伦、毒害男性家族成员、毒杀君主、错综复杂的人物关系、族谱、狂热的、全球性的文学事件。你拿来莎剧，往里面加龙、僵尸、赤身裸体的人以及族群利益，再剔除其中的韵文，那么你就得到了《权力的游戏》。人们普遍认为热播剧《权力的游戏》是根据玫瑰战争改编的，这是15世纪发生在英国两个世仇家族之间的一场血腥战争。但是我所感兴趣的却是莎士比亚是如何协调历史与作品之间关系的，以及对于莎剧背景的了解可以如何帮助我们加深对《权力的游戏》中文学要素的理解。

My name is Jeff Wilson, I'm a preceptor of expository writing at Harvard University and the author of the forthcoming book from Routledge,Shakespeare and Game of Thrones.

我是杰夫·威尔逊，在哈佛大学担任说明文写作导师，我的作品《莎士比亚与“权力的游戏”》即将由路特雷奇出版社出版。

In his book Shakespeare and Game of Thrones, Jeff Wilson analyzes the different ways that Martin was influenced by Shakespeare and by writers influenced by Shakespeare.

在《莎士比亚与“权力的游戏”》一书中，杰夫·威尔逊分析了莎士比亚对马丁的不同影响，以及那些受莎士比亚影响的作家们对于马丁的不同影响。

Wilson: Shakespeare has this weird influence onGame of Thronesthat is both really prominent and really indirect because Martin at times is engaged directly with Shakespeare's works. But even more, so Martin is basing his historical knowledge on 18th, 19th, 20th-century popular histories that aren't Shakespeare but are themselves deeply influenced by the way Shakespeare chose to tell the story of the Wars of the Roses. And so Martin wasn't directly engaging with Shakespeare, but he was directly engaging with the materials that were directly engaging with Shakespeare.

威尔逊：莎士比亚对《权力的游戏》的影响十分微妙，这种影响很显著但却又都是间接的，因为马丁只有极少数的时候才会与莎剧产生直接的联系。而且即便马丁的历史知识是基于18、19、20世纪这些莎士比亚之后的历史阶段，莎士比亚选择的那种讲述玫瑰战争的方式也深深影响着这些历史本身。所以说，虽然马丁与莎士比亚之间并没有直接的联系，但却与那些和莎士比亚直接关联的素材有着直接的联系。

Lesser: What I find fascinating is the way we kind of inherit interpretations of history, and we get a bit like, when you draw an angle that's very tiny at the beginning, if you extend it, by the time you go not very far, the distance between the two lines gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

莱瑟：令我深深着迷的是我们对于历史解读方式的继承。这有点像是，你在一开始画一个很小的角，然后再把它延长，你都不用延长太多，就会发现这个角两条线之间的距离越来越远，越来越远，越来越远。

My name's Anton Lesser and I played Qyburn inGame of Thrones.

我是安东·莱瑟，在《权力的游戏》中扮演科本一角。

And so Shakespeare was drawing on sources that were compiled from material in the context of a dynasty, the Tudor dynasty, so they were probably quite biased -- and so that material that Shakespeare then drew on for his resource to write theWars of the Roseswas already slightly down, that the angle was getting slightly wider -- and what was already may be slightly inaccurate, chronologically, started to become material for him to distort even further in the service of making a great story. So then we have George R.R. Martin, who takes what we've now got two or three levels removed from the origin and just takes that as a sort of nucleus for his own dramatic license.

莎士比亚所采用的资料来自都铎王朝所编撰的历史素材，所以这些素材本身也许就有一定的倾向性和偏见。因此，莎士比亚描写玫瑰战争时所引用的素材就已经是略带偏颇的了，他所绘画的那个角正在逐渐变大变宽，而他为了创作出一个了不起的故事，还会进一步扭曲这些发生时间已经有些不精准的历史事件。接着我们再来看看乔治.R.R.马丁，他把我们现有的那些已经偏离实际原点两到三层的内容用作了自己戏剧创作的内核。

We’ll start with that historical nucleus that inspired Martin and Shakespeare. Reed Edwards is a fan of Game of Thrones and a history buff who loves reading about Westeros and medieval Europe. We asked Reed to tell us the story of the Wars of the Roses and to describe some of the parallels between this history and Thrones.

下面我们就从那给予马丁和莎士比亚灵感的历史内核切入进行分析。里德·爱德华兹是《权力的游戏》的粉丝，这位历史爱好者还热衷于阅读与维斯特洛和中世纪欧洲相关的内容。我们邀请里德为我们讲述玫瑰战争的历史，并分享这段历史与《权力的游戏》之间一些相似的事件。

Edwards: The War of the Roses was a period of civil war in England between 1450 and the 1480s, in which two kind of warring cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet, which is the ruling House of England at the time, essentially went to battle over their right for the throne. And these two houses were one, the house of Lancaster, which was represented by its sigil, the Red Rose, and their rival, the House of York, represented by the White Rose, thus the ever-creative name, the War of the Roses. The story really begins in the 1480s in England, which was a period of particular unrest -- you had a particularly weak king by the name of Henry the Sixth, he learns of the last outpost in France that his father, Henry the Fifth of Shakespearean fame, Bordeaux, has finally fallen to the French, and he loses his mind. I mean, literally loses his mind. He actually goes into a period of insanity.

爱德华兹：玫瑰战争是英国15世纪50年代至80年代之间发生的一次内战，当时处于统治地位的是金雀花王朝，它的两支后裔为了争夺英国王位而开始了这场发生断续的内战。这两支后裔分别是以红玫瑰为标志象征的兰开斯特家族和以白玫瑰为标志象征的约克家族，此次战争也因此被称作是“玫瑰战争”。故事实际开始于15世纪80年代的英国，那是一个动荡的时代，当时的国王亨利六世软弱无能。当他收到消息说他的父亲，莎士比亚笔下那位著名的亨利五世在法国打下的最后一个前哨基地波尔多落入法国人手中时，便发了疯。这里就是字面的意思，他发疯了。他是真的精神失常了。

Fans might see a parallel between this “mad king” and Aerys Targaryen II, the “Mad King” overthrown in Robert Baratheon’s rebellion not long before Game of Thrones begins. Henry VI’s madness sets off a chain of events that also disturbs the line of succession for the English crown.

在这位“发疯的国王”身上，《权力的游戏》的粉丝们可以看到“疯王”伊里斯·坦格利安二世的影子，在电视剧刚开始不久，他就在劳勃·拜拉席恩的起义中被推翻。亨利六世的发疯引起了一系列连锁反应，扰乱了英国王位的继承顺序。

Edwards: And the nobles of the realm look around for an alternative to this, I would say, beyond mad, but just kind of degenerate king that can't rule -- and conveniently for them, there's a rival claimant to the throne who hasn't asserted his right. But his name is Richard, he's the Duke of York, he has many nobles behind him, and they determine that it's in the best interest of England to name him as a regent with the title of Protector of the Realm.

爱德华兹：因此，英国的贵族们开始四处寻找替代者。要我说，不只是疯子，堕落的国王也无法治理好国家。而就在此时，适时地出现了一位有权继任王位的竞争者，但他并没有出来主张自己对王位的权利。他就是约克公爵理查，他深受众多贵族的拥护，于是贵族们决定推举他做英国的摄政王，认为这是维护英国国家利益的最好方式。

And he serves in this role for a period of time until Henry's senses come back to him. And Henry decides that he wants to retake personal rule of the realm, which doesn't sit particularly well with Richard. It very much pleases Henry's wife, Margaret of Anjou, who doesn't like Richard very much. And he decides, Richard decides, that he's going to go to war to assert his claim to the throne and take over as king himself. So he raises his banners, so to speak, he brings in all the nobles that are loyal to him, and he goes to war.

理查一直担任摄政王这个角色直至亨利六世恢复正常意识。然而此时，亨利六世想要收回自己对国家的统治权，这令理查颇为不满。可是亨利六世的妻子安茹的玛格丽特对此却十分高兴，因为她非常不喜欢理查这个人。于是，理查决定发动战争，主张自己对王位继承权，想要夺取王位，加冕为王。他举起旗帜，召集所有支持他的贵族，发起了战争。

Richard is so successful that Henry agrees to name him heir to the throne. But in an ironic twist of fate, Richard dies in battle soon after and Henry VI feels safe on the throne.

理查的战争取得了巨大的胜利，亨利六世同意宣布他为自己王位的继承人。但命运却总是充满戏剧性，战争结束后没多久，理查便去世了，这让亨利六世感觉自己的王位安全了。

Edwards: But of course, as with all these twists of fate, it doesn't last long, this period of stability and Richard's son, Edward the fourth, decides to rise up and avenge the death of his father in this noble plea, and bring all of his bannermen along and take the throne along the side. And he does so and is finally victorious. He’s young, he's nineteen years old, he's supposed to be dashingly good looking. He takes the throne at the Battle of Towton, one of the bloodiest battles in the medieval period, where fifty thousand knights are clashing and ten thousand of them die on the field of battle, and he becomes Edward the Fourth, the next king of England.

爱德华兹：当然，由于命运的这种种曲折，稳定并没有持续多久。理查的儿子，爱德华四世决定打着为父亲报仇的崇高名号发动起义，他召集所有的支持者，决定要夺取王位。事实上他也做到了，并取得了最终的胜利。当时爱德华很年轻，只有19岁，而且据说他长得也十分英俊。爱德华四世是在陶顿战役中夺得王位的，这是中世纪时期最为血腥的战争之一，5万名骑士参与了这场厮杀，其中1万多人战死沙场。战役结束后，爱德华加冕为英国的新王，这就是历史上的爱德华四世。

Here, too, we start to see some parallels with events in Game of Thrones

对于这一点，我们也能在《权力的游戏》中发现一些相似的故事情节。

Edwards: Many people equate Ned Stark and the Ned Stark character to that of Richard of York, the father who's noble and ultimately dies for a cause he believes in. And then his son, the Robb Stark character, much like Edward the Fourth, rises up, calls in the banners, and marches off to war to defeat his father's enemies in the name of justice and his own father. 

