哈利·波特：一段魔法史 Harry Potter: A History of Magic(2017)【完整台词】

Whoosh! I've got to do a whoosh sound,

it's the only way it makes it real to me.

To trace the real history of magic,

there can be few better places than the British Library.

It has 150 million items

and the curators have been searching amongst them for over a year.

As every Hogwarts student knows,

a good magical textbook can save your life or solve your problems.

But in the 16th century,

members of the British cultural establishment believed in them, too.

So, this is one of my favourite manuscripts in the exhibition.

It's an actual book of spells and is extremely beautiful to look at,

I think, and has a lot of interesting content.

A real magical textbook,

and it belonged to the Elizabethan poet Gabriel Harvey.

But this one is an experiment or a spell on how to be invisible

and how it must be prepared.

There's lots of text written about Gabriel Harvey,

but as far as I know, I don't think he ever disappeared.

HE RECITES THE MANUSCRIP "By the mercy which you bear upon mankind,

"make me to be invisible."

"He set off, drawing the invisibility cloak tight around him

"as he walked.

"The library was pitch-black and very eerie.

"Harry lit a lamp to see his way along the rows of books."

Conveying the rich imaginary world of JK Rowling is a huge challenge

for the curators.

To help them, they've enlisted Harry Potter illustrator Jim Kay,

whose drawings and paintings will bring to life the links between

literary fantasy and historical fact.

So I first started illustrating Harry Potter

back in 2013,

and back then,

I thought, "Well, it'd take about six months to do all of book one,"

and it actually took me two and a half years

working seven days a week,

usually 12 hours at once, a day.

It was terrible pressure and you don't want to mess up

the world's most successful children's book.

The British Library team are selecting examples of Jim's work

to feature in the show.

Who is this?McGonagall.

It's actually based loosely on my partner,

who I aged for this painting, I must stress.

Jim's most intriguing illustrations are these curious-looking specimens,

mandrake roots and their seedlings.

Harmless enough, you might think,

but these roots must be handled with care.

"Harry snapped the earmuffs over his ears.

"They shut out sound completely.

"Professor Sprout put a pink, fluffy pair over her own ears,

"rolled up the sleeves of her robes,

"grasped one of the tufty plants firmly and pulled hard.

"Harry let out a gasp of surprise that no-one could hear.

"Instead of roots,

"a small, muddy and extremely ugly baby popped out of the earth.

"The leaves were growing right out of his head!

"He had pale-green mottled skin

"and was clearly bawling at the top of his lungs.

"Professor Sprout took a large plant pot from under the table and

"plunged the mandrake into it, burying him in dark, damp compost,

"until only the tufted leaves were visible.

"Professor Sprout dusted off her hands,

"gave them all the thumbs-up and removed her own earmuffs.

"'As our mandrakes are only seedlings,

"'their cries won't kill yet,' she said calmly,

"as though she'd just done nothing more exciting than water a begonia.

"'However, they will knock you out for several hours.'"

In herbal folklore, the bloodcurdling scream of the mandrake

was thought to kill or send its listener mad.

The British Library have uncovered an unusual illustration of the myth.

A very unusual illustration indeed.

My mandrakes aren't quite like that.

Broadly speaking, I adopted the myth with some tweaks.

Very similar. No dogs involved in mine, though.

Humans did actually pull them up

and mandrake root was an essential component in a restorative potion

that was needed at Hogwarts that year.

There are real mandrakes and the root is human-shaped,

so I think that's where the myth came from, isn't it?

As often happens, people extrapolated from the real object.

The mandrake is no longer commonplace.

Yet the elaborate folklore that surrounds it all came down

to this rather small, grubby root.

There's definitely something in these roots that...

Yeah, anthropomorphic.

It's almost like a sort of pot belly.

So you could have a more distended stomach

leading to legs...

which I quite like.

These severed hands symbolise its use as an anaesthetic

in amputations.

Medieval herbals like these reveal the wonder and mystery

inspired by plants.

This is a time when most people couldn't get access

to any form of medicine. A small cut could kill you, you know?

It's no wonder that people put so much stock

in the potential life-saving properties

of the plants around them, really.

Plants are a key ingredient in JK Rowling's wizarding world,

where they're used to make potions, and supplies can be found

in the apothecary of a certain Mr Mulpepper.

His name might sound a little bit like another exhibit in the show,

the Complete Herbal by one Nicholas Culpeper.

So Culpeper really was a herbal hero.

He was the guy who revolutionised medicine in Britain.

He took the power from the physicians and gave it back

to the common people.

Nicholas Culpeper grew up in the Sussex countryside

here in Isfield.

So, this footpath here would've been the exact footpath

that the young Culpeper would have walked down

from his grandfather's church over to the village,

and it's here he would've learned all about

the flowers and the plants of the English countryside.

The book was published almost 400 years ago and

it's still in print today.

In the 1600s, you could buy it on a street corner.

You can buy it online today.

It's the book that's been in print for the longest

apart from the Bible.

Culpeper's book has special significance for JK Rowling.

Oh, yes.

I know this book.

This is Culpeper's Complete Herbal and I own two copies of this.

Am I allowed to touch this?

I will be tremendously careful, I'm so scared.

Oh, wow, look.

It's not even the properties of the plants,

it's just the way that they wrote about the plants

and observed them and tied them to planetary movements and so on.

There's such a poetry to it.

"Oh, yes, it is fat, unctuous and temperate.

"Generated of that which is moist, aerius and moderately hot."

I love it.

"Midnight came and went while Harry was reading and rereading a passage

"about the uses of scurvy-grass,

"lovage and sneezewort, and not taking in a word of it.

"These plants are most efficacious in the inflaming of the brain and

"are therefore much used in confusing and befuddlement drafts,

"where the wizard is desirous of producing hot-headiness

"and recklessness."

Even when I didn't really use what they were saying,

I found it inspirational.

I found the way they talked about these plants inspirational.

This is a gorgeous book. Look at this.

And sometimes I would use old names to make my own names, you know?

You just look at the way that they put the words together.

Sea colewort - love it.

Nicholas Culpeper was also accused of witchcraft about ten years before

he published his book.

In 1642, he was accused of being a practising witch.

Now, this is possibly because of antagonisms that he was creating

with the College of Physicians,

but it's also because I think people

that are mixing up herbs, creating potions,

there's always going to be those questions about them.

"Non-magic people, more commonly known as muggles,

"were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times,

"but not very good at recognising it.

"On the rare occasion they did catch a real witch or wizard,

"burning had no effect whatsoever.

"The witch or wizard would perform a basic flame freezing charm

"and then pretend to shriek with pain

"while enjoying a gentle tickling sensation.

"Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burnt so much

"that she allowed herself to be caught no fewer than

"47 times in various disguises."

Witches and wizards in the Potterverse,

they are morally neutral.

You are as good or as bad as you decide to be.

There's nothing inherently wrong about performing magic,

it's simply an ability that some people have.

Yet in history, most references to witches are resoundingly negative.

And the link between witches and powerful dark magic

was forged by a book.

So this is the earliest illustrated printed treatise on witchcraft.

It's called De Lamiis Et Phythonicis Mulieribus,

which roughly translate as "of witches and soothsayers".

This is the first time