This essay explores Shakespeare’s relationship to the intellectual history of equivocation in sixteenth and seventeenth-century rhetoric and dialectic. It demonstrates that ‘equivocation’, far from denoting only a Jesuitical practice of deception, had a long and complex history intrinsically linked to theories of interpretation. Thus, the essay challenges the view that Macbeth’s apparent obsession with equivocation can be attributed exclusively to the Gunpowder Plot. The widely presumed influence of the conspirators’ trials on the play, based largely on verbal parallels with sermons, speeches and treatises, sidelines a fundamental sixteenth-century discourse about epistemology. The essay offers a historicized understanding of equivocation to demonstrate that the concept had permeated early modern culture more deeply and earlier than usually acknowledged. It provides a comparative analysis of Shakespeare’s use of the word ‘equivocation’ in Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well, Othello and Macbeth. Reading Macbeth alongside pre-Gunpowder Plot plays (The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure), and the rhetorical and dialectical tradition, reveals a culture that was deeply disconcerted by what was perceived as the inherent instability of meaning. The essay argues that the theological-political controversy about equivocation was a debate about language and interpretation in which Shakespeare’s characters had participated before 1605.

中文翻译：

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波特与耶稣会士：麦克白与被遗忘的模棱两可的历史☆

本文探讨了莎士比亚与 16 世纪和 17 世纪修辞学和辩证法中模棱两可的思想史的关系。它表明，“模棱两可”远非仅指耶稣会士的欺骗行为，其悠久而复杂的历史与解释理论有着内在的联系。因此，这篇文章挑战了麦克白对模棱两可的明显痴迷可以完全归因于火药阴谋。人们普遍认为，阴谋者的审判对戏剧的影响，主要基于与布道、演讲和论文的口头相似性，使 16 世纪关于认识论的基本话语搁置一边。这篇文章提供了对模棱两可的历史化理解，以证明这一概念比通常承认的更深入、更早地渗透到早期现代文化中。它提供了莎士比亚的使用单词“含糊”的比较分析哈姆雷特，所有的好就一切都好，奥赛罗和麦克白。阅读麦克白与前火药情节剧（威尼斯商人, Measure for Measure )，以及修辞和辩证的传统，揭示了一种文化，这种文化对被视为意义内在不稳定性的东西深感不安。这篇文章认为，关于模棱两可的神学政治争论是一场关于语言和解释的争论，莎士比亚的人物在 1605 年之前就参与其中。