爱德华兹：很多人会把《权力的游戏》中的奈德·史塔克这个角色看作是约克的理查，他们都是尊贵高尚的父亲，都为自己所坚信的事业献出了生命。奈德的儿子罗柏·史塔克则很像爱德华四世，他也发动起义，召集部下，打着正义和为父报仇的旗号，在战场上打败了父亲的敌人。

Robb Stark calls in his banners and goes to fight the Lannisters just as Edward of York fights the Lancaster family. And as Edward became King of England, Robb is hailed by his bannermen:

罗柏·史塔克召集部下，向兰尼斯特家族开战，这就像约克的爱德华与兰开斯特家族之间的战争一样。爱德华加冕为英国国王，罗柏也受到部下的拥戴：

Theon: My sword is yours, in victory and defeat, from this day until my last day.

All: The King in the North! The King in the North! The King in the North!

席恩：我的剑属于你，从今起矢志不渝。

所有人：北境之王万岁！北境之王万岁！北境之王万岁！

Wilson: So the way that the text is initially set up by Martin is that you have the Starks as the Yorks, you have the Lannisters as the Lancasters, and you have the Targaryens as the Tudors.

威尔逊：马丁最初的内容安排，会让你感觉史塔克家族就是约克家族，兰尼斯特家族是兰卡斯特家族，而坦格利安家族则是都铎家族。

Of course, Robb Stark never ends up on the Iron Throne. But Edward the Fourth ruled England with relative stability--until his brother George and the Earl of Warwick rose against him. Shakespeare dramatizes this uprising in Henry VI Part 3. Shakespeare wrote two cycles of history plays called tetralogies, because they each contained four plays. In the first tetralogy, written in the early 1590s, he told the story of the Wars of the Roses in Henry VI Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Richard III. In Shakespeare’s play, what prompts Warwick’s rebellion is the fact that Edward commissions him to negotiate Edward’s marriage with the French princess. Edward then becomes captivated by a woman named Lady Grey and marries her, leaving Warwick humiliated --and angry. Robb Stark also loses an important ally when he promises to marry Walder Frey’s daughter and marries another woman instead. 

当然，罗柏·史塔克最后并没能登上铁王座。但爱德华四世却是统治过英国的，并给英国带来了一段相对稳定的时期，直到他的弟弟乔治和沃里克伯爵起兵造反。莎士比亚将此次暴动写入了戏剧《亨利六世》的下篇中。莎士比亚创作的两组历史剧被称作是“四联剧”，因为每组都由四部戏剧组成。第一部四联剧创作于16世纪90年代，讲述的是玫瑰战争的故事，由《亨利六世》上中下篇和《理查三世》组成。在莎士比亚的戏剧中，沃里克之所以会叛变，是因为爱德华委派他去商谈自己与法国公主的婚姻，可后来，爱德华却深深爱上了格雷夫人，并与她秘密结婚，这让沃里克恼羞成怒。而在《权力的游戏》中，罗柏·史塔克也是因为类似的原因失去了一位重要盟友。他最初答应迎娶瓦德·佛雷的女儿，但最后却和另一位女性成了婚。

Catelyn: Walder Frey is a dangerous man to cross.

Robb: I know that.

Catelyn: And you mean to do it anyway.

Robb: I love her.

凯特琳：瓦德·佛雷是个惹不起的人。

罗柏：我知道。

凯特琳：但你依旧要这样做。

罗柏：我爱她。

In the Wars of the Roses, however, Edward the Fourth does go on to defeat Warwick and secure his throne again. He lives out his life as king and his eleven-year-old son Edward the Fifth succeeds him. The transition of power looks peaceful. But there’s another twist of fate ahead.

在玫瑰战争中，爱德华四世最终打败了沃里克，保住了自己的王位。他一直做着英国国王，直到去世，之后他11岁的儿子，爱德华五世继承王位。权力的过渡交替似乎很平稳。但实际上，命运又很快又将经历一次戏剧般的转折。

Edwards: For any Shakespeare fans out there, one of the most infamous characters in all of history, Richard the Third, enters the scene. This is the uncle of the poor boy king, and he imprisons his nephew, Edward, along with his younger brother, Richard, in the Tower of London. They die, you know, some months later in mysterious circumstances. But everyone points the finger at Richard. And Richard assumes the throne as Richard the Third. 

爱德华兹：到这里，所有莎士比亚粉丝眼中最臭名昭著的角色之一，理查三世要登场了。他是这位可怜的年幼国王的叔叔，他把自己的这位侄子爱德华以及爱德华的弟弟理查囚禁于伦敦塔中。几个月后，他们神秘死去。没有人知道究竟是谁谋害了他们，但所有的矛头都指向了理查。之后，理查加冕成为了理查三世。

Richard III, depicted in the play as a strangely beguiling hunchbacked villain, is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable creations--and one of George R.R. Martin’s favorite characters. In episode 3, we’ll discuss how Martin recreates Shakespeare’s Richard. For the historical Richard, gaining the throne was the prologue to the last great struggle in the Wars of the Roses. Many nobles opposed his rule, and they turned their support to the last Lancastrian heir.

