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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. Who might testify that it was Shakespeare who wrote the plays

A. The mystery-author theorists.
B. Francis Bacon.
C. Theatre owners.
D. Theatregoers and the actors.

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What should a diabetic do, according to the doctor

A. Eat more vegetables and fruit, but less fat.
B. Do more exercises to get rid of sugar.
C. Drink as much water as possible.
D. Stop eating sweets and candies.

TEXT A Science is a cumulative body of knowledge about the natural world, obtained by the application of a particular method practised by the scientist. The word science itself is derived from the Latin scire, which means to know, to have knowledge of or to experience. Technology is the fruit of applied science, it is the concrete expression of research done in the laboratory and applied to manufacturing commodities to meet human needs. The word scientist was introduced only in 1840 by William Whewell, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. In his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, he wrote: "We need a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should be inclined to call him a scientist." The "cultivators of science" before 1840 were known as "natural philosophers". The founders of the 300-year-old Royal Society were typical "natural philosophers". They were curious, often eccentric persons who poked inquiring fingers at nature. In the process of doing so they stated a technique of inquiry we know today as the "scientific method". Briefly, these are the steps in the method. First comes the thought that sparks off the inquiry. (For. example, in 1896, the physicist Henri Becquerel, in communications to the French Academy of Sciences, stated that he found that uranium salts emitted rays of unknown nature. His discovery excited Marie Curie. Along with her husband Pierre, she wanted to know more about this radiation. What was it exactly, and where did it come from) Second comes the collecting of facts: the techniques of doing this will differ according to the problem to be solved. However it is based on experiments in which one may use anything from a test tube to an earth satellite to gather essential data. