Like many people in this discombobulating era of Brexit, the addled young man on the boat isn’t sure exactly what the country known as England is, or if it even exists. “I mean I don’t believe in it!” he says. Trying to imagine that island nation, he finds that “I have no image.”

So speaks one of the title characters in David Leveaux’s 50th anniversary revival of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” Tom Stoppard’s retelling of “Hamlet” from the perspective of its most memorably forgettable figures, which shimmers like a mirage in the desert at the Old Vic Theater. It is, to be precise, Rosencrantz who theorizes about the nonexistence of England.

Sorry, I mean Guildenstern. No, no, it’s definitely Rosencrantz. I think. Everybody’s always confusing these two longtime friends of a certain temperamental Prince of Denmark, including Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern — I mean, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz — themselves.

就像這個令人困惑的英國脫歐時代的許多人一樣，船上這位迷惘的年輕人並不確定這個稱為英格蘭的國家究竟是什麼，甚至是否存在。他說：「我的意思是，我不相信它！」試著想像那個島國，他發現，「我沒有畫面」。

這是「羅森克蘭茲與吉爾登司騰已死」劇中的同名角色之一在說話，導演大衛．拉沃在此劇推出50周年之際把它重新搬上舞台，劇作家湯姆．史達帕從劇中最令人難忘的小人物的角度，重述「哈姆雷特」故事，這齣劇在老維克劇場上演，就像沙漠裡閃爍的幻象。更精確的說，是羅森克蘭茲提出英國不存在的理論。

抱歉，我的意思是吉爾登司騰。不，不，肯定是羅森克蘭茲。我想。大家總是把有點喜怒無常的丹麥王子的這兩位老友搞混了，包括羅森克蘭茲和溫文儒雅的吉爾登司騰─我的意思是，吉爾登司騰和溫文儒雅的羅森克蘭茲─本人。

The theatergoers who have made Leveaux’s production a palpable hit are unlikely to be similarly befuddled, since Rosencrantz is portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe, who became world famous as the more proactive title character of the “Harry Potter” movies before he proved his stage chops. Radcliffe, happily teamed with Joshua McGuire as Guildenstern, may be disappearing most appropriately into the role of Rosencrantz the nonentity.

But fans are still mobbing the stage door, because they think they know who Radcliffe really is. Which would suggest they haven’t absorbed the lesson of Stoppard’s play.

讓拉沃的製作相當賣座的那些劇院觀眾不太可能搞混，因為羅森克蘭茲是由丹尼爾雷德克里夫飾演，他在證明他的舞台實力前，即以「哈利波特」系列電影中更積極活潑的同名角色而聞名於世。與飾演吉爾登司騰的約書亞麥圭爾愉快搭檔的雷德克里夫消失在羅森克蘭茲這小角色裡，也許最恰如其分。

然而影迷仍熱情追星，因為他們認為他們認得雷德克里夫。這意味他們還沒從史達帕的劇作中吸取到教訓。

At a time when cultural and political identity is in disruptive flux in Britain (and most of Europe, and that big place across the Atlantic), Stoppard’s opalescent uncertainty feels alarmingly on the nose. Past, present and future all look ominously cloudy as forecast by the young, precociously fatalistic Stoppard.

在英國（還有大部分的歐洲，以及大西洋彼岸的那一大片地方）的文化和政治認同正處於破壞性變動的時代，史達帕昭示的不確定貼切到令人驚訝。過去、現在和未來都顯得不祥而陰沉，一如年輕、早熟地宿命的史達帕所預言的。

This Czech-born dramatist, who turns (no!) 80 this summer, is now one of his adopted nation’s most eminent men of letters, the author of plays of intellectual and emotional gravitas like “The Invention of Love” and “The Coast of Utopia.” The two early works by him that happily overlapped this season in major London productions are often regarded as the merely playful jeux d’esprit of a giddy lad with an insatiable and compendious mind.

As Stoppard and the fans who have grown up with him edge closer to the void, these early contemplations of being and nothingness resonate with a new quiver.

這位在捷克出生的劇作家，今夏滿80歲（不！），是他旅居的國家現今最傑出的文學家之一，著有一些知性與感性的巨作，如「愛的發明」和「烏托邦海岸」。倫敦大製作本季愉快地同時搬演他的這兩部早期作品，往往被當成只是心智永難滿足且單純的輕浮少年好玩的詼諧之作。

史達帕，以及與他一起長大的劇迷一步步靠近虛無，這些早期對於存在和死亡的思考也產生了共鳴和新的悸動。

How fitting that the man often credited with saying “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” most likely did not invent the phrase.

