A Kingdom for a Stage
これはヘンリー５世の冒頭の口上で、有名な一遍です。芝居が始まる前のイントロですが、これがきちんとこなせれば名優とされるもので、主役に順ずる俳優がつとめるのが普通です。
O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention:
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon!
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
For ‘tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass-for the which supply
Admit me Chorus to this history,
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play.
Act 3-1
これはフランス大軍との決戦で兵士に檄をとばすヘンリー５世の演説の冒頭。
Once more on to the breach, dear friends, once more!
Or close the wall up with our England dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
A modest stillness and humility,
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger!!
Hamlet
皆さんおなじみのハムレットの独白（英語ではasideといいます）。
To be or not to be, that is the question
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them.
これはハムレットがクローディアス国王の姦計でイングランドに送られる途中の独白。
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unus’d.
レアティーズと剣の試合をすることになったハムレットに親友のホレーシオが危険を感じ、止めるように説得したときの答えです。
There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ‘tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now.
If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness
Twelfth Night
男装の麗人ヴァイオラが主人のオルシーノ公爵の意をうけてオリヴィアに恋心を伝える場面、しかしこの句の真意はヴァイオラの公爵にたいする恋心の爆発です。
O, if I did love you in my master’s flame,
With such a suffering such a deadly life,
In your denial I find no sense,
I would not understand it.
(Why, what would you?)
Make me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house,
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Haloo your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out “Olivia!”
シェイクスピアの朗誦は体力が要ります。３週間の特訓を行いました。その結果、横隔膜を総動員した発声で外部の人が“何事か”と会場に駆けつけるありさま。私にとってはストレスが解消された感じでした。出席者の１人が「横田さんの朗誦を聴いて、はじめて言わんとしていることが分かりました」と言ってくれたのが嬉しかったです。