評論
打印
L：Hello again and welcome back to
A：Hello everybody.
L：Today we are going to launch a new segment.
A：Yes, we are going to be launching famous Brits under the microscope.
L：Famous Brits, so British people.
A：Absolutely!
L：我們新的板塊叫做“英國名人八卦堂”。
A：So in this segment, we are gonna be talking about all those famous people from British history. The good, the bad and the ugly and we are going to talk to you a little bit about their lives.
L：And the gossip.
A：The gossip, the interesting stories, all these Brits you are gonna be hearing about are well known household names in the UK.
L：So, a household name that means anyone from English speaking countries should know these names and their stories.
A：Yes, the same with Chinese, people from history as well, every Chinese person knows them, but someone who is learning the language, they probably won't know who these people are.
L：Or at least not that much.
A：Well, or not that much.
L：OK, sounds interesting. So the first episode of this segment, 八卦堂的第一期who are we going to talk about?
A：We are gonna be talking about the baddest English king of the all—— Henry VIII.
L：Henry VIII, 亨利八世。
A：Yes!
L：Henry VIII was one of the most famous kings in British history.
A：Yes, basically everybody knows the story of Henry VIII in the UK and he was a member of the Tudor Dynasty.
L：Tudor, 都鐸王朝。So when was that? Sorry my history really isn't that very great.
A：It was ran in 16th century. So Henry VIII was the king of England from 1509 to 1547.
L：So he was ruling the country for about forty years. Whenever you think of Henry VIII, you always remember some of the famous paintings, portraits of him.And he always looks rather rotund, really big, a really big guy, really fat man.
A：Oh, he was really big. He was very very tall. He was roughly around 1 meter 90.
L：190?
A：Yeah.
L：Especially back in the day, that would be really really tall.
A：Yes, that would be really tall. But you said about him being in fat, but that wasn't always the case, when he was young, he was very famous for being very handsome, very athletic, as well as being very clever.
L：所以也有小鮮肉的時候，So you said that he was very clever. I remember reading it somewhere, he spoke multiple languages?
A: Yes, he spoke about 4 languages and he's also a very good musician as well.
L：Very versatile.
A：But unfortunately that's not what he is famous for in England nowadays.
L：Isn't he famous for killing a lot of people including some of his wives?
A：Yes, we will talk about a little bit killing later on, but you mentioned his wives, do you know how many wives he actually had?
L：I believe it was six?
A：Yep! King Henry VIII had pretty much the most wives of any our kings.
L：Oh, by the way. This is the very different concept. Even as the king, he was only allowed to be married to one woman.
A：Yeah.
L：He was not having concubines or…
A：No, he had mistresses, but that was not the same as concubines.
L：就是不能像中國皇帝那樣有妃子，但是他有情人，有mistresses.
A：Yeah, but that doesn't mean he was a good husband. He is famous for having two of his wives—Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard executed; they were beheaded.
L：So he killed them, he cut their heads off.
A：Yes, and this is how we learned about his wives at school. We all learned the rhyme "Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived."
L：So English school kids need to learn the rhyme.
A：Yeah.
L：Thinks school is really quite the same around the world. 所以英國的小孩子在學習亨利八世的時候就會學這個口訣：
"Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived."
“離婚，斬首，死掉，離婚，斬首，活下來”。
This rhyme describes his six wives.
A：Yeah. So take a look at the first wife, the one he divorced. In order to divorce her, Henry VIII actually changed the religion of England, so England moved from being a Catholic country to a Protestant country.
L：Is this because being Catholic, he was not allowed to divorce the woman?
A：There were ways he could divorce, but unfortunately at that time. It was his wife's nephew who was the most powerful man in Europe, so he wouldn't let Henry VIII divorce his aunt and …
L：OK, that's very complex.
A：And he put pressure on the pope to not allow him to divorce.
L：So he changed the entire country's religion just to divorce her.
A：Yes, he closed down all the monasteries in England.
L："Monasteries", this is Catholic. 關閉了所有的天主教的修道院。And then changed the country to Protestant, 改到新教。
A：So it's quite complicated this but essentially all you really need to know is that the religion change from Catholic to Protestant and this is known as "the Reformation".
L：宗教改革，"the Reformation". And what about the second wife? This was the first wife, "Divorced". And then the second is beheaded. If I remember correctly, that's Anne Boleyn, one of the more famous wives. A妮柏林。
A：Yes, she was very famous. And that's most because all the TV shows and movies that all about her. So you have the movie
L：That was Scarlett Johansson,
A：And also from the very famous TV show《Wolf Hall》from the very famous book in the UK.
L：《狼廳》，the
A：It was very very popular a few years ago.
L：And that's about Henry VIII, about Tudor dynasty?
A：Yes, Henry VIII, and also Anne Boleyn, in particular.
L：So, if you are interested, you can check it out. So back to the second wife, so why did he behead Anne Boleyn then?
A：Because he wanted to have a son that's the main reason. And Anne Boleyn only gave him a daughter, so he wanted to move on. He wanted to find another wife.
L：And why couldn't he just divorce her?
A：This is the question, but there are also a few tales that he just simply got tired of Anne Boley; he got more and more annoyed by her so he just wanted to get rid of her.
L：Wow, as a king you can just chop her head off. So eventually, did he die single then?
A：No, as I have said, he has got six wives. So his last wife really became like his nurse because he was so ill and so unhealthy.
L：Exactly how fat was Henry VIII in his later years?
A：Well, put it this way, his waist was 132cm when he died.
L：132cm, that's scary! That's almost 4尺！But what changed? How come he grew from an athletic handsome clever young man into someone who is so violent and so fat?
A：Well, a lot of it,scholars are saying now, was because of a head injury.
L：Oh, he hurt his head.
A：He almost died when he was jousting.
L：Jousting就是一種馬上的長槍比武。So they thought it was that head injury that changed him.
A: Yes, it changed his personality as well. So he became famous as a tyrant. He often lost his temper.
L：A tyrant is usually a king that's really violent, that likes killing people, torturing people.
A：So he executed about 70,000 people during his reign, which is roughly about 5 a day.
L: So he killed 5 people a day.
A：Yeah, more or less.
L：Execution就是“處死”，he executed 70000 people. So since Henry VIII is such an important part of the British history, now if you go to England, where can you see his palaces or any of the relics?
A：You can see a lot of the relics and you can see a lot of the artifacts associate with the Henry VIII in museums all around Britain, but the place that people link with him most of all is Hampton Court Palace.
L：漢普頓宮，that's in the suburbs of London, isn't it?
A：Yes, it's on the River Thames, it's quite close to center London. And there you can see a lot of the buildings, a lot of the palaces complex, is all associated with Henry VIII.
L：I've been to Hampton Court.
A：Oh, yes?
L：I just found the gardens are amazing. They are exquisite.
A：And did you see the actress dressed up like Henry VIII as well?
L：Oh, yes! I found that's really interesting. They were dressed up as Henry VIII and also Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, his other wife.
A：So if you are still interested in Henry VIII, there's so many documentary, so many movies, TV shows you can watch as well.
L：Like we have mentioned the movie
A：Yes.
L：It's really an interesting place.
A：So, as this is our first episode of the segment, please let us know what you think in the comment section.
L：And maybe you can tell us what famous Brits you'd like to hear about.
A：So until next time.
L：See you next time.
A：Bye.
L：Bye.
更多英語資訊，獲取節目完整文本，請關注微信公眾號：璐璐的英文小酒館。每天大量英語干貨更新！