在莎士比亚的剧中，理查三世被刻画成了一个让人捉摸不透的驼背恶棍，他是莎剧中令人印象最为深刻的角色之一，同时也是乔治.R.R.马丁最爱的角色之一。在此次特别节目的第三集中，我们将会探讨马丁是如何对莎士比亚笔下的理查进行再创作的。在历史上，理查的加冕是玫瑰战争中最后一段动荡时期的序曲。很多贵族反对理查的统治，于是转而去支持兰开斯特家族中最后一位后嗣。

Edwards: One young boy, again, by the name of Henry Tudor, who's this 18-year-old boy who's been away in France, hiding away with his uncle, trying to amass forces to return, who has this distant link through his mother and uncle and some second cousin basically to the throne, crosses the channel, invades England, and finally defeats Richard the Third at the Battle of Bosworth Field and establishes the Tudor dynasty on the throne, which finally puts an end to the War of the Roses and even goes so far as to marry the eldest daughter of Edward the Fourth, Elizabeth of York, to kind of unite the two houses.

爱德华兹：这一次又是一位少年，他叫亨利·都铎，当时只有18岁。他和自己的叔叔逃亡到了法国。亨利与王位的关系其实很远，是通过他的母亲和叔叔，以及某个远方表兄才勉强算得上和英国王位有联系。当时他召集起一切力量，跨越英吉利海峡，入侵英国，并最终在博斯沃思原野战役中打败了理查三世，建立起了都铎王朝，玫瑰战争就此结束。之后，他还与爱德华四世的长女，约克的伊丽莎白成婚。就这样，亨利·都铎将兰开斯特家族和约克家族联结在了一起。

In Game of Thrones, there’s also a hope that a long-lost heir to the throne will cross the sea, take the throne, and reunify the kingdom--maybe by marrying someone from another great house. This victorious storyline is what many characters and fans expected from Daenerys Targaryen.

在《权力的游戏》中，人们其实也期盼出现这样的剧情，一个长久没有音信的继承人漂洋过海，夺取王位，统一国家，也许也是通过和另一个大家族的成员结婚实现统一的。剧中许多角色以及粉丝们都期待丹妮莉丝·坦格利安能够成功完成这样的故事情节。

Wilson: This long-lost child from the Targaryen family, who's the analogy to the Tudors, is going to come along and reunify this nation after a period of civil war. And you get shades of that, but it gets mixed up and jumbled up and turned around and upside down and then sometimes re-righted at the very end so that you can see, you can track how Martin used the Wars of the Roses and Shakespeare's first tetralogy as source material, but also was perfectly happy to walk away from that and explore different storylines.

威尔逊：坦格利安家族就相当于历史上的都铎王朝。这个长久没有音信的孩子即将归来，结束内战，统一国家。从中你可以看到历史的影子，但这些历史故事却又被杂糅在一起，故事情节被翻转颠倒，甚至有时在最后结尾处还会被重新改写。所以在阅读过程中，我们能够觉察出马丁在创作中是如何利用玫瑰战争以及莎士比亚第一组四联剧的相关素材，也会很开心地发现故事和真实历史的不同之处，会很乐意去发现一个不一样的故事发展脉络。

For any fans who knew English history, Game of Thrones set up expectations about how Daenerys’s story would go--but the episode “The Bells” radically upended those expectations.

对于了解英国历史的粉丝而言，他们会觉得《权力的游戏》对于丹妮莉丝这个角色的发展设置了一定的预期，但《钟声》这一集却彻底打破了那些预期。

[sound clip from “The Bells” - bells ringing, then Daenerys’ dragon roaring as she starts her attack]

[《钟声》的音频片段-钟声响起，丹妮莉丝的龙咆哮着，她开始进攻]

George R.R. Martin and Shakespeare use historical sources, but they aren’t bound to them. They always transform history for their own artistic purposes. And each does so in a different way.

乔治.R.R.马丁和莎士比亚都利用了历史素材，但他们并没有局限于这些素材。他们经常会为了实现自己的艺术目的而对历史故事做一定的改变，不过他们各自却有着自己独特的改变方式。

Wilson: For Shakespeare, his key strategy for creating compelling art was to leave information out. His sources always give us so much more information about the story than what he gives us in his plays. So there's all these gaps in Shakespeare’s stories. But in contrast, Martin's strategy is to put everything in, to give us all the information, more information than anyone could ever want. And so when we're reading the fiction, it feels like reading history with all the details of historical scholarship. And so both are transforming their sources but in really, really different literary ways.

威尔逊：对于莎士比亚而言，他之所以能写出如此引人入胜的作品，关键在于他的留白。相较于他的戏剧，他所引用的素材反而更能告诉我们更多有关这个故事的信息。于是，莎剧中总是有各种各样的留白。可相反，马丁在创作时却会把所有内容补全，他会给到我们所有的信息，比我们需要的还多。所以，当我们在读这部小说时，会感觉像是在阅读历史，里面全是历史学术性细节。由此我们可以看出，马丁和莎士比亚都会改变所引用的素材，但是他们艺术创作的方法却非常非常不一样。

Martin and Shakespeare also transform history by shaping it into a particular kind of story. Shakespeare looked at the Wars of the Roses, with its series of many political rulers falling from power, and saw one literary genre repeating itself over and over.

