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TEXT D 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. All of the following statements are true EXCEPT______.

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.

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EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION In the first part of your writing you should present your thesis statement, and in the second part you should support the thesis statement with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring what you have written to a natural conclusion or a summary. Marks will be awarded for content, organisation, grammar and appropriateness. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Write your composition on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.

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Rain forests Tropical rainforests are the most diverse ecosystem (生态系统) on Earth, and also the oldest. Today, tropical rainforests cover only 6 percent of the Earth’s ground surface, but they are home to over half of the planet’s plant and animal species.What Is a Rainforest Generally speaking, a rainforest is an environment that receives high rainfall and is dominated by tall trees. A wide range of ecosystems fall into this category, of course. But most of the time when people talk about rainforests, they mean the tropical rainforests located near the equator. These forests receive between 160 and 400 inches of rain per year. The total annual rainfall is spread pretty evenly throughout the year, and the temperature rarely dips below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. This steady climate is due to the position of rainforests on the globe. Because of the orientation of the Earth’s axis, the Northern and Southern hemispheres each spend part of the year tilted away from the sun. Since rainforests are at the middle of the globe, located near the equator, they arc not especially affected by this change. They receive nearly the same amount of sunlight, and therefore heat, all year. Consequently, the weather in these regions remains fairly constant. The consistently wet, warm weather and ample sunlight give plant life everything it needs to thrive. Trees have the resources to grow to tremendous heights, and they live for hundreds, even thousands, of years. These giants, which reach 60 to 150 ft in the air, form the basic structure of the rainforest. Their top branches spread wide in order to capture maximum sunlight. This creates a thick canopy (树冠) level at the top of the forest, with thinner greenery levels underneath. Some large trees grow so tall that they even tower over the canopy layer. As you go lower, down into the rainforest, you find less and less greenery. The forest floor is made up of moss, fungi, and decaying plant matter that has fallen from the upper layers. The reason for this decrease in greenery is very simple the overabundance of plants gathering sunlight at the top of the forest blocks most sunlight from reaching the bottom of the forest, making it difficult for robust plants to thrive.The Forest for the Trees The ample sunlight and extremely wet climate of many tropical areas encourage the growth of towering trees with wide canopies. This thick top layer of the rainforest dictates the lives of all other plants in the forest. New tree seedlings rarely survive to make it to the top unless some older trees die, creating a "hole" in the canopy. When this happens, all of the seedlings on the ground level compete intensely to reach the sunlight. Many plant species reach the top of the forest by climbing the tall trees. It is much easier to ascend this way, because the plant doesn’t have to form its own supporting structure. Some plant species, called epiphytes, grow directly on the surface of the giant trees. These plants, which include a variety of orchids and ferns, make up much of the understory, the layer of the rainforest right below the canopy. Epiphytes are close enough to the top to receive adequate light, and the runoff from the canopy layer provides all the water and nutrients(养分)they need, which is important since they don’t have access to the nutrients in the ground. Stranglers and Buttresses Some epiphytes eventually develop into stranglers. They grow long, thick roots that extend down the tree trunk into the ground. As they continue to grow, the roots form a sort of web structure all around the tree. At the same time, the strangler plant’s branches extend upward, spreading out into the canopy. Eventually, the strangler may block so much light from above, and absorb such a high percentage of nutrients from the ground below, that the host tree dies. Competition over nutrients is almost as intense as competition for light. The excessive rainfall rapidly dissolves nutrients in the soil making it relatively infertile except at the top layers. For this reason, rainforest tree roots grow outward to cover a wider area, rather than downward to lower levels. This makes rainforest trees somewhat unstable, since they don’t have very strong anchors in the ground. Some trees compensate for this by growing natural buttresses. These buttresses are basically tree trunks that extend out from the side of the tree and clown to the ground, giving the tree additional support. Rainforest trees are dependent on bacteria that are continually producing nutrients in the ground. Rainforest bacteria and trees have a very close, symbiotic (共生的) relationship. The trees provide the bacteria with food, in the form of fallen leaves and other material, and the bacteria break this material down into the nutrients that the trees need to survive. One of the most remarkable things about rainforest plant life is its diversity. The temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest are mainly composed of a dozen or so tree species. A tropical rainforest, on the other hand, might have 300 distinct tree species.All Creatures, Great and Small Rainforests are home to the majority of animal species in the world. And a great number of species who now live in other environments, including humans, originally inhabited the rainforests. Researchers estimate that in a large rainforest area, there may be more than 10 million different animal species. Most of these species have adapted for life in the upper levels of the rainforest, where food is most plentiful. Insects, which can easily climb or fly from tree to tree, make up the largest group (ants are the most abundant animal in the rainforest). Insect species have a highly symbiotic relationship with the plant life in a rainforest. The insects move from plant to plant, enjoying the wealth of food provided there. As they travel, the insects may pick up the plants’ seeds, dropping them some distance away. This helps to disperse the population of the plant species over a larger area. The numerous birds of the rainforest also play a major part in seed dispersal. When they eat fruit from a plant, the seeds pass through their digestive system. By the time they excrete (排泄) the seeds, the birds may have flown many miles away from the fruit-bearing tree. There are also a large number of reptiles and mammals in the rainforest. Since the weather is so hot and humid during the day, most rainforest mammals are active only at night, dusk or dawn. The many rainforest bat species are especially well adapted for this lifestyle. Using their sonar, bats navigate easily through the mass of trees in the rainforest, feeding on insects and fruit. While most rainforest species spend their lives in the trees, there is also a lot of life on the forest floor. Great apes, wild pigs, big cats and even elephants can all be found in rainforests. There are a number of people who live in the rainforests, as well. These tribes--which, up until recently, numbered in the thousands--are being forced out of the rainforests at an alarming rate because of deforestation.Deforestation In the past hundred years, humans have begun destroying rainforests at an alarming rate. Today, roughly 1.5 acres of rainforest are destroyed every second. People are cutting down the rainforests in pursuit of three major resources: · land for crops · lumber for paper and other wood products · land for livestock pastures In the current economy, people obviously have a need for all of these resources. But almost all experts agree that, over time, we will suffer much more from the destruction of the rainforests than we will benefit. The world’s rainforests are an extremely valuable natural resource, to be sure, but not for their lumber or their land. They are the main cradle of life on Earth, and they hold millions of unique life forms that we have yet to discover. Destroying the rainforests is comparable to destroying an unknown planet we have no idea what we’re losing. If deforestation continues at its current rate, the world’s tropical rainforests will be wiped out within 40 years. There is not much change in the weather in the tropical rainforests all the year round.

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