Chapter 55 strange day

one Among the European cultural masters, the one born in the narrowest house is Beethoven and Shakespeare.It seems that God purposely reduced and lowered the room, stairs, doors and windows one by one, and then let the future master break through the wall with a crash and leave.Both died at the same age: fifty-two. Beethoven was born in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. It is not a small city. Of course, it is impossible to enshrine this old house too grandly, but let it line up quietly on the edge of a narrow street, and careless people walk by. Can't find it both times.Shakespeare’s birthplace was a small town, Stratford-on-Avon, so that’s a big deal. Now almost all the fame, business, and livelihood depend on Shakespeare, as if the entire village exists to wait for him His birth, waiting for his growth, departure, return, death, and then waiting for the world to commemorate.

This is the kindness of fellow countrymen from different generations, and the warmth of the ordinary world.What is unusual is that there are constant tourists from all over the world every day, so the festival is being welcomed and sent to the destination every day, and it is obvious that this festival will continue forever. The weather was already very cold and the wind was strong. I was walking on the street wearing a down jacket. After walking a distance, I hid in a souvenir shop to warm up. I came out after warming up and continued walking.My friends asked me what relic I was looking for, and I said no, but I actually wanted to get back a little complicated feeling.

What I think now is that, for a long time, the town was oblivious to its wanderers, but it didn't know that all the criticisms that Shakespeare suffered before and after his life, and even the authenticity of his existence, were mostly due to it. . two A small town is a small town after all, and it was a small town more than 400 years ago. Why does it convey a Shakespeare? That kid named Shakespeare couldn't possibly get a good education here. He went to a grammar school and dropped out of school when he was thirteen or fourteen because his family couldn't afford the tuition.He left here for London at the age of twenty-two. It is likely that he escaped. The reason is said to be poaching someone's deer. Of course, this is an uncertain legend.After arriving in London, people in his hometown heard that he watched horses for the audience in front of a theater, and later he became a handyman and actor in the theater step by step.He would come back once a year. Later, the economic situation gradually improved, and he also purchased real estate and real estate in his hometown, and spent the last few years in his hometown.When he died at the age of fifty-two, he did not attract much attention. There is a local custom of sending mourning poems, but it seems that no one wrote mourning poems for him at that time.He left a will, told some trifles, and made no mention of his own writings.Even his son-in-law Hall, who is a doctor, did not mention in his diary that his father-in-law could write scripts.

These circumstances raise a series of questions. First of all, why is there a lack of awareness of his exploits in his hometown?This situation is not surprising to some literati who have been away from their hometown for too long and too far away, but the town is not too far from London, and Shakespeare comes back almost every year, and he returns to live in his hometown in his later years. How could he be so numb? Secondly, and most fundamentally, how did a person who received only a very limited elementary education in a township become one of the few great writers in human history?He was only thirteen or fourteen years old when he dropped out of school, and he spent the next eight or nine years earning a living in this small town. How could he make up for his serious lack of culture?It would be fine if he was just a literary giant who expressed his subjective feelings, but everyone knows that Shakespeare is knowledgeable and ignorant, not only leisurely in and out of history, politics, law, geography and other subjects, but also familiar with the life of the court and nobles. Is this what this small town can give him?

Related to this, there are quite a few trivial question marks.For example, in Shakespeare’s will kept by the town, several signatures were ghostwritten by others, and the spelling was inconsistent. This may be explained as the cause of illness, but on some other registration documents, his signature does not seem to be his own handwriting .These practices are very similar to the thousands of illiterate people at that time.How can it be imagined that this person who refused to sign his name not only wrote more than 30 brilliant masterpieces that can be called world classics, but also wonderfully used more than 20,000 English words, which is the most abundant vocabulary in history. One of the writers!These questions finally make people doubt that the Shakespeare known to the world is really the one who walked out of this small town?Such doubts began to be published intensively in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the cultural world was like an earthquake.Skeptics do not doubt the existence of Shakespeare who walked out of this small town. They only doubt that a highly educated, scholarly and upper-class person borrowed this person's name as a pseudonym for publishing his plays.