此外，他们还会把历史塑造成某一个特定的故事类型。莎士比亚看到玫瑰战争中一个又一个统治者从权力的顶端滑落，他的戏剧中也有一种周而复始的形式在不断重复上演。

Wilson: He structures his first tetralogy as a series of tragedies. So you get first the tragedy of Joan of Arc, then the tragedy of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, then the tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, and then the tragedy of Richard the Third, just one after another. And every end is the beginning of another tragedy. So you have this sense of kind of recurrence and cyclical narrative. But then about three-quarters of the way through Richard the Third, things change from this cycle of tragedies to what feels more like an epic, heroic romance. And you start to get Richard the Third as evil, battling the Earl of Richmond as good.

威尔逊：他创作的第一组四联剧是一个悲剧系列。这里你首先会读到圣女贞德的悲剧，接着是格洛斯特公爵汉弗莱的悲剧，然后是约克公爵理查的悲剧，再接着就是理查三世的悲剧，悲剧一个接着一个。每个悲剧的结束都是新的悲剧的开始。从这里你感受到故事在不断轮回，在不断循环往复。但是，当理查三世的故事进展到大约四分之三的时候，它开始从悲剧循环中脱离出来了，变得更像是一部史诗、一部英雄传奇。你开始把理查三世看作是个坏人，把同他作斗争的里士满伯爵看作是个好人。

The Hollow Crowndraws out this moral contrast between Richard III and Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, by intersplicing their speeches to their troops before their final battle:

《空王冠》这部剧刻画出了理查三世和亨利·都铎，里士满伯爵之间的道德对立，这种对立可以从他们最后决战前，对各自军队的演讲中体会出来：

Richmond: Loving countrymen, remember this, / If you do sweat to put a tyrant down, / You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain.

Richard III: And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow, / Long kept in Brittany at our mother’s cost, / A milksop.

Richmond: Sound drums and trumpets boldly and cheerfully. / God, and Saint George, Richmond, and victory!

里士满：我亲爱的臣民们，请记得/如果你们发誓要推翻暴君/只有在暴君被杀死之后，你才能安然入睡。

理查三世：领导他们的不过是个卑鄙小人，/这些人一直住在布列塔尼，花着我们母亲的钱，/不能成大器。

里士满：让我们勇敢欢乐地打响战鼓，吹起喇叭。/上帝、圣乔治、里士满、胜利！

Shakespeare’s depiction of a heroic Henry Tudor overcoming a demonic Richard III reflects a view of history called ‘the Tudor myth.’ The Tudor monarch Elizabeth I ruled England when Shakespeare wrote his history plays, and this was how the Tudors would have wanted to see their role in history: as the providentially destined victors in a cosmic battle of good against evil. 

莎士比亚对于英勇的亨利·都铎战胜邪恶的理查三世的描写，体现出了一种被称作为“都铎神话”的历史观。莎士比亚创作这些历史剧的时候，英国当时的君主是都铎王朝的伊丽莎白一世。都铎家族自然希望看到自己在历史中被描述为正义与邪恶这场混战中的天选胜利者。

Wilson: So in the course of telling these historical societal tragedies, Shakespeare starts to identify generic form and then he changes the generic form. And as soon as he's telling a historical romance, you start to get elements of fantasy in it with the conquest of good versus evil. Then Martin sees that the Tudor myth has elements of fantasy in it, and so it would be well suited to the genre conventions of fantasy literature, so it makes sense to bring in dragons and zombies and long-lost princes and princesses.

威尔逊：所以在讲述这些历史性社会悲剧时，莎士比亚会先确定一种流派形式，然后随着创作的进展，再对这种形式进行修改。他开始讲述历史传奇时，你便会在其中读到奇幻元素，读到善恶之间的较量。马丁发现都铎神话中就包含了幻想元素，这很符合奇幻文学这个流派的写作惯例，所以再往故事中加入龙、僵尸，以及长期无音信的王子和公主这些元素也就都说得过去了。

Martin saw how Shakespeare started to move medieval history towards literary fantasy by casting political struggle in this mythic spiritual mold. Then Martin took that same historical material and asked just how far he could push the fantasy elements.

马丁发现莎士比亚会将政治纷争揉进神话奇幻中，从而把中世纪的历史变成了幻想文学。于是马丁也运用相同的历史素材，并开始思考如何把这些奇幻元素再进一步往前推进。

Edwards: If you look at a map, a medieval map of the world, at the edges of the map, there's areas that are either unexplored thus far or haven't really been traveled to. And oftentimes you'll see this Latin phrase "hic sunt dracones", which means “here be dragons,” and it essentially entails that we don't know what's out here. There could be anything. It's dangerous, it's scary. But there's mythological creatures. There could be. And at the end of the day, he brought that to life. He said, well, what if at those edges of the map there actually were dragons?

