“台上仅见理查”——18、19世纪美国舞台上的《理查三世》

“Richard,Solus”:Richard III on the American Stage in the 18^(th) and 19^(th) Centuries

《理查三世》是18、19世纪美国舞台上最走红的一部莎剧。学界对其中原因的探索多以莎士比亚原著为研究文本,忽视了当时美国舞台上演出的并非莎本,而是科利·西伯于17世纪末推出的改编本。西伯本摒弃了莎本的历史主题,将理查变成剧中绝对中心,从而把历史剧换成了个人悲剧。这样的改写虽并非针对美国舞台所作,却恰好迎合了美国人价值观中的个人主义精神,并与18、19世纪美国剧场的运作模式以及当时观众审美情趣合拍,因此风靡一时。西伯的改编虽自身文学价值有限,但其在美国的流行给当代读者提供了一个探索早期现代文学文本生产与传播过程中意图增殖机制的机会,因此仍值得研究。

Richard III was the most popular Shakespearean play on the American stage in the 18^(th) and 19^(th) centuries.So far,scholarship on this popularity has been mostly centered around the original play by Shakespeare,overlooking the fact that the stage performance at that time was actually based on a script adapted by Colley Cibber in the late 17^(th) century.By removing the historical theme from Shakespeare’s play,Cibber’s version places Richard at the very center of the play and converts the history play to a personal tragedy.Although Cibber had not the American stage in mind at the time of the adaptation,his Richard III nevertheless appealed to the spirit of individualism in American values,and corresponded well to the operational mode of the American stage and the aesthetic taste of its audience in the 18^(th) and 19^(th) centuries,making it a sensational success at the time.While Cibber’s adaptation is admittedly of limited literary value in itself,it is still worth studying because its popularity in the US offers contemporary readers a chance to observe the multiplication of intentions in the production and dissemination of early modern literary texts.