美国国家公共电台 NPR Christopher Marlowe Credited As Shakespeare's Co-Author On Henry VI Plays

Christopher Marlowe Credited As Shakespeare's Co-Author On Henry VI Plays 

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0004:06repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: 

It's a big day for Christopher Marlowe, who unfortunately cannot enjoy it, having been dead since 1593. The Elizabethan playwright² will get credit from Oxford³ University Press as co-author of three histories, "Henry VI, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3." Until now, those plays have been credited solely⁴ to William Shakespeare. Joining us to explain this decision is Gary Taylor, who's one of the general editors of "The New Oxford Shakespeare" and a professor of English at Florida State University.

Welcome to the program.

GARY TAYLOR: I'm delighted to be here.

SIEGEL: And first I want to clarify what you and your colleagues are not saying. You're not saying that Christopher Marlowe, as some of his admirers might contend, was the real author of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Shakespeare was a fraud. Do I have that right?

TAYLOR: You're absolutely right. Shakespeare was not a fraud. Marlowe did not write all of Shakespeare's works. He did something, instead, that was perfectly⁵ normal in the Elizabethan theatre, which is he collaborated⁶ with another playwright, in this case Shakespeare.

SIEGEL: What led "The New Oxford Shakespeare" team to declare "Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3" worthy⁷ of a shared byline⁸?

TAYLOR: Well, people have suspected that Marlowe had something to do with these three plays since the 1790s. But we haven't had a way that we could test it. And fortunately, Shakespeare has now entered the epoch⁹ of big data.

It is now possible for us to compare the text of a play by Shakespeare, or really any play in the period, against all the surviving plays and to see whether these parts of plays that have long been suspected as being maybe not by Shakespeare are by Shakespeare after all or by somebody else.

SIEGEL: So you find textual similarities between Marlowe's acknowledged plays and these histories - not enough to say Marlowe wrote them but enough to say he was a co-author of them?

TAYLOR: Yes, because what matters here is the pattern of similarities. You have a scene which has a completely different linguistic¹⁰ profile than the rest of the play. They had a scenario¹¹ that set out the plot of the play. And then they could divide it up between different writers.

SIEGEL: Can you give us an example of something that if it turns up in a disputed part of a play, points you in the direction of a particular playwright?

TAYLOR: For one example, the word glory is not all that unusual in plays of the period. And the verb droopeth, you know, it occurs in a number of different writers. But if you put those two words together right next to each other, glory droopeth, that occurs in one of these disputed passages in "Henry VI, Part 1." The only other place it occurs in all the plays of the period is in a play by Marlowe.

Now, just those two words by themselves would not be enough. But when you find a number of unusual combinations of this kind all clustered together in one place, then the simplest explanation for that is that there's two different writers here.

SIEGEL: One tweet about this announcement said, Shakespeare gets the last laugh. Marlowe now gets to share the blame for the "Henry VI" plays. These aren't the finest works attributed to William Shakespeare.

TAYLOR: Well, the "Henry VI" plays are written early in his career. Actually, I think that this evidence makes these plays more interesting. They were helping¹² to create the whole genre¹³ of a history play. It was a way of talking about vernacular¹⁴ politics and about civil war. The whole idea for this kind of play with a serious analysis of politics comes out of the collaboration¹⁵ between these two very different but very gifted writers.

SIEGEL: Professor Taylor, thank you very much for talking with us today.

TAYLOR: Thank you for listening.

SIEGEL: It's Gary Taylor, one of the general editors of "The New Oxford Shakespeare" and a professor of English at Florida State University.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 playwright   

n.剧作家，编写剧本的人

参考例句：

• Gwyn Thomas was a famous playwright.格温·托马斯是著名的剧作家。
• The playwright was slaughtered by the press.这位剧作家受到新闻界的无情批判。

3 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

4 solely   

adv.仅仅，唯一地

参考例句：

• Success should not be measured solely by educational achievement.成功与否不应只用学业成绩来衡量。
• The town depends almost solely on the tourist trade.这座城市几乎完全靠旅游业维持。

5 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

6 collaborated   

合作( collaborate的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾结叛国

参考例句：

• We have collaborated on many projects over the years. 这些年来我们合作搞了许多项目。
• We have collaborated closely with the university on this project. 我们与大学在这个专案上紧密合作。

7 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

8 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

9 epoch   

n.(新)时代；历元

参考例句：

• The epoch of revolution creates great figures.革命时代造就伟大的人物。
• We're at the end of the historical epoch,and at the dawn of another.我们正处在一个历史时代的末期，另一个历史时代的开端。

10 linguistic   

adj.语言的，语言学的

参考例句：

• She is pursuing her linguistic researches.她在从事语言学的研究。
• The ability to write is a supreme test of linguistic competence.写作能力是对语言能力的最高形式的测试。

11 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

12 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

13 genre   

n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格

参考例句：

• My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
• Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看， 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。

14 vernacular   

adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名

参考例句：

• The house is built in a vernacular style.这房子按当地的风格建筑。
• The traditional Chinese vernacular architecture is an epitome of Chinese traditional culture.中国传统民居建筑可谓中国传统文化的缩影。

15 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。