英语访谈对话 528 Shakespeare

 　　Todd: Eucharia, you are into drama so I thought we would talk about Shakespeare.

　　Eucharia: Cool!

　　Todd: First of all, who is Shakespeare?

　　Eucharia: Well, Shakespeare is one of the most famous playwrights¹ of the world. He was born in 1564 in Stratford on Avon in England which is a really pretty town and he opened the Globe theatre in London I think at some stage but the main thing why Shakespeare is so famous… he had a really short life. Back in those days to make it to 40 was considered old age but in his relatively² short life he produced an enormous body of work. He produced historical plays, tragedies, comedies, poetry, sonnets… So he was an extremely prolific³ writer and I think the reason that he’s so famous even today is because the themes he chose for most of his work were universal. They’re themes that touch us whether we speak English, whether we speak Spanish or Russian, whether we’re in the 21st century or in the 16th century. They’re themes that are eternal and they concern humanity, and have concerned humanity for such a long time.

　　Todd: How much of the English has changed since the original Shakespeare to the Shakespeare we have today, I mean the English we have today?

　　Eucharia: Well if Shakespeare suddenly appeared in the 21st century he would be almost illiterate⁴ because back in those days English had a vocabulary of about 150,000 words, whereas now the vocabulary of English is one of the highest in the world. I think 300,000 now, probably more, so Shakespeare wouldn’t be able to make himself understood if he came back today, so in a way the vocabulary he’s using is really easy. But of course English has changed from that era from middle English until contemporary, English keeps changing even if you talk to your grandparents, well not just English, all languages change and develop over time so even if you talk to your grandparents they’re going to use a slightly different variety of the language you’re speaking.

　　Todd: But wait a minute. You’re saying that his English is easy? When I read it it doesn’t seem easy, it seems pretty tough!

　　Eucharia: Well that’s because his English was used in a different way. So some words and some grammatical structures are no longer in English, they’ve fallen out of usage except when we read stuff like Shakespeare and then for us it seems almost like a foreign language because we don’t have these grammatical structures any more and we don’t use English in this way anymore.

　　Todd: Ok thanks.

1 playwrights   

n.剧作家( playwright的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• We're studying dramatic texts by sixteenth century playwrights. 我们正在研究16 世纪戏剧作家的戏剧文本。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Hung-chien asked who the playwrights were. 鸿渐问谁写的剧本。 来自汉英文学 - 围城

2 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

3 prolific   

adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的

参考例句：

• She is a prolific writer of novels and short stories.她是一位多产的作家，写了很多小说和短篇故事。
• The last few pages of the document are prolific of mistakes.这个文件的最后几页错误很多。

4 illiterate   

adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲

参考例句：

• There are still many illiterate people in our country.在我国还有许多文盲。
• I was an illiterate in the old society,but now I can read.我这个旧社会的文盲，今天也认字了。