[Stage] Enter Edmund the bastard, with a letter
[舞台] 爱德蒙这个私生子手持一封信走上台

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Thou, nature, art my goddess. To thy law
My services are bound.
自然啊，你是我的女神。对你的法则，我的服务是义不容辞。

Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother?
为什么我要忍受习俗的瘟疫，允许世俗的好奇心剥夺我因为我比哥哥晚出生了十二、四个月？

Why “bastard?” Wherefore “base?”
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true
As honest madam’s issue?
为何叫“私生子”？为何是“低贱”？当我的身材结实，我的心灵宽阔，我的外形堂堂正正如同贵妇人的亲生子一样？

Why brand they us
With “base,” with “baseness,” “bastardy,” “base,”
“base”—
为何要给我们贴上“下贱”、“卑微”、“非婚生”、“低贱”、“低”——

Who in the lusty stealth of nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth within a dull, stale, tirèd bed
Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops
Got ’tween a sleep and wake?
在大自然欲望的秘密激情中，大家的本质和强烈的特点比在单调、无聊、疲惫的床上造就一群傻瓜，那些在睡梦之间产生的，更为强烈。

Well then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate.—
好吧，合法的爱德加，我必须要得到你的土地。我们父亲对私生子爱德蒙的爱和对合法儿子的一样。

Fine word, “legitimate!”—
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top th’ legitimate.
多好听的词啊，“合法”！—好吧，我的合法兄弟，如果这封信有效，我的计谋成功，爱德蒙这个卑微王八蛋定会超越合法的你。

I grow, I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
我成长，我繁荣。现在，众神啊，为私生子站起来！

[Stage] Enter Gloucester. Edmund looks over his letter
[舞台] 格洛斯特进入。爱德蒙看过他的信

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
Kent banished thus? And France in choler parted?
And the king gone tonight, prescribed his power
Confined to exhibition?
肯特就这样被流放了？法国愤怒地分裂了？国王今晚就走，把他的权力限制只给了表面文章？

All this done
Upon the gad?—Edmund, how now? What news?
所有这些都是即兴的？—爱德蒙，怎么了？有什么消息？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
[pocketing the letter] So please your lordship, none.
[把信藏进口袋] 如果您的大人有所高兴，没有消息。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
你为什么这么急切地把那封信塞进口袋？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I know no news, my lord.
我不知道有什么消息，我的主。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
What paper were you reading?
你刚才在读什么纸条？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Nothing, my lord.
没有什么，我的主。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of it
into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such
need to hide itself.
没有？那急忙把它塞进口袋里有何需要？“没有”的质量并没那么需要隐藏。

Let’s see. Come, if it be nothing,
I shall not need spectacles.
让我看看。如果是空无一物，我不需要眼镜。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter from my
brother that I have not all o’er-read. And for so much
as I have perused, I find it not fit for your
o’erlooking.
先生，我请求您的宽恕。这是一封我兄弟的信，我还没有完全读过。而且对于我已经读过的那部分，我发现不适合您过目。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
Give me the letter, sir.
把信给我。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The
contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.
要么留着它要么给出去我都会触犯。信的内容，据我部分理解，是有些问题的。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
[taking the letter] Let’s see, let’s see.
[拿过信] 让我看看。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote this
but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
我希望为了我兄弟的辩解，他只是写这信来试验或考验我的德行。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
[reads]
“This policy and reverence of age makes the
world bitter to the best of our times, keeps our
fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I
begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression
of aged tyranny, who sways not as it hath power but as
it is suffered.
[读] “这种政策和对年长的敬畏使得我们最美好的时光变得苦涩，我们的财富被扣押直到我们年老不能再享受。我开始发现在老年的压迫下存在着愚蠢和虚弱的束缚，他们并不是以他们有权利施政，而是被允许如此。

Come to me, that of this I may speak
more. If our father would sleep till I waked him, you
should enjoy half his revenue forever, and live the
beloved of your brother,
Edgar.”
来找我，对此我们可以多谈。如果我们的父亲能睡到我叫醒他，你就能永远享有他一半的收入，并且成为你兄弟爱德加所爱。”