爱德华兹：如果你去看地图，看中世纪时期的世界地图，你会发现，在地图的边缘，还有很多地区没有被探索到，有很多地区从来都还没有人去过。在这些地方旁边你经常会看到标注着一句拉丁语短语 (“hic sunt dracones”) ，它的意思是“这里有龙”，实际上的意思就是我们根本都不知道在那些地方究竟有什么。任何东西都有可能出现在那里。很危险，很吓人。可能会有神话中的生物。这都是有可能的。终于有一天，马丁赋予那些东西生命，把它们写活了。他说，如果地图的边境地区真的有龙的话，会怎样呢？

[sound clip from the birth of the dragons]

[龙出生的声音]

Thinking about all the different literary genres that Shakespeare and Martin use--mythology, tragedy, romance, fantasy--we might start to wonder why they started with history in the first place. If you’re going to fictionalize the story so much, why bother using historical sources?

我们可以思考一下莎士比亚和马丁所运用的不同文学流派，有神话、悲剧、传奇、奇幻故事。这时我们可能会疑惑，既然这样，他们为什么一开始要从历史入手呢？既然创作的是虚构程度这么高的故事，干嘛还要费心思使用历史素材呢？

Edwards: I think that what Martin felt that the history brought to his stories and his plots and his world were the kind of more gritty side of history. I think I remember seeing an interview with Martin where he described his biggest fear, his fear with a lot of the post-Tolkien high fantasy writers, that they were kind of moving towards this, I forget the exact phrase, but he describes it as kind of a “Disney World”-type medieval world. And he felt that a lot of the kind of grittiness that came into high fantasy and things that he loved in high fantasy could really be brought out by the history itself.

爱德华兹：我觉得马丁对于历史的态度是，他觉得历史可以赋予他创作的故事、他创作的情节线索、以及他笔下的那个世界更多的历史真实感。我记得看过马丁的一个采访，在采访中他说自己最担心的一点，这也是那些后托尔金时代的严肃奇幻作家最担心的一点，就是他担心自己的故事会朝着，我忘了他具体是怎么说的，但我记得他的大意就是，他担心自己创造的世界会是一个“迪士尼世界”式的中世纪世界。他认为严肃奇幻文学中的许多真实性以及这类文学吸引他的地方，都可以通过历史本身来实现。

One of the grittiest and most celebrated episodes of Game of Thrones was actually based on a historical medieval event.

实际上，《权力的游戏》中最真实、最有名的剧集之一就是改编自中世纪的一个真实历史事件。

Edwards: Take, for instance, the Red Wedding. He's specifically come out and said that his inspiration came from two separate events in Scottish history, but one notably known as the Black Dinner. And it was essentially this dinner hosted between these two warring clans of Scotland.

爱德华兹：就拿“血色婚礼”这个情节举例吧。马丁特别指出，这里的灵感来源于苏格兰历史上两个独立的事件，其中一个就是著名的“黑色晚餐”事件。举办那次晚餐的是苏格兰的两个敌对家族。

At a talk in 2018, Martin described this historical event of the Black Dinner between the warring Scottish clans:

2018年，马丁在一次谈话中这样描述黑色晚餐这个历史事件中的两个敌对的苏格兰家族：

Martin: So they came to the Royal Castle, and they had a nice dinner with the king, and then at the end, the band began to play this very ominous dirge-like song, and the servants came in with a big covered platter and under that was a black boar's head, which was a symbol of death, and when they saw that, the two Douglasses knew that they were going to be killed, and they were taken out and their heads were immediately chopped off … it's a great story, and of course a lot of modern historians say it's all, it didn't happen that way -- yes, they were executed, but there was no dirge-like song, and there was no fancy dinner, and there was no black boar's head on a covered plate, some storyteller added all that later, but you know, the storyteller was right, it's a better story with all that stuff in it.

马丁：他们前往国王的城堡，和国王愉快地共进晚餐。在晚餐临近结尾时，乐队开始演奏起不祥的哀伤挽歌，仆人们端上了一个盖着的大盘子，底下是一颗象征着死亡的黑公牛头。当看到这个牛头时，赴宴的道格拉斯两兄弟知道自己要逃已经来不及了，他们被拖到外头，立即就被斩首了……这是个很棒的故事，虽然很多现代历史学家说实际情况并不是这样。他们表示道格拉斯两兄弟的确被斩首了，但在宴会上并没有演奏哀伤的挽歌，那次宴会也并不豪华，盖着的盘子上的黑公牛头也并不存在。但是，你也可以感觉出来，如果加上这些要素，故事会更加吸引人。

And famously, in itsadaptation of the Black Dinner story, Game of Thrones brings back that ominous dirge in the song the musicians play at the wedding--a song that reveals they are actually enemy Lannister soldiers.

在这根据黑色晚餐改编的著名桥段中，《权力的游戏》加回了不祥的挽歌，乐师们在婚礼上奏起这首曲子，显示出他们实际上是敌对的兰尼斯特士兵。

Edwards: And the Red Wedding, which is something that I think captured the imagination of people throughout the world when it came toGame of Thrones, was an instance that had its roots in history. I mean, these events happened, these fascinating stories took place. And I think that, you know, Martin's view is, those are out there, so why not use them?

爱德华兹：我认为引发了全球观众想象力的“血色婚礼”就表明《权力的游戏》是植根于历史的。我的意思是，这些事件真的发生过，这些引人入胜的故事是真实的。我觉得，马丁是这么想的，既然有现成的故事了，为什么不利用起来呢？

One reason to use these sources might be to shed more light on people and groups whose stories are misunderstood. George R.R. Martin is especially drawn to the stories of powerful women in medieval history, as was Shakespeare.

