摘要
巡回演出的演员在公路和小路上行走,推着手推车或骑着驴子,这是戏剧史上最持久的浪漫画面之一。演员们在谷仓、市场、用木板和木桶搭建的舞台上表演,这是一个和剧院一样古老的标志性理念。而学者们则倾向于认为观众是在环球剧院或黑衣修士剧院观看莎士比亚戏剧的。事实上,莎士比亚的戏剧之所以能够在世界各地传播,比起在完备的剧场建筑内的表演,更应归功于巡回演出的演员们的努力。他们在远非理想的情况下表演,但带有极大的热情和不知疲倦的乐观精神。探讨成群结队的巡演演员将火炬从英格兰农村的城镇和村庄传递到文艺复兴时期的法兰克福或格丹斯克的市场和宫殿,并最终传递到其他大洲的方式。与此同时,巡回演出的演员在传承莎士比亚的遗产方面也扮演了其他重要角色。他们保持着一种传统,这种传统比后世的许多“改良”更接近莎士比亚自己“公司”的传统,并确保了莎士比亚继续被视为所有人的娱乐,而不仅仅是昂贵剧院里的高雅艺术,或者是教室里的文学文本。对莎士比亚戏剧传播历史上几个关键时刻的关注,强调与近代规模更大、更著名的剧院相比,巡回演员们有时是更真实地再现戏剧和作者意图的守护者。
The image of strolling players tramping the highways and byways, pushing a handcart or riding a donkey,is one of the most enduringly romantic images in theatre history. Actors performing in barns,in marketplaces,on stages made from planks and barrels are an iconic idea as old as theatre itself. Whereas scholars tend to think of Shakespeare's plays being seen by audiences at the Globe or the Blackfriars,in fact the spread of Shakespeare’ s plays around the world owed less to the performance of his plays in well-established theatre buildings than to the efforts of strollers, performing in circumstances which were far from ideal, but driven by passionate enthusiasm and tireless optimism. This article will explore the ways in which groups of strolling players carried the torch from the towns and villages of rural England to the marketplaces and palaces of Renaissance Frankfurt or Gdansk,and eventually to other continents. At the same time the strolling players had other important roles in carrying Shakespeare ’ s legacy. They maintained a tradition which was far closer to that of Shakespeare ’ s own company than many of the “ improvements ” of later generations, and ensured that Shakespeare continued to be seen as entertainment for all,not just as high art in expensive theatres,or as literary texts in a classroom. By focussing on several key moments in the history of the transmission of Shakespeare ’ s plays the author argues that the strollers have sometimes been the guardians of a truer representation of the plays and the writer’ s intentions than the larger and more famous theatres of more recent times.
