重新檢視老牧羊人的「荒誕莊園」：威廉．莎士比亞之《冬天的故事》中的主人制、父權、家庭統治

Reexamining the Old Shepherd’s “Preposterous Estate”: Mastery, Paternity and Household Rule in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

本論文的目的是欲讓學術界首次持續關注威廉·莎士比亞(William Shakespeare)之《冬天的故事》中老牧羊人一角。因此，本論文呼應了近期的學術關注，重新檢視位於文化邊緣與 歷史上遭遺忘者的生活與經驗。藉由探索此鮮少討論的角色，我的論文將試圖填補莎士比亞研究領域的空白。我認為，任何想更了解《冬天的故事》的讀者僅會從探索此角色中獲益，因為此角色對於莎士比亞的 重述劇本有著重大影響；更重要的是詳細探討莎士比亞賦予此角色解決多面向父權制危機的 任務，這是此詹姆斯一世時期文本的核心。莎士比亞將此角色的「純樸」與貴族的「紳士風度」價值並列，我認為這安排最終為環球劇場近代早期的觀眾提供了一個令人景仰的人物。 本文首先考慮蒙特羅斯(Louis Adrian Montrose)對紳士風度文化中父權政治的批判；接著，針對皮埃爾·布迪厄(Pierre Bourdieu)所謂的「性情」，對此位八十歲的小主子進行社會學上 的解讀，進而延伸。目的是揭示老牧羊人如何成為一個表達觀眾焦慮與渴望的代言人物；而 這些觀眾的過去、現在以及將來的幸與不幸其實是大大地取決於他們自身父親、庇護者、貴族私人教師與主人的一念之間。 若與劇本中的其他主子/父親相比，牧羊人身處一個危機四伏，卻又能穩步發展的家庭。在這當中，他的默默表現既讓我們作好心理準備，同時又向我們解釋了為什麼珀迪塔的守護者被諷刺地高抬為「許多國王統治的路徑」。

 

The intention of this paper is to bring sustained scholarly attention, for the first time, to the character of the old Shepherd in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Hence, it shares a recent critical interest in re-examining the lives and experiences of the culturally marginal and the historically forgotten.

By exploring this rarely discussed figure, my paper will attempt fill to a void within the field of Shakespearean Studies. Any reader who wants to understand The Winter’s Tale better, I would argue, will benefit from exploring a character whose behavior shapes, in crucial ways, Shakespeare’s retelling of the play’s source material. It is particularly important to explore in detail the way in which Shakespeare entrusted this character with the role of resolving the multi-dimensional patriarchal crisis that sits at the heart of this Jacobean text. Shakespeare juxtaposes the ‘simplicity’ of this character to the courtly value of “gentility,” a choice that, I argue, ultimately offers the early-modern audience of the Globe a figure to look up to.

Analysis will first consider Louis Adrian Montrose’s critique of the patriarchal politics of gentility and then move on to expand it, by exercising a sociological reading of what Pierre Bourdieu would call the “disposition” of this octogenarian petit master. The purpose is to reveal how the Shepherd emerges as a figure that speaks to the anxieties and the aspirations of an audience whose past, current and future fortunes and misfortunes were highly dependent on the whims of their own fathers, patrons, tutors and masters. In contrast to the other masters/fathers in the play, the Shepherd’s unnoted performance as head of a precariously situated but steadily advancing household both prepares us for and explains to us why Perdita’s guardian is ironically celebrated as the “conduit of many king’s reigns.”