In this way, the author who hides behind his pseudonym is the real cultural giant.Since a great cultural figure will always reveal light in many ways, he should also be an important figure in London at that time.So, who is he? The skeptics, according to their cultural logic, tested several people individually. Some say it was Bacon who entered Cambridge University at the age of twelve and later became a great philosopher; some say it was the Earl of Oxford; have a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge; some people even more boldly assert that the real author is Queen Elizabeth, because only she can experience the profound state of mind of those court tragedies, and has such rich knowledge and vocabulary; along this line of thought, some people think , some famous nobles around the queen may have participated in the creation of these scripts.

Anyone with a discerning eye can clearly see that the skeptics have chosen different objects, but the reasons hidden behind them are surprisingly uniform, that is, great writers can only come from universities, and if there are exceptions, unless they are queens and nobles. Their textual research articles are very long, and they also have a lot of annotations and citations, which fully meet the academic specifications of the university.It's a pity that, year after year, many people are attracted by them, but few people are persuaded by them.Shakespeare plays everywhere, and no audience would think that buying a ticket to see the genius of the philosopher Sir Bacon or Queen Elizabeth this evening.

Of the list they drew up, there was only one Marlowe who really knew how to write, because he was indeed an outstanding playwright himself, although skeptics valued his Cambridge degree.As a result, over time, the skeptic with a grain of salt abandons the other and clings to him alone.Chacha Marlowe may have participated in the intelligence work of the British government at that time, and was assassinated in a hotel near London at the age of 29, so there was a man named Calvin Hoffman in the 1950s. The Americans put forward an idea: Maybe it was not Marlowe who was assassinated that day. The intelligence agency played a trick. The real Marlowe had fled to the European continent and kept his anonymity. After writing the script, he sent it back to England under Shakespeare’s pseudonym. The publication also happened not long after Marlowe was assassinated.

This idea sounds good as the outline of a novel, but it has an obvious Hollywood nature, that is, it only seeks strange and dangerous transitions, and does not ask about the loopholes left.For example: Marlowe wanted to remain anonymous, so why didn't he just choose a pseudonym, instead of looking for the name of a real colleague?If the real Shakespeare couldn't write such a play, how could a large number of his colleagues in the troupe fail to see the flaw and then spread it, causing Marlowe's insecurity?Also, by the time the great creative project, which lasted for more than twenty years, was completed, the world and people had changed drastically, and Queen Elizabeth had already passed away. At least the reasons for Marlowe's anonymity should have been relaxed, and he and other insiders would not be unaware The weight of this project, why is there no bit of truth revealed, or a few words left to inform future generations?

In fact, according to academic logic, there are two facts that are sufficient to refute those skeptics: one is that Shakespeare’s plays were written in a hurry for performances in the troupe, and the two actors in the same troupe were collected later, and Shakespeare himself was also in the troupe. Among them, the entire creative behavior is in a transparent state of group interaction, and there is no convenience for individual scholars to cheat when writing; second, Shakespeare’s contemporary colleague and playwright Ben Jonson wrote for the complete works of Shakespeare collected by the two actors. offer poems.

