For the last fifteen years or so, I have been teaching a university course at Lund University, Sweden, which combines the academic study of one of Shakespeare's plays (through lectures, the submission of essays, and so on), with a more practical approach: the students are cast in, rehearse (with me as their director), and finally perform a slightly abridged version of the play, in English, in full period costume, before an audience. The performance constitutes the students' "oral exam" although the grading is based on their written work. This hands-on approach is engrossing, exhausting, and enjoyable in equal measure, and surprisingly often it yields substantial food for thought. As anyone who works on Shakespeare from a practical angle knows, seeing a play through fresh young eyes almost invariably proves to be a way of discovering brave new worlds within it. Recently, after two productions of The Winter's Tale--surely the saddest of Shakespeare's comedies--I felt that the logical next step had to be exploring Romeo and Juliet, the funniest and most farcical of his tragedies. Not that there is anything essentially new or original in regarding Romeo and Juliet as a play that thinks it is a comedy, of course; it is an idea that has been exploited by many directors and thoroughly analyzed by academics. But as my students studied, rehearsed, and ultimately performed Romeo and Juliet (or Four Funerals and a Wedding as it was occasionally referred to in the group), the comedy element spontaneously came to be a core part of our stage work, and on the whole, this approach originated with them (although I was very willing to go along with it). Thus, in our work, one of the main concerns somehow became how to confound audience expectations and avoid playing the tragedy before it actually happens, and how to achieve an encounter with it as unprepared, perhaps, as that of a sixteenth-century penny-stinkard sneaking into the playhouse late and missing the Prologue. As a consequence, we wanted our Verona to be a comfortably ordinary place for as long as possible, and for as many sublunary citizens as possible--a place full of people busy playing the leads in their own lives rather than attendant lords in someone else's, intent on their own joys and cares, most of the time treating the Montague/Capulet brawls as so much white noise. In the rehearsals, discussions, and analyses, we repeatedly found ourselves exploring the boundary between comedy and tragedy, our question being this: exactly when, and how, are we allowed, or even encouraged, to laugh at tragedy and death in Shakespeare's plays--and are we able to laugh at dead bodies onstage today? I have no definite answers to offer, only the solutions we found for ourselves in our staging; and in this paper, I want to discuss them further. Most people--be they scholars, spectators, or those involved in performance--would probably agree that the transition from comedy to tragedy happens in 3.1: the bewildering reversal comes with the almost accidental, almost incidental, stabbing of Mercutio. (1) This is where Mercutio finally (in Robert Maslen's words) attests to "the proximity between rapier wit and violence with rapiers." (2) Following Coppelia Kahn, Maslen sees the tragedy as a result of the clash between violent masculinity and heterosexual desire and claims that "the lightness with which he undertakes the quarrel stakes Mercutio's claim to manhood." (3) There is no question that there is plenty of testosterone in this scene, of course, but to me, it seems that the main reason that Mercutio undertakes the quarrel so lightly is that it is at that point a light, almost playful fight, reminiscent of the wrestling and biting of young puppies, which nobody, least of all Mercutio, expects will have a fatal outcome--and that this is also what makes the reversal so shocking. Even Romeo, who tries to stop the fight, does so invoking not physical danger but the law ("the Prince expressly hath/Forbid this bandying in Verona streets"). …

