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This Contest Was Won Four Centuries Ago 比赛结束在400年前 As the November evenings draw in1, it will become increasingly important to reme mber that the BBC's search for the greatest Briton has little to do with real interest in the rival merits of the candidates. If something serious were intended, Anne Robinson2 would not be presenting the series, William Ewart Gladstone, George Eliot and John Milton3 would have been included in the slate of nominees from which the viewing public made its initial choice, and Diana, Princess of Wales would not be on the final shortlist. To be fair to the BBC, once somebody had the bright idea of stimulating weak-minded interest by pretending that there was a competition, a sensible programme was impossible. The genuine contest was over before it began. The title was won four centuries ago and has been retained ever since by the man who makes Britain in general, and England in particular, different from the rest of the world. Whatever our other failures and failings, we remain special and su perior because we have William Shakespeare. His champion status cannot be changed by the sort of vote that the BBC organises to determine the sports personality of the year. Shakespeare would walk away with the title if he were no more than the greatest poet and dramatist the world has ever known. But that is only the beginning of his claim to be England's Englishman. What he wrote defines what we are. England made him but he, in turn, helped to make the England of our imagination. On the day after British troops were evacuated from Dunkirk4, the pupils of my primary school all chanted in unison: "Come the four corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them." Our notion of national identity --- distinct from the culture and customs of our continental cousins --- is enshrined in Shakespeare's histories. Henry V, proposing to Princess Katherine6, typifies our relationship with France 403 years after the scene was written. Affection combines with self-interest to encourage a closer a lliance. But the language is a problem. The poet of England always exhibits an admirable English realism about his native land. He searched for Arcadia7 in the Forest of Arden8. And, to guarantee the continued support of his royal patrons, he chronicled the reigns of successive Henrys and Richards in a way that owes more to Tudor9 prejudices and propaganda than to objective history. But Shakespeare avoids the mawkish sentimen-tality that characterises so many self-styled patriots. Shakespeare has become part of our language. Some of the aphorisms are so vivid that they have turned into cliches. But few of us pass a day without using or hea ring a dozen phrases which we would find in a book of Shakes-pearean quotations. Years ago I asked Senator Pat Moynihan --- a surviving member of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier10 --- if he had really responded to the news of the president' s death with an expression of fear that he would never feel young again. Not quite, he to ld me. But something like it. His first thought was: "Our revels now are ended." (The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1, line 148) No other dramatist has possessed Shakes-peare' s ability to analyse the fundamental human emotions. The world' s greatest plays about love, ambition, jealousy and grief were all written by him. Each one of them ---Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear --- teaches perceptive readers something new about themselves. Add to that the political lessons inherent in Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, and it is easy to forget Shakespeare' s real purpose. Shakespeare was meant to make us glad. Last summer, I saw Pericles at Stratford11, a play that some critics think not good enough to be the Bard' s own work. It was pure delight and I staggered out of the the atre thinking that if this is the worst he ever did, the best must be a series of miracles. What Shakespeare has to say about love and
hate, hope and despair, triumph and f ailure means as much now as it
did when it was written. Enobarbus exaggerated the splendour of Cleopatra'
s12 progress along the river Cydnus because he wanted to be associated
with a sensation. Which of us has not done something similar in the
hope of impressing our friends? Shakespeare speaks for us all at our
worst and best. That is why Ben Jonson13 called him"Not of an age,
but for all time".BBC please note.
阅读感评 最初看到这篇文章的时候，我的意见和作者一样：“最伟大英国人”评选活动是一次毫无意义的比赛，因为没人（英国人）具有同莎士比亚竞争的实力。然而，评选结果于2002年11月24日晚揭晓：二战首相丘吉尔以27.9%的得票率胜出，第二名是修建了无数铁路和桥梁的工程师布鲁内尔，被作者认为不具备决赛资格的戴安娜王妃赫然名列第三，莎士比亚的得票率仅为6 .9%，排在达尔文之后的第五位。瞠目结舌之余，也不免有一些想法。 政治人物向来很难令人产生好感——很多情况下，政客不过是一些不惜牺牲一切生灵以遂其权力欲的疯子，据闻为曹操先生座右铭的“宁教我负天下人，休教天下人负我”往往是他们生涯的最好注脚。倘来富贵如烟云过眼，他们对后世的影响终究有限。他们握有主宰凡人世俗生活的权力，却难以在人的思想和精神上留下痕迹（有些极端的暴政会严重伤害一个民族的道德感，可算是例外）。人类凭借自觉的精神得为高等生物，因此衡量伟大与否的标准无疑应当是对人类精神生活的贡献。以此观之，使人类对自身有更深刻认识的思想者无疑是贤之大者，帝王将相何得与之相提并论？从另一方面来说，不世出的天才与时势造就的英雄，两者之间孰为重轻，也是个不难判断的问题。大约是贝多芬曾对一位公爵大人说过一番大意如此的话：前500年中有无数公爵，后500年亦将如此，而上下千年，只此一贝多芬耳。这并不是音乐家的自我吹嘘。时至今日，贝多芬的音乐依旧在涤荡我们的灵魂；而那位爵爷若有名流传后世，怕也是拜贝多芬之赐吧。 以我国而论，五千年中你方唱罢我登台，江山代有真命天子出，好一部热闹的历史。但若仔细审视我们的思想和情感，你一定能发现，在我们心灵中回荡的，绝不是金戈铁马和庙堂钟鼓，而是一些人轻轻的、充满诗意与智慧的足音。他们中有孔孟老庄、有屈陶李杜……是他们，使我们成为我们。 也有人说了，如果没有丘吉尔在卫国战争中的英勇表现，英国人连进行此类评选活动的机会都没有。这种想法也有其荒谬之处，但批驳起来又要扯得远了，最后说不定要讲到顾炎武的“亡国”与“亡天下”乃至世界大同上面去，在此不述。 当然，正确的态度是把这样的评选看作是游戏（如作者所说，它不可能不是游戏）——不然难以解释戴妃之三甲地位。在这个游戏的时代，先贤们的影响确然是越来越弱了，因为他们太过严肃，因为他们遗赠我们的字典中缺少游戏二字，因为……。然而，没有强大的精神，我们将如何在这个物质迫人的世界中游戏？ 如果我们也有这样的评选，游戏的结果会是什么样子呢？ |