马丁运用这些素材原因之一也许是想让人们进一步了解那些被误解的人和群体。乔治.R.R.马丁对中世纪那些强大的女性尤其感兴趣，这一点他和莎士比亚一模一样。

With Shakespeare's first tetralogy, that's where you get a lot of the best female characters in Shakespeare's entire works. You get Joan of Arc, you get Margaret, who are just fearless. You get Eleanor and you get Marjorie Jordan, and you have these witches and Machiavellian women and military leaders who are out on the battlefield, who are breaking some of the stereotypes of female characters at the time.

在莎士比亚第一组四联剧中，你就可以遇见许多莎剧中最杰出的女性角色。你会看到圣女贞德，你还会看到玛格丽特，她们都是勇敢而无所畏惧的女性。你会看到埃莉诺，你会看到马乔里·乔丹，你会看到女巫、运用权谋的女性以及那些在战场上厮杀的女性军事领袖。她们打破了那个年代对于女性的一些固有成见。

Gloucester: Madam, the King is old enough himself / To give his censure. These are no women’s matters.

Margaret: If he be old enough, what needs your Grace / To be Protector of his Excellence?

格洛斯特：娘娘，王上已经成年，可以拿出自己的主张来，用不着女人们来干政的。

玛格丽特：王上既然已经成年，那么为什么还需要您来摄政呢？

Edwards: I think one of the things that Martin found so fascinating was some of the female characters at this time, because there's a common misconception about history in this period that the women characters were these subservient, sat by the sides of their husbands and they listened to them and obeyed and did what they wanted. And that's just, it couldn't be farther from the truth. And characters like Margaret of Anjou, you mentioned Anne Neville, I would also add in Elizabeth Woodville, the wife of Edward the Fourth, were fascinating individuals in this time, intelligent and also very strong in their beliefs and their backing of their children's claim and ultimately wanted more than anything to see their sons sit on the throne of England. And as much as people want to hate Cersei Lannister, there's mothers who can appreciate her love for her children and the desire that she has to see what she believes is best for them. And so I find those parallels to be kind of even more interesting than some of the more, I think, obvious Mad King insane of characters.

爱德华兹：我觉得让马丁着迷的还有那个年代的一些女性人物。对于那个历史时期的女性，人们普遍会把她们误认为是恭敬顺从的人，觉得她们只会坐在丈夫身边，听从丈夫的命令与差遣。但实际情况远非如此。这些女性角色，比如说安茹的玛格丽特，还有你提到的安妮·内维尔，这里我还想提一下爱德华四世的妻子伊丽莎白·伍德维尔，她们都是那个时代的魅力女性。她们聪明有智慧，有着坚定的信念，她们支持自己孩子对王位的主张，最希望看到的就是自己的儿子能够牢牢地坐在王位之上。虽然很多人都憎恨《权力的游戏》中的瑟曦·兰尼斯特，但是一些母亲是能够理解她对自己孩子的那种爱，能理解她极力想把最好的给自己孩子的那种渴望。我认为这些女性角色远远比“疯王”那类角色更加有趣。

One of the interesting aspects of Martin’s writing is the way he cankeep you from hating people like Cersei Lannister--characters who could easily be seen simply as villains. Mythological battles between good and evil--like the one Shakespeare depicted between Henry Tudor and Richard III--are a staple of fantasy literature, especially J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.Martin was strongly inspired by Tolkien’s epic, but he brought a more realistic and historically rooted quality to the morality of his world.

马丁的创作还有一个很有意思的地方，就是他会让你无法憎恨瑟曦·兰尼斯特这类角色，要知道一般情况下，人们往往会简单把他们看作是恶棍。正义与邪恶之间的传奇战争一直是奇幻文学的一个重要组成部分，就像莎士比亚笔下亨利·都铎和理查三世之间的那场战役，而在J.R.R.托尔金的《指环王》中这一点尤其明显。马丁深受托尔金影响，但他所创造的那个世界的道德体系则又更加写实，更具备历史基础。

Edwards: In Tolkien's work, there's definitely a good and an evil. And there's entire species that are good versus evil. And I think what Martin found, and that's the same in the folklore that Tolkien was borrowing from, well, in history, there is no good and evil. I mean, there's bad characters. There's bad people, and there's good people, undoubtedly. But at the end of the day, no one can look at the house of Lancaster or the House of York and say one of them was good and the other was bad. It's just not the case. And I think that allowed him to create these characters and build out these nuanced characters. Take a Jaime Lannister, for instance, who, you know, at the beginning of the story couldn't be more evil in the minds of most fans.

