前几天看小刚的《夜宴》，忽然想到哈姆雷特和奥菲利娅的故事。从女性被毁灭的角度出发，这个故事和陈家洛送香香公主给乾隆的故事是雷同的。所以你在看沙剧和金剧的时候，常有“如有雷同，纯属巧合。”
以下是我几年前出版的论文（版权所有，拒绝转载）。
The Destruction of Ophelia’s Womanhood by Hamlet
In Hamlet, Shakespeare depicts a love tragedy through the dramatic development of the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. Suffering the great pain of losing his father, Hamlet curses his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle, who inherits the crown of the court. His mother’s betrayal to his father shatters his opinion of womanhood, leading him to believe that, “frailty, thy name is woman” (1.2.146). His notion that all women are sexually promiscuous and unfaithful in love becomes firm when Ophelia denies him by obeying her father’s order. Sunk into a love melancholy, Hamlet is unable to distinguish the offenses of his mother from the submissive nature of Ophelia. Therefore, Hamlet projects his mother’s sexuality onto Ophelia and denies her honest, virtuous love.
Hamlet launches into a tirade against his mother when he endures the unpleasant scene of her wedding to his uncle. He condemns his mother’s betrayal of love by saying:
…Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. (1.2.153-156)
He curses her furiously for breaking her vow of marriage and transferring her love so quickly. Exploding in a great rage, he debases his mother’s virtue by calling her “a beast that wants discourse of reason” (1.2.150). Later, as his discontentment with his mother intensifies, Hamlet considers her incestuous marriage to be a “bloody deed” (3.4.29) and becomes suspicious about her complicity in the murder of his father.
Denying the honesty of his mother’s love, Hamlet further associates her sin of betrayal with the growth of her sexual appetite. He speaks sarcastically of his mother’s blind pursuit of sexuality by illustrating the inferiority of his uncle to his father, saying, “So excellent a king /that was to this Hyperion to a satyr” (1.2.139-140). He defines his father as the sun god Hyperion, a model of beauty, and his uncle as a satyr, a half human beast that has a taste only for luxury. He then steps forward to claim that she marries his uncle with no sense of love, merely pursuing sexual satisfaction. His long speech in Scene 3 demonstrates his notion when he denounces his mother by saying, “You cannot call it love, for at your age /The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble” (3.4.69-70). Disgusted by the senselessness of his mother’s love, he condemns her with vulgar sexual comments:
[You live] In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty--- (3.4.92-94)
His mother’s sexuality significantly mutates his attitude towards women. He believes that her disloyalty in love is a reflection of women in general, as he concludes, “frailty, thy name is woman” (1.2.146).
The conflation of Ophelia with Hamlet’s mother reaches a climax when Hamlet collapses both characters by criticizing their dishonesty and betrayal. Hamlet becomes desperate in love and commands Ophelia to stay away from marriage, saying, “Get thee to a nunnery /Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” (3.1.121-122). The concept of “breeder of sinners” refers to his mother, as he further clarifies:
I am myself indifferent honest,
But yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. (3.1.122-124)
He believes that he is a sinner simply because his mother who bred him has committed a crime by betraying his father. As a result, he attributes the inferior aspects of his nature, such as revengefulness, ambitiousness, and offensiveness to the breeding of his mother’s sin. Since Hamlet equates Ophelia to his mother in her sense of dishonesty, he implies that if Ophelia marries, her children will inherit her sins in the same way he inherits his mother’s. Therefore, he urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery, prohibiting her from breeding crime. Speaking sarcastically, he provides another option to Ophelia:
Or if thou wilt needs marry,
Marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what
Monsters you make of them. (3.1.138-140)
He remarks that Ophelia’s disloyalty has made him behave like a monster. This is a reference to the imagery of a cuckold whose common symbol is horns. His father became a monster immediately after he died because his mother cheats him by marrying his uncle. Considering the similarity of Ophelia and his mother, he believes that he too has been cuckolded, for Ophelia betrays him by denying his love.
Consequently, when Ophelia denies his amorous advances, Hamlet automatically applies his notion of women’s fickleness to her. Obeying her father, Ophelia returns the love poems and letters that Hamlet once gave to her and bitterly comments, “Their [poems and letters’] perfume lost /Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind” (3.1.99, 101). Ophelia implies that the once-elegant gifts from Hamlet have lost their value since he has become mad and uncivil. Feeling the offenses of her words as much as that of his mother’s “bloody deed,” Hamlet believes that, as a woman, Ophelia will pursue sexuality by trading access to her beauty. He interprets the interaction between her honesty and beauty when he says:
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
Transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than
The force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. (3.1. 111-114)
He implies that Ophelia’s beauty is having “commerce” (3.1.109) with her virtue when they transform each other. According to Hamlet, her beauty allows her to trade honesty of love for sexuality because the power of her honesty is too weak to hold her beauty moderate and virtuous. Therefore, in Hamlet’s view, Ophelia is merely an actress who delivers a vision of deceptive love. He concludes, “God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another” (3.1.145-146). Hamlet believes that, like his mother, Ophelia disguises herself as honest, betraying love at the cost of her virtue.
Projecting the objective of his mother’s betrayal onto Ophelia, Hamlet believes strongly that she is also sexually ambitious. Before the Dumb show begins, he has a conversation with Ophelia and says, “For look you how cheerfully /My mother looks” (3.2.132). He thinks that, just like his mother, Ophelia merely has sexual appetite and no sense of love because both women are able to act “cheerfully” right after they break off their previous relationships. Similar to the way he insults his mother, Hamlet teases Ophelia with oblique sexual references. He torments her with a string of erotic puns, asking if he should put his head upon her lap. When Ophelia reveals that she does not hear any sexual implication in his words, Hamlet immediately becomes bold, speaking in a vulgar tone: “That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs” (3.2.121). Later, when Ophelia appreciates his talent in acting the show, he continues to comment with sexual innuendo, saying “It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge” (3.2.255). Ironically, the innocent character of Ophelia prohibits her from understanding the underlying meaning of words, commenting only on the briefness of the prologue in the show. Hamlet therefore takes this chance to make a forceful remark, saying that the prologue is “As [brief as] woman’s love” (3.2.159).
Hamlet’s hatred toward his mother provides an insight into his destruction of Ophelia’s natural state. The offenses of his mother’s betrayal distort his notion of women in general, making him believe that dishonesty and sexuality also characterize Ophelia. Eventually, Hamlet’s bad treatment of Ophelia and his unintentional murder of her father drive her insane. In the revelation of her madness, Ophelia seems to be well aware of the double standards of honor that men achieve by acting aggressively, while women achieve by preserving their virginity. She bitterly sings:
Young men will do’t if they come to’t,
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, “Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed. (4.5.60-64)
She becomes conscious of the sexual implications of Hamlet’s remarks, cursing his breaking of his promise of marriage. Consequently, Ophelia transforms from innocence to experience. When at the end of the play, she gives away the flowers that she used to spend her time collecting, this symbolizes the end of her doomed naiveté.
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很有意思的比较文学。但本鹅英文水平有限，有的地方看不大懂，况且论坛中还有很多读者是不懂英文的，望作者能译出汉语来供大家共同赏析。如果你的汉语译文很出色，论坛当然会根据情况考虑加精。 ----鹅
[ 本帖最后由 鹅得意的笑 于 2009-12-15 08:58 编辑 ] |
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发表于 2009-12-14 23:23
楼主
－－－－鹅
, 不过个人对莎翁的作品没什么研究, 而且对文章里面莎翁的古英语有点晕, 就不评价什么了
不知道在美国发表一篇论文容易不, 需要什么条件, 希望楼主指点下