ネットに落ちたシェイクスピア

Mark Brown “William Shakespeare's handwritten plea for refugees to go online” http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/15/william-shakespeare-handwritten-plea-for-refugees-online-sir-thomas-more-script-play-british-library-exhibition


大英図書館の新サイトDiscovering Literature: Shakespeare*1。その目玉はウィリアム・シェイクスピア*2の唯一現存する自筆の草稿。その内容はトマス・モアが難民(仏蘭西で迫害されたプロテスタント)への寛大な待遇を嘆願するというもので、ヨーロッパにおけるシリア難民問題が深刻化する昨今の状況にもレリヴァントである。


The original play, written in approximately 1600 about the life of Henry VIII’s councillor and lord chancellor, was not by Shakespeare and was not staged because of fears it might incite unrest.

Shakespeare was one of several writers brought in to rework the piece, and it is his contribution which remains the most remarkable.

He writes: “You’ll put down strangers,/ Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,/ And lead the majesty of law in lyam/ To slip him like a hound. Alas, alas! Say now the King/ As he is clement if th’offender mourn,/ Should so much come too short of your great trespass/ As but to banish you: whither would you go?/What country, by the nature of your error,/ Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders,/ To any German province, Spain or Portugal,/ Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England:/ Why, you must needs be strangers.”

また、

The powerful scene, featuring More challenging anti-immigration rioters in London, was written at a time when there were heightened tensions over the number of French Protestants (Huguenots) seeking asylum in the capital.

“It is a really stirring piece of rhetoric,” said the library’s curator, Zoe Wilcox. “At its heart it is really about empathy. More is calling on the crowds to empathise with the immigrants or strangers as they are called in the text. He is asking them to imagine what it would be like if they went to Europe, if they went to Spain or Portugal, they would then be strangers. He is pleading with them against what he calls their ‘mountainous inhumanity’

新サイトDiscovering Literature: Shakespeareのほかのコンテンツとしては、例えば、

Some of the earliest images of Native Americans brought back by the first European settlers.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s personal copy of The Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, which includes extensive annotations and his famous comments on Iago’s “motiveless malignity”.

The only surviving portrait of John Dee, the Elizabethan polymath thought to have inspired Shakespeare’s Prospero.

自分の過去のエントリーを調べたのだけれど、「シェイクスピア」と「シェークスピア」、非一貫的に混用している。

*1:http://www.bl.uk/shakespeare

*2:See also http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20050904 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20060426/1146020138 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20060630/1151699893 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20060711/1152589140 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20060724/1153759525 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20061106/1162754079 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20070524/1179985066 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20070905/1189016541 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20071019/1192774519 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20080131/1201781124 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20080211/1202716783 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20080423/1208961998 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20081226/1230261513 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090808/1249741839 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090921/1253537681 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20091109/1257705586 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20100219/1266510218 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20100315/1268629101 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20101228/1293511035 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110310/1299783619 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110526/1306387966 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110829/1314543718 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20111011/1318271473 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20120420/1334949213 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20130425/1366854456 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20131204/1386109987 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20130625/1372115074 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20140316/1394939032 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20141127/1417019111 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20150219/1424373123 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20150610/1433916539