2. 职称英语
  3. Given Shakespeare’s popularity as an actor and a playwright and his conspicuo

Given Shakespeare’s popularity as an actor and a playwright and his conspicuo

游客2023-12-18  17
问题    Given Shakespeare’s popularity as an actor and a playwright and his conspicuous financial success, it was not surprising that jealous rivals began to snipe at his work. In later centuries, a common charge was that Shakespeare did not invent many of his plots but took his basic stories from well-known English history and old legends instead.
   It is quite true that these sources have been used by many English dramatists. But what Shakespeare did to the common facts is wholly remarkable: he invented new characters, transformed old ones, created a gallery of kings, maidens, courtiers, warriors and clowns of startling psychological depth.  He rearranged familiar tales with an extraordinary gift for drama, comedy and fantasy. And over all this Work, so rich with soaring language and glistening poetry, he cast an unprecedented mood of grandeur and glory. Never had the theatre been showered with such lyricism and passion, such insight and profundity.
   But how could a man of so little education produce such masterful works? Did Shakespeare, in fact, write the plays? Through the centuries, some have suggested Francis Bacon was the "real" Shakespeare. But the mystery-author theorists conveniently ignore an indisputable fact: numerous contemporaries stated that William Shakespeare of Stratford and London was the author of all but a few plays in the present canon. Ben Jonson knew him well, as did theatre owners, and the actors who signed the validating foreword to the definitive First Folio (1623) edition of his work.
   That Shakespeare was not "educated" means only that he had not endured the dry curriculum of Oxford or Cambridge in those days. Shakespeare was, in fact, a wide reader with an inquisitive mind and a confidence in his own perceptions. John Deyden observed: "He was naturally learned" And Shakespeare certainly "read" tile nature of human behavionr-male and female, monarchs and jesters, peasants and buffoons.  It was his imaginative range, his jewelled language,  his skill as a storyteller-rather than his erudition-that made him the wonder of the world.
   In one revolutionary step, the dramatist from Avon broke away from the stereotyped morality plays that dominated the English stage. He preached no sermons; he offered no pious warnings; he treated good, evil, virtue and sin as would a psychologist, not a priest. His cool objectivity in rendering human passions has incurred the wrath of many a righteous soul, and even the great Samuel Johnson chastised Shakespeare for writing "without any moral purpose".
   It was precisely this aspect of Shakespeare, this relentless analytic stance, embroidered with poetry of luminous beauty , that ushered in what can, without exaggeration, be called the modern theatre.
   Shakespeare destroyed the reigning, stultifying over-simplifications of Elizabethan drama. He dared to show heroes with flaws and doubts and unheroic impulses; heroines whose chastity was at war with their carnality; petty and fearful kings; queens who were monsters, and princes who were charlatans; villains overwhelmed by guilt or even tempted by virtue-in short, a parade of characters caught, as men and women truly are, in the conflict of emotions and the paradoxes of human dilemmas. [br] All of the following statements are true EXCEPT______.
选项 A、Shakespeare received little formal higher education.
B、Shakespeare could remain objective when interpreting human passions.
C、Shakespeare had a thorough understanding of the nature of human behaviour.
D、Shakespeare’s drama was spoken highly of by Samuel Johnson.
答案 D
解析 第三段第一句的意思是：一个受过极少教育的人如何能创作出这些著作呢?这与A对应。第五段最后一句的前半句(His cool objectivity in rendering human passions)意思指Shakespeare表达人物情感时的客观冷静，与B对应。第四段第四句谈到 Shakespeare的确能“读懂”人类行为的本质(and Shakespeare certainly“read”the nature of human behaviour)，与C对应。正确答案只能是D，因为第五段最后一行谈到Samuel Johnson批评Shakespeare的写作“没有任何道德观念”(Samuel Johnson chastised Shakespeare for writing“without any moral purpose”)，而D中was spoken highly of的意思是被高度赞扬。
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