So, since Shakespeare who came out of the small town did not have an impostor, why did some of the problems raised earlier in this article arise?I think this has something to do with the general social mentality caused by the powerful aristocratic rule in Britain at that time.The royal family and aristocrats can appreciate dramas, but they cannot respect the people in the troupe. They cannot imagine that these actors can not only act, but also completely create such artistic masterpieces. Of course Shakespeare understands the injustice of the environment, he occasionally confides and is ridiculed, so he has nothing to say.Today's readers are already familiar with Shakespeare's inner world, so they can fully understand why he has nothing to say in that environment, and can also guess why he returned to the small town in his prime. It can be imagined that Shakespeare returned to the small town with a very strange mentality.All the grievances I have in London are related to being born in such a small town. It seems that only the small town can understand me the most. There is nothing to say.A mind that has soared through the spiritual universe can hardly find a partner to communicate with, including in its own hometown.So he didn't embarrass his hometown anymore, and only let the villagers know him in the most common sense, and couldn't bear to make them flustered by the slightly difficult part of himself.It is inevitable that he is already very rural, but he is very alienated from the villagers, because the villagers must support people who are basically on the same level as them but slightly higher than them. Shakespeare has no ability to dress himself up like this, so It was quickly forgotten by them. The loneliness of a great man is never more inevitable or more complete than this. Therefore, it is not difficult for anyone who loves Shakespeare today to understand that in such a small town, he dictated his last will with a few pairs of blank eyes, without mentioning a single word of his own works. I think that when a writer is dying, his works will generally appear in three levels: the first level is that the works have already been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and people just chant his name without words; Let everyone remember it again, a sigh; the final level is that the work enters the will, and the children and property can inherit it together. Of course, these levels will also interleave with each other. Shakespeare goes beyond even the first degree.He knows that drama performance is a process art, and he has no extravagant hope that any one will be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and he only regards them as passing clouds.For those scripts, like all drama practitioners who only look at the life of dramas from performances, although he cherishes them in his heart, he has never imagined their historical fate.What's more, at that time, the society had not yet established copyright awareness for the script behind the performance. We therefore understand further that he shook his head slightly when asked to sign the recorded will. Shakespeare, he knew the meaning of the coherent letters, so he didn't want to write it for the last time on this page that didn't express his soul. This looks really like an illiterate. Same town, same illiteracy, he's back to the state of his birth. He felt that the ending was very dramatic, and it was time to call the curtain call. But in my imagination, he would open his eyes again and ask the relatives around him what date it is today. The answer is: April 23rd. He smiled, and then closed his eyes, never to open them again. This ending is even better than I thought.Because it's his birthday.He came to this world on April 23rd, and left on April 23rd, not a day away.It's a really strange day. Perhaps, this is God's special favor to a dramatist, and God also learned to write screenplays. three A word also needs to be said about the skeptics. I walked the streets of Stratford and thought, how can the town be blamed for its indifference on Shakespeare's deathbed?After all, it defied all skeptics with its hundreds of years of buzz, bustle, and hospitality. Doubt is always allowed, but counter-doubt should also be allowed.We've seen the trajectory of the skeptic's heart, so we might as well be skeptical about them. Today, there is no need to analyze their absurd mentality of hating the poor and loving the rich, and insisting that the queen, jazz, and nobles are the real creators of Shakespeare's plays. My biggest doubt is: have they Qualifications to study and talk about Shakespeare? Qualifications, which is their basic tool for auditing Shakespeare.We are now reviewing them in turn using the same vocabulary, but the content contained in it is completely different.No status, no status, no academic qualifications, just a minimum qualification: publish articles about Shakespeare, at least have a little understanding of artistic creation. When they think that it is impossible to become Shakespeare without going to Oxford and Cambridge University, I am sure that they do not understand artistic creation; when they always only focus on Shakespeare’s dabbling in the field of knowledge, completely ignoring his construction in the field of beauty, I believe I'm sure they don't understand artistic creation; when they don't know all kinds of so-called learning, most normal people can catch up if they spend enough time, the only thing they can't catch up is creative inspiration, I'm sure they don't understand artistic creation; when they can't imagine A genius who is in the process of creation has unlimited life potential, and a wise man who is sensitive can comprehend the vast time and space from his limited life experience. I am sure that they do not understand artistic creation. Not knowing art creation is not a big problem. There are many other things to do in the world, but they want to study Shakespeare and fundamentally deny his existence, so their qualifications cannot but be questioned. However, they have a qualification in name, for example, university teachers, so it is easy to confuse the public. The