中文翻译：

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将乐趣带回葬礼：在罗密欧与朱丽叶中处理/玩弄死亡

在过去的十五年左右的时间里，我一直在瑞典隆德大学教授一门大学课程，该课程将莎士比亚一部戏剧的学术研究（通过讲座、提交论文等）与更实用的方法相结合：学生们被选上，排练（我是他们的导演），最后在观众面前用英语，穿着古装，表演了一个略有删节的剧本。表演构成了学生的“口试”，尽管评分是基于他们的书面作业。这种动手实践的方法在同等程度上引人入胜、令人精疲力竭和令人愉快，而且令人惊讶的是，它经常会产生大量的思考。任何从实际角度研究莎士比亚的人都知道，以年轻的眼光观看戏剧几乎总是被证明是在其中发现勇敢的新世界的一种方式。最近，在《冬天的故事》（无疑是莎士比亚喜剧中最悲伤的一部）的两部作品之后，我觉得合乎逻辑的下一步必须是探索罗密欧与朱丽叶，这是他的悲剧中最有趣、最滑稽的一部。当然，并不是说将罗密欧与朱丽叶视为一部自认为是喜剧的戏剧有什么本质上的新意或原创性；这是一个被许多导演利用并被学术界彻底分析的想法。但是当我的学生学习、排练并最终表演《罗密欧与朱丽叶》（或乐队中偶尔提到的四个葬礼和一个婚礼）时，喜剧元素自发地成为我们舞台工作的核心部分，并在所有的，这种方法起源于他们（虽然我非常愿意接受它）。因此，在我们的作品中，主要关注点之一不知何故变成了如何混淆观众的期望并避免在悲剧真正发生之前播放它，以及如何实现与它的相遇，就像没有准备好，也许，就像 16 世纪的一分钱——臭蛋很晚才偷偷溜进剧场，错过了序幕。因此，我们希望我们的维罗纳在尽可能长的时间内成为一个舒适的普通地方，并为尽可能多的地下公民提供服务——一个到处都是忙于在自己生活中扮演主角的地方，而不是在别人的生活中随从领主的地方。 ，专注于自己的快乐和关心，大部分时间将蒙太古/凯普莱特的争吵视为白噪音。在排练、讨论和分析中，我们反复发现自己在探索喜剧与悲剧之间的界限，我们的问题是：究竟何时、如何、甚至允许我们在莎士比亚戏剧中嘲笑悲剧和死亡——我们是否能够嘲笑死亡？今天在舞台上的尸体？我没有明确的答案可以提供，只有我们在分期中为自己找到的解决方案；在本文中，我想进一步讨论它们。大多数人——无论是学者、观众还是参与表演的人——可能都同意从喜剧到悲剧的转变发生在 3.1 中：令人困惑的逆转伴随着几乎是偶然的、几乎是偶然的 Mercutio 刺伤。(1) 这就是 Mercutio 最终（用罗伯特·马斯伦的话）证明“剑拔弩张的智慧和对剑拔弩张的暴力之间的接近”的地方。(2) 跟随 Coppelia Kahn，马斯伦认为这场悲剧是暴力男子气概与异性恋欲望之间冲突的结果，并声称“他在争吵中的轻率与梅尔库蒂奥的男子气概有关。” (3) 毫无疑问，这个场景中有大量的睾丸激素，当然，但在我看来，Mercutio 如此轻率地进行争吵的主要原因似乎是在这一点上，这是一场轻松的，几乎是俏皮的战斗，让人想起幼犬的摔跤和咬伤，没有人，尤其是 Mercutio，没有人期望会有致命的结果——这也是让逆转如此令人震惊的原因。即使是试图阻止战斗的罗密欧，也不是援引了人身危险，而是援引了法律（“王子明确禁止/禁止在维罗纳街头进行这种活动”）。… 似乎默丘西奥如此轻率地进行争吵的主要原因是，在这一点上，这是一场轻松的，几乎是俏皮的战斗，让人想起幼犬的摔跤和咬伤，没有人，尤其是默丘西奥，没有人期望会有致命的结果——这也是逆转如此令人震惊的原因。即使是试图阻止战斗的罗密欧，也不是援引了人身危险，而是援引了法律（“王子明确禁止/禁止在维罗纳街头进行这种活动”）。… 似乎默丘西奥如此轻率地进行争吵的主要原因是，在这一点上，这是一场轻松的，几乎是俏皮的战斗，让人想起幼犬的摔跤和咬伤，没有人，尤其是默丘西奥，没有人期望会有致命的结果——这也是逆转如此令人震惊的原因。即使是试图阻止战斗的罗密欧，也不是援引了人身危险，而是援引了法律（“王子明确禁止/禁止在维罗纳街头进行这种活动”）。… 这样做不是援引人身危险，而是援引法律（“王子明确禁止/禁止在维罗纳街道上进行这种活动”）。… 这样做不是援引人身危险，而是援引法律（“王子明确禁止/禁止在维罗纳街道上进行这种活动”）。…