譯/李京倫 Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" has always been about more than killing Julius Caesar.
On the eve of World War II, Orson Welles staged a landmark anti-fascist production with a Mussolini-like Caesar. The Royal Shakespeare Company recently set the play in Africa, powerfully evoking the continent's dictators and civil wars. Five years ago, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis staged a production featuring the assassination of an Obama-esque Caesar by a group of right-wing conspirators.
莎士比亞的劇作「凱撒大帝」一向不只關乎凱撒被殺而已。
二次世界大戰爆發前，美國導演奧森威爾斯就將劃時代的反法西斯版「凱撒大帝」搬上舞台，其中的凱撒長得就像義大利獨裁者墨索里尼。英國「皇家莎士比亞劇團」最近推出了非洲版，強而有力地令人想起非洲大陸的獨裁者與內戰。5年前，美國明尼蘇達州明尼亞波利斯市的格斯里劇院上演了凱撒大帝，特色是貌似當時美國總統歐巴馬的凱撒被一群右派共謀者暗殺。
But it is the Public Theater in New York that finds itself in the middle of a pitched controversy, for its new staging of the play at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Oskar Eustis, the director, chose to make his Caesar decidedly Trumpian, giving him a shock of hair, an overlong red tie and a wife with a recognizably Slovenian accent. As all Caesars are, he is killed in the middle of the play — bloodily — by Brutus and his band of co-conspirators.
That killing has driven Delta Air Lines and Bank of America to pull all or part of their sponsorship of the Public Theater's free Shakespeare in the Park program, and thrust the theater into a maelstrom of criticism from President Donald Trump's supporters.
然而，紐約藝術團體「公共劇院」近日在中央公園德拉科特劇場演出這部戲，卻引發重大爭議。導演尤斯提斯刻意讓凱撒長得一副美國總統川普樣，給了他濃密的頭髮，超長的紅領帶，和聽得出帶有斯洛維尼亞口音的妻子。就像所有版本的凱撒一樣，凱撒在劇情進行到一半時被羅馬共和國元老院議員布魯圖斯和一群同謀血腥殺害。
這暗殺的一幕，使美國達美航空和美國銀行完全或部分撤銷對公共劇院不收門票的「中央公園看莎劇」活動的贊助，並使劇團淹沒在川普支持者的批評聲浪中。
"Julius Caesar," with assassination at its core, is politically fraught, and subject to multiple interpretations. The play was written during a tense moment when Elizabethan England seethed with political plots. In Catherine the Great's Russia, copies of the play were removed from bookstores. Over the years, totalitarian regimes have banned or bowdlerized it. And audiences and scholars have long debated the play's meaning, and the extent to which Shakespeare was sympathizing with the conspirators or condemning them.
"One thing about Shakespeare's plays that makes them so alive is that they are extremely labile," said Stephen Greenblatt, a Shakespeare scholar. "They go in a lot of different directions, and 'Julius Caesar' is a strong, extreme case of this."
「凱撒大帝」以暗殺為核心，本就充滿政治意涵，且可從多種角度詮釋。此劇創作於伊麗莎白女王時代的英國，當時局勢緊張，政治陰謀充斥。在凱薩琳大帝時期的俄國，此劇劇本被勒令從書店下架。多年來，極權政權不是封殺它就是刪除其中的段落。觀眾和學者一直討論這部戲的意義，以及莎士比亞同情或譴責密謀暗殺者的程度。
研究莎士比亞的學者葛林布萊說：「讓莎士比亞戲劇這麼鮮活的一個原因是，這些戲劇極具不確定性，從不同角度解釋都說得通，而『凱撒大帝』正是強烈而極端的案例。」
Not that the play, in which the increasingly powerful Caesar is killed in the name of saving the republic, is pro-assassination. On this, most Shakespeare scholars agree.
"I think the general drift of it is: Be careful, you might get what you want," Greenblatt said, noting the chaos and bloodshed the assassination unleashes. "The very thing that you think you're doing to protect the republic can lead to the end of the republic."
Leaders have been fascinated by the work. George Washington saw a production of the drama in 1790. Nelson Mandela annotated a copy when he was imprisoned on Robben Island for fighting apartheid in South Africa.
「凱撒大帝」講述權力越來越大的凱撒遭密謀者以「拯救共和國」的名義殺害，不過，絕大多數研究莎士比亞的學者同意，這部戲並不那麼贊同暗殺。
葛林布萊說，「這部戲的大意應該是：小心點，你可能會得到你想要的東西」，他指的是這起暗殺激發的混亂與血腥，「你自認為保護共和國而做的事，可能恰恰導致共和國的終結」。
許多領袖都為這齣戲著迷。美國第一位總統華盛頓在1790年看了這部戲的演出。南非首位黑人總統曼德拉因抗議南非種族隔離制度被關在羅本島時，為這部戲的劇本做了注釋。
說文解字看新聞
文/張佑生
中文有「死有輕如鴻毛，重於泰山」的說法。同樣是死於非命，英文最常見的是kill，天災人禍都可能是死因；murder著重在犯意與罪行；貫穿本文的assassination專指暗殺重要人士，尤其是政治人物。
荊軻刺秦王是很典型的例子，動詞翻譯用kill不是不行但略嫌陽春，assassinate就貼切得多。由於「惜哉劍術疏，奇功遂不成」，刺殺任務只能說是a failed assassination attempt，荊軻則是刺客（assassin）。儘管姓名被當成劇名，莎劇學者咸認凱撒只是titular hero，行刺的Brutus反而才是本劇的tragic hero。此為後話。
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