university is a very peculiar social construction. As far as its backbone is concerned, it has undoubtedly played a huge role in the development of human culture, but it also has some annoying sides.For example, on the edge of the aristocratic ruling structure, it derives another social class, which makes it possible for many people with weak creative abilities to borrow the name of semi-official and semi-academic, relying on the strength of the group, gaining the light of famous teachers, and obtain a kind of social class. identified.Among them, those who are more reluctant to obtain this recognition are always more likely to put on a scholarly posture, point fingers, and finally even think they know how to create art, and start to deny Shakespeare.And now even the former lovers of Shakespeare are confused, because behind Shakespeare there is nothing behind them, but behind these people there is a university. In this case, I think the most important thing is to pull these people away from the illusory university background, and then review their qualifications individually, staring at them and asking: Who are you? Otherwise, Shakespeare is in the light and they are in the dark; Shakespeare’s origin is clear, but their origin is unclear; Shakespeare has works, so he has a target to attack, and if they don’t have works, they have no target to attack; Shakespeare is trying his best to move the people , They are loudly swaying public opinion. In short, this is an unbalanced confrontation, a masked sneak attack. After questioning, we can announce: Stop dividing into believers and skeptics on the issue of the attribution of Shakespeare's works. The skeptics are not a faction, because they don't understand artistic creation at all, so they are not qualified to talk about Shakespeare publicly. This way of thinking about the qualifications of critics made me suddenly enlightened.Because to this day, farces of unilateral masked and sneak attacks still occur everywhere.I heard a European economist tell me two days ago that some developed countries in the world are about to stipulate that stock critics in public media must announce their property and shareholding status.Although I have never had anything to do with stocks, I immediately understood that there was no other way to do this.Because according to my personal experience, I have seen at least two groups of real criminals cover their faces and expose and denounce victims in the media.It seems that the past and the present are the same, and only by revealing the true face of the critics, and ending the state of only hearing their voices but not seeing them, can criticism start to become a little meaningful. In fact, even the sound you smell has two layers.The voice at the explicit level is often very academic and righteous, while the voice at the implicit level is hoarse and anxious, which is very unpleasant.Sometimes, if you are not careful, the hidden layer will be highlighted, which is surprising. For all this, even in his lifetime, Shakespeare also experienced it. For example, in 1592, when Shakespeare was twenty-eight years old, there was an article circulated in the London theater circles, in which there was a passage that was very specific, but the tone was a bit harsh: There was an upstart crow, using our Decorate yourself with feathers, use an actor's skin to wrap his tiger and wolf heart.He writes some pompous blank verse and thinks he's on par with the best writers among you, he's a handyman through and through, and has the audacity to think he's the only one in the country who can shake the stage. This article is signed, and the author is Robert Green, known as a university wit.At that time, he had a high status in London's cultural circles. When he found that Shakespeare suddenly appeared and was very popular, he felt that his status was threatened.It would have been good to play with cultural and academic voices to calm down a town, but Shakespeare's first few plays were "Henry VI", "Richard III", and "Titus Andronicus". The historical meaning is profound, completely depriving the critics of the possibility of being condescending from the academic culture, so this Green became angry and expressed his inner jealousy all at once.In fact, this is also the hidden voice of many gentle skeptics later. This article was compiled into his anthology after Green's death, so that later generations can see it, so that later generations can know the real voice around Shakespeare when he was alive.It can be inferred that more real voices are worse than this article. I really don't know how Shakespeare created masterpieces and created greatness in such an environment.I heard that he sometimes fought with others in a beer hall, so I thought, I couldn't bear it. The master's situation, even after four hundred years, still makes people feel distressed. Four In Europe at that time, there was another person who was more distressed than Shakespeare, and that was Spain's Cervantes, the author of "Don Quixote". He couldn't bear to say a few words about his life. He only went to middle school and had no money to go to college. He joined the army at the age of twenty-three, and his left hand was disabled in a naval battle the following year.He dragged his disabled body and was still serving in the army. Unexpectedly, he was kidnapped by pirates four years later, and was tortured by pirates for five full years because he could not pay the ransom.After breaking away from pirates, he began to write. Later, because his father died and his family was poor, he applied to work in the army again as a military supply, and was framed and imprisoned.After being released from prison, he served as a tax collector, and was imprisoned for the second time. After being released from prison, he began to write "Don Quixote".But in the year when this book was published, someone was stabbed in front of his house. He was imprisoned for the third time due to inexplicable suspicion, and he appeared in court again for his daughter's dowry. In short, this crippled cultural giant spent a long time in pirate dens and prisons, and his fate was too bitter. "Don