Commonly attributed to Mark Twain, that quotation instead appears to be a descendant of a line published centuries ago by satirist Jonathan Swift. Variants emerged and mutated over time until a modern version of the saying was popularized by a Victorian-era preacher, according to Gregory F. Sullivan, a researcher who, like Twain, prefers a pseudonym.

說來真是貼切，被認為說了「當真相還在穿鞋時，謊言已走遍半個世界」這句話的人，大有可能並未發明這句話。

一般認為此語出自馬克吐溫，然而追溯這個引文的來由，卻似乎是諷刺作家強納森．史威夫特數百年前所出版作品中的一句話。葛雷戈利．Ｆ．蘇利文是位研究者，和馬克吐溫一樣喜歡使用化名，根據他的說法，隨著物換星移，不同版本相繼出現且一變再變，直到維多利亞時代，才由一名傳教士讓這句話的現代版成為廣為人知的格言。

Seven years ago, under the alias Garson O’Toole, Sullivan started Quote Investigator — a popular website where he traces the origins of well-known sayings. This month, also as O’Toole, he published “Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations,” a book in which he collected and updated many of the posts from his site and offers new theories on how misquotations form.

“When I started off, it was mysterious exactly where these misquotations were coming from, and it was interesting that sometimes you could find these clues that pointed to how they may have originated,” said Sullivan, a former teacher and researcher in the Johns Hopkins computer science department who now spends his time writing.

In the book, Sullivan offers 10 common “mechanisms” that he says lead to misquotation and incorrect attribution.

七年前，蘇利文化名賈森．歐圖爾創立了「引文調查員」這個受歡迎的網站，專門對一些眾所周知的格言追本溯源。本月，他同樣以歐圖爾之名出版了《海明威沒這麼說：一些熟悉引文的背後真相》一書。他在書中收集與更新許多來自他網站的貼文，並為誤引形成的原因提出了新的理論。

蘇利文說：「當我開始時，這些誤引究竟從何而來完全是個謎，有趣的是，有時候你能找到這些線索，指引你它們的可能來源。」蘇利文曾任約翰霍普金斯大學電腦科學系的教師和研究員，目前專事寫作。

書中，蘇利文提出他認為導致誤引和不正確掛名的10個常見「機制」。

Through one such process, which he labels “textual proximity,” a famous person mistakenly gets credit for a quotation merely by having their name or likeness published close to the words. In another, “ventriloquy,” a statement about an individual’s work is perceived to be so apt that it is eventually confused for their own words.

其中一個過程（機制）他名為「上下文鄰近」，一位知名人士誤被當作是一個引文的作者，其實只是因他們的名字或肖像在出版時位置靠近這些字詞而已。另個機制名為「腹語術」，則為與某人作品有關的陳述因被認為詮釋得淋漓盡致，以致最後與原作混為一談。

Both may explain how Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer, became associated with the saying: “Any idiot can face a crisis, it’s the day-to-day living that wears you out,” as outlined on Sullivan’s website and, now, in his book. In May 2013, Sullivan heard from a reader who, after a fruitless attempt to prove Chekhov’s authorship of those words, wanted help uncovering the true history of the quotation.

Sullivan accepted the challenge.

Google Books led him to “The Tradition of the Theatre,” a textbook published in 1971 and edited by Peter Bauland and William Ingram. Only snippets were available online, so he visited a university library to review the book in full.

這兩者可解釋，為何俄國作家安東．契訶夫會與這句話扯上關係：「任何白癡都能面對危機，讓你筋疲力盡的是日常生活。」蘇利文在他的網站上做了概述，現在也見於他的書中。2013年5月，蘇利文的一位讀者告訴他，他試圖證明這句話出自契訶夫卻徒勞無功，希望蘇利文助他一臂之力，揭開這個引文的真實歷史。

蘇利文接受了這項挑戰。

谷歌圖書帶蘇利文找到「戲劇的傳統」這本書，它是1971年出版的教科書，由彼得．波蘭德與威廉．英格拉姆合編。由於網路只有此書片段，於是他前往一所大學圖書館，翻查了此書完整原文。