爱德华兹：在托尔金的作品中，有着绝对的善恶。所有族群都有鲜明的善恶之分。我觉得马丁觉察除了其中的一个问题，这个问题其实在托尔金借用的那些民间传说中也同样存在，就是在历史中，并没有所谓的善与恶。我想说的是，那些坏角色，豪无疑问，肯定有坏人，也有好人。但是在结尾处，没有人能够看着兰开斯特家族或者约克家族，说一方是好的，另一方是坏的。我们不能这样区分。我认为也正是因为这样，马丁才有机会创造出这些复杂的角色，刻画出这些有这微妙区别的人物。就像詹姆·兰尼斯特，在一开始，大部分粉丝都觉得他是全剧最邪恶的一个角色。

The very first episode of Game of Thrones ends with Jaime Lannister attempting to kill the child Bran Stark because Bran discovered Jaime’s sexual relationship with his sister Cersei Lannister. By Season Eight, Jaime is risking his life to fight alongside the Starks. But even so, his character arc isn’t a simple transition from bad to good. He leaves the Stark army because he is still drawn by a powerful love for Cersei. For most of Martin’s characters, there’s no easy or simple way to judge them, and that’s another feature that history helped provide.

在《权力的游戏》第一集结尾处，詹姆·兰尼斯特企图杀死还是孩子的布兰·史塔克，因为布兰意外地发现了他和亲姐姐瑟曦·兰尼斯特之间的奸情。但是到了第八季，詹姆却冒着生命危险与史塔克家族并肩作战。不过，即便是这样，他也不是简单就从一个坏人转变成了一个好人。而且在最后他还是离开了史塔克的军队，因为他依旧深深爱着瑟曦。对于马丁创作的大部分角色，我们都不能简单去评判他们，而这正是历史所具备的另一个特点。

Edwards: I think that he found that character arcs and history were just so much more prevalent than taking from your typical fairy tale story, so to speak, that it's good versus evil, and good triumphs in the end.

爱德华兹：我认为马丁也发现了人物的这种变化和历史的进程远比那种典型的童话故事套路更加普遍常见，在童话故事里，善恶的对决往往是以善的一方取胜而结束。

This kind of moral complexity--in Game of Thronesand in Shakespeare’s plays--is one reason why these works are so compelling to so many people, including the actors who play in them. This is Anton Lesser’s reaction to Qyburn, the character he played in Game of Thrones.

不论是在《权力的游戏》中，还是在莎剧中，这种道德的复杂性都深深吸引着众多读者，其中还包括扮演剧中角色的演员们。下面这段是安东·莱瑟对科本这个人物的看法，科本是安东在《权力的游戏》中所扮演的角色。

Lesser: I love him because he's not an evil character. Neither is he a good character. He's just very complicated and I love that, and I think most actors, if you ask them, “What's the most satisfying sort of role to play”, they say, “Roles where you actually don't know what's going on”.

莱瑟：我喜欢这个角色，因为他并不是一个坏人。当然，他也不是一个好人。这个角色很复杂，而我恰恰就喜欢这一点。我觉得如果你去问大部分演员，“最令你满意的是哪种角色？”他们一定会回答说，“最令我满意的是那种你不知道他接下来会作出什么事情的角色。”

Lesser is also a veteran actor of Shakespeare. And he finds this same attractive, complicated quality in Shakespeare’s plays--especially tragedies like Julius Caesar.

莱瑟同时还是一位经验丰富的莎剧演员。他发现在莎剧中，同样也有这样迷人又复杂的人性，这一点在《裘力斯·凯撒》这类悲剧中尤为明显。

Brutus: But ’tis a common proof / That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder, / Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; / But, when he once attains the upmost round, / He then unto the ladder turns his back, / Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees / By which he did ascend. / So Caesar may. Then, lest he may, prevent. /  … And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg, / Which, hatched, would, as his kind, grow / mischievous, / And kill him in the shell.

布鲁图斯：可是微贱往往是初期野心的阶梯，凭借着它一步步爬上了高处；当他一旦登上了最高的一级之后，他便不再回顾那梯子，他的眼光仰望着云霄，瞧不起他从前所恃为凭借的低下的阶段。凯撒何尝不会这样？所以，为了怕他有这一天，必须早一点防备。......我们应当把他当作一颗蛇蛋，与其让他孵出以后害人，不如趁他还在壳里的时候就把他杀死。

Lesser: I think it's brilliant because it challenges you. It makes you sort of admit, you don't know what this life is about. You don't know how you would behave if you were given power. You don't know how you would make a conclusion that Brutus has to make, to kill Caesar or be true to his friend. None of us know.

莱瑟：我觉得这种角色很棒，因为这种角色对演员其实也是挑战。他让你不得不承认，你根本不知道生命的意义究竟是什么。你不知道一旦被赋予权力以后你会做出什么事情。你不知道自己会不会作出和布鲁图斯一样的决定，不知道自己是会去杀了凯撒，还是会成为他真正的朋友。没有人知道。

In our next episode, we’ll investigate the complex morality of Shakespeare’s and Martin’s worlds. We’ll look again at history and how it shapes characters’ moral choices, and at how those choices become even more difficult once you acquire power. We hope you’ll join us for Episode Two of “The Wooden O and the Iron Throne”: “Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown.”

下集节目，我们将探寻莎士比亚和马丁笔下所描绘的那些世界中的复杂道德体系。我们将再次把目光投向历史，看看历史如何影响着角色们的道德选择。同时去感受一旦我们自己也获得了那样的权力，作出那些道德选择将会变得多么困难。希望大家可以继续跟随我们，一同进入“环形剧场与铁王座”特别节目的第二集——“为王者无安宁”。