Hum, conspiracy? “’Sleep till I wake him, you should
enjoy half his revenue”—my son Edgar? Had he a hand to
write this, a heart and brain to breed it in? When came
this to you? Who brought it?
嗯，密谋？“睡到我叫醒他，你就能享有一半的收入”——我的儿子爱德加？他有手写这信，有心和脑策划这事吗？这信什么时候到你手上？谁给你的？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
It was not brought me, my lord. There’s the cunning of
it.
I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.
这信不是别人给我的，我的主。这就是其狡猾所在。我发现它被扔进了我房间的一个窗户。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
You know the character to be your brother’s?
你认得出是你兄弟的笔迹吗？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it
were his.
But in respect of that, I would fain think it were not.
如果事情是好的，我的主，我敢发誓那是他的笔迹。但考虑到那内容，我更愿意认为不是。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
It is his.
那是他的。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
It is his hand, my lord, but I hope his heart is not in
the contents.
那是他的笔迹，我的主，但我希望他的内心并不认同信的内容。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business?
他以前有没有对你提起过这件事？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to
be fit that, sons at perfect age and fathers declined,
the father should be as ward to the son, and the son
manage his revenue.
从未，我的主。但我经常听他坚持认为，儿子成熟，父亲衰老，父亲应该成为儿子的监护人，由儿子来管理财产。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter!
Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish
villain—worse than brutish!
哦，坏蛋，坏蛋！信里就是他的这些观点！可恶的坏蛋！非人的，被人憎恨的，比野兽还野兽的坏蛋——比野兽还要糟糕！

Go, sirrah, seek him. I’ll
apprehend him. Abominable villain! Where is he?
去找他，快去，那个卑鄙的恶棍！他在哪里？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to
suspend your indignation against my brother till you
can derive from him better testimony of his intent, you
shall run a certain course—
我的主人，我不太清楚。如果您能暂时抑制对我兄弟的愤怒，直到您从他那里得到更确凿的意图证明，那么您将走上一条确定的道路——

where if you violently
proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would
make a great gap in your own honor and shake in pieces
the heart of his obedience.
如果您在误解他的意图时对他采取强硬措施，那将损害您自己的荣誉，并动摇他对您的忠诚之心。

I dare pawn down my life for
him that he hath wrote this to feel my affection to
your honor and to no other pretense of danger.
我敢用我的生命担保，他写这封信只是为了测试我对您荣誉的感情，没有其他危险的意图。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
Think you so?
你这么认为吗？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
If your honor judge it meet, I will place you where you
shall hear us confer of this and by an auricular
assurance have your satisfaction—and that without any
further delay than this very evening.
如果您认为这样做合适，我可以安排您今晚就在我们商讨这事的地点潜听，亲自确认这一切，而不会有任何进一步的延误。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
He cannot be such a monster—
他不可能是那样的怪物——

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Nor is not, sure.
确实不是，肯定的。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves
him. Heaven and earth!
对他那么温柔而又全心全意爱他的父亲。天与地啊！

Edmund, seek him out, wind me
into him, I pray you. Frame the business after your own
wisdom. I would unstate myself to be in a due
resolution.
爱德蒙，去找他，将我卷入其中，我请求你。按照你的智慧来安排这件事。我愿意放下我的一切，只求一个确切的解决方案。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I will seek him, sir, presently, convey the business as
I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.
我会立刻去找他，先生，我会找到方法，并把所有的事情告诉您。

Gloucester（格洛斯特）
These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good
to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus
and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the
sequent effects.
最近太阳和月亮的日食和月食不会给我们带来好事。尽管自然的智慧可以这样也可以那样地解释，但自然仍然会感到接下来的后果像鞭子一样抽打着我们。

Love cools, friendship falls off,
brothers divide, in cities mutinies, in countries
discord, in palaces treason, and the bond cracked ’twixt
son and father. This villain of mine comes under the
prediction—there’s son against father.
爱情冷却，友谊破裂，兄弟纷争，在城市中是暴动，在乡村是纷争，在宫廷是叛逆，儿子与父亲之间的纽带破裂。我的这个坏蛋就符合这个预言——有儿子对抗父亲的情况。

The king falls
from bias of nature—there’s father against child. We
have seen the best of our time. Machinations,
hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow
us disquietly to our graves.
国王的天性出了偏差——有父亲对抗孩子的情况。我们看到了我们时代的最好的部分。阴谋、虚伪、背信弃义以及所有的破坏性混乱伴随着我们不安地走向坟墓。

Find out this villain,
Edmund. It shall lose thee nothing. Do it carefully.—And
the noble and true-hearted Kent banished, his offense
honesty! ‘Tis strange, strange.
找到这个坏蛋，爱德蒙。这对你不会有任何损失。小心翼翼地去做吧。——而又诚实又有心的肯特被放逐了，他的罪过就是诚实！这真是奇怪，太奇怪了。

[Stage] Exit Gloucester
[舞台] 格洛斯特退场

Edmund（爱德蒙）
This is the excellent foppery of the world that when we
are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own
behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the
moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by
necessity,
这世界真是太可笑了，当我们在命运上病恹恹的时候——往往是我们自己行为的厌倦——我们把我们的灾难归咎于太阳、月亮和星星，好像我们是天生的恶棍，

fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves,
thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance,
drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced
obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are
evil in by a divine thrusting-on.
天命下的傻瓜，小偷和叛徒，被星相的控制而成为酒鬼、骗子和通奸者，以及我们之所以为恶都是因为神的驱使。

An admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to
the charge of a star! My father compounded with my
mother under the dragon’s tail and my nativity was under
Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and
lecherous.
这真是人类好色本性的绝妙逃避，为自己怪异的行为找个星象来承担责任！我父亲和我母亲在龙尾下交合，而我的出生正位于北斗星下，那么接下来的结果就是我天性粗暴和好色。

Fut, I should have been that I am, had the
maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my
bastardizing. Edgar—
呸，无论最守规矩的星星是否照耀我，我应该成为现在的我。爱德加——

[Stage] Enter Edgar
[舞台] 爱德加进场

and pat on ’s cue he comes like the catastrophe of the
old comedy. My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh
like Tom o’ Bedlam.
正合他的出场时机，就像古代喜剧中的灾难性结局。我的台词就是恶棍般的忧郁，用汤姆·奥贝德勒姆的叹息声。

Oh, these eclipses do portend these
divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi.
哦，这些日食和月食真预示着这些分裂！Fa, sol, la, mi.

Edgar（爱德加）
How now, brother Edmund? What serious contemplation are
you in?
怎么了，爱德蒙兄弟？你在沉思什么？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this
other day, what should follow these eclipses.
我在思考，兄弟，我前几天读到的一则预言，这些日食之后会发生什么。

Edgar（爱德加）
Do you busy yourself about that?
你在忙这个？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed
unhappily — as of unnaturalness between the child and
the parent, death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient
amities, divisions in state,
我向你保证，他所写的影响的确会不幸地发生——如儿童与父母之间的不自然，死亡、饥荒、古老友谊的破裂，国家内的分裂，

menaces and maledictions
against king and nobles, needless diffidences,
banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial
breaches, and I know not what.
对国王和贵族的威胁与诅咒，不必要的猜疑，好友的流放，军队的溃散，婚礼的破裂，等等我不知道的什么。

Edgar（爱德加）
How long have you been a sectary astronomical?
你当了多久的天文迷了？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Come, come. When saw you my father last?
来吧，来吧。你上次什么时候见到父亲？

Edgar（爱德加）
Why, the night gone by.
哦，就在昨夜。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Spake you with him?
你和他说话了吗？

Edgar（爱德加）
Ay, two hours together.
是的，一起谈了两个小时。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in
him by word or countenance?
你们是在和气的情况下分开的吗？你发现他在言语或表情上对你有不满吗？

Edgar（爱德加）
None at all.
一点也没有。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him.
And at my entreaty forbear his presence till some little
time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure,
你再想想你可能在哪里得罪了他。请求你按照我的请求，避开他一阵子，直到他的怒气稍微冷静一些。

which
at this instant so rageth in him that with the mischief
of your person it would scarcely allay.
此时他的怒火猛烈到，哪怕是对你的人身安全也几乎无法抑制。

Edgar（爱德加）
Some villain hath done me wrong.
肯定有坏人对我做了坏事。

Edmund（爱德蒙）
That’s my fear. I pray you, have a continent
forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower. And
as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I
will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak.
这就是我的担心。请你保持冷静的忍耐，直到他的怒火减弱。正如我所说的，和我一起退到我的住所，我会适时带你去见我主人说话。

Pray ye, go.
There’s my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed.
请你走吧。这是我的钥匙。如果你要外出，记得带武器。

Edgar（爱德加）
Armed, brother?
带武器，兄弟？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
Brother, I advise you to the best. Go armed. I am no
honest man if there be any good meaning towards you.
兄弟，我是为你好。请你带武器。如果对你有任何善意，我就不是个诚实人了。

I
have told you what I have seen and heard—but faintly,
nothing like the image and horror of it. Pray you, away.
我告诉你了我所见所闻的——但那只是轻描淡写，没有什么像它的形象和恐怖。请你离开。

Edgar（爱德加）
Shall I hear from you anon?
我一会儿能听到你的消息吗？

Edmund（爱德蒙）
I do serve you in this business.
我在这件事上为你服务。

[Stage] Exit Edgar
[Stage] 爱德加退出

A credulous father, and a brother noble—
Whose nature is so far from doing harms
That he suspects none, on whose foolish honesty
My practices ride easy.
一个轻信的父亲，还有一个高尚的兄弟——他的本性远离做坏事，以至于他根本不怀疑任何人，在他的愚蠢诚实上，我的计谋轻松得逞。

I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit.
All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit.
我明白了这件事。让我，如果不是靠出生，就靠智慧得到土地。对我来说一切都适宜，只要我能让它变得适合。

[Stage] Exit
[Stage] 退出