Quixote" had been published, and caused a great sensation.However, neither the local officials nor the judges, knowing his literary talent, were unwilling to use a bit of conscience to seriously examine the disaster he suffered and give him a little bit of fairness. At that time, Spain was different from England. Cervantes, who had only studied in middle school, was not tried by a group of university talents like Shakespeare. He was judged by a real court.However, it was these real courts that reminded him of the pirates who had kidnapped him for five years, and they tried him for nothing. When the trials of the pirates and the trials of the courts were combined to form the course of his life, he couldn't help shaking his head and smiling wryly. I can't think of any writer in the world who has suffered more than Cervantes for a while.He cannot accuse, because every suffering comes from a different direction, which side does he accuse? So Cervantes set out to smelt misery.It is not a great skill for a writer to spit out as much suffering as he swallows, and in fact he indulges the suffering, allowing it to come in and out unscathed.Cervantes is just the opposite. He understands the heart of suffering in endless encounters, so he neither reveres nor curses it, but stands above its head, looks down at its ins and outs, and then asks himself. Finally, his arrival is the departure of another character, Don Quixote on a scrawny horse and holding a spear.This was cast by Cervantes with his own suffering, which proves that he has completely subdued suffering and obtained an anthropological reading. When Don Quixote started, the world burst into laughter. Thus, Cervantes also interpreted comics and fables at the highest level. Some time ago, I saw the monumental statue of Cervantes in Madrid. In front of the statue is the equestrian statue of Don Quixote, followed by Sancho.The capital of a dignified country commemorates him with a group of sculptures in the city center, and this memorial square is called the Plaza of Spain after the name of the country. I think it has surpassed Shakespeare in terms of specifications.It is understandable that this land washes away the ignorance of the past with grand pride.But it is a pity that the statues of Don Quixote and Sancho are too realistic, like using oil painting to describe a cartoon of genius, which has become a failure.German esthetician Lessing once discussed in Laocoon that it is a difficult re-creation to convert epic poetry into sculpture, but it is a pity that there has always been a lack of theorists of Lessing's level in Spain. This group of sculptures on the Plaza de España, Cervantes is white, Don Quixote and Sancho are black.The white Cervantes would stare at the pair of dark and clumsy babies in front of him every day and would laugh secretly. How can you wander far away with your appearance, turning suffering into a fable? In his later years, Cervantes saw the second volume of "Don Quixote" faked by others, so he hurriedly put on his clothes to fight against cultural thieves, and the way was to catch up with the second volume of the photo.True, the year after the second volume was published, he died of edema. Saying that Shakespeare is a dummy and giving Cervantes a fake book seems to have the same meaning in different places: both want to deny their real existence.They too covet their surroundings, they disturb their surroundings too much. More than 200 years later, the German poet Heine pointed out that Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Goethe had become a triumvirate, reaching their peaks in narrative, drama, and lyric creation. In Heine's eyes, only these three heads rule, only these three peaks.But Goethe was born too late, and there are only two sides standing side by side. They are both in Europe, but separated by the sea. At that time, the two countries were still facing each other. As I have said before, it seems that by God's arrangement, the dramatist Shakespeare died dramatically on his own birthday, making April 23rd a strange day.Unexpectedly, there are even more strange things. It seems that it is God, and it can only be God. He thinks that the two peaks cannot be left alone, and he actually arranges the death of Cervantes on the same day!Then, April 23, 1616, became even more strange. At that time, neither Stratford in England nor Madrid in Spain were too surprised by their deaths.It will be many years before mankind will feel a cultural landslide, but that is already an aftershock.When the real collapse happened, the streets were ordinary, pedestrians were in a hurry, the wind was light and the clouds were calm, and the spring was fading. five At that time, there was also a cultural master standing in the East, that is Tang Xianzu of China. In the early twentieth century, a Japanese scholar named Masako Aoki compared Tang Xianzu with Shakespeare for the first time. He was glad that both Eastern and Western drama poets were active in the world at the same time, but what surprised him was that in the year following Shakespeare’s death, Tang Xianzu He also died, and he chased him very closely. However, Mr. Aoki Masaji miscalculated the Chinese calendar.Not the following year, but the same year.Tang Xianzu also died in 1616, less than a hundred days after Shakespeare died. After all, China and Europe are far away, and it will take time to transmit information even in the dark.If we imagine that a pair of mysterious giant hands made Shakespeare and Cervantes leave the world on the same day, then Tang Xianzu from the East left a hundred days later, which can be regarded as the same time. How neatly they walked together, and how hurriedly they walked. Culture, at its highest level, is by no means a turbulent river that lasts all year round, but a world-shattering shock and a sudden stop.The most beautiful movement will not be muddled. With a decisive gesture of the mysterious conductor, the keys stop and the strings are silent, and everything is silent. Only at this time, people stop making noise, start to remember, regret, commemorate and look forward to. In 1616, human beings were terrified.