There is a theory that Shakespeare was an accountant. How else to explain the detailed use of bookkeeping metaphors in his writing? “We shall not spend a large expense of time/ Before we reckon with your several loves,” declares Malcolm in Macbeth, “And make us even with you.” The jailer in Cymbeline compares the hangman’s noose with an accountant reckoning the credits and debits of the condemned man’s life. And The Comedy of Errors refers to a debt as a “thousand marks”, a unit only used by book-keepers in Elizabethan England.
有一種理論認為莎士比亞是一名會計師。否則,如何解釋他在寫作中如此詳細地使用了會計隱喻呢?《麥克白》中,馬爾科姆宣稱:“在我們與你的幾個愛人結算之前,我們不會花費太多時間。”《辛白林》中,獄卒將絞刑繩與會計師計算被判者生命中的借貸進行了比較。而《錯中錯》將債務稱為“一千馬克”,這是伊麗莎白時代英國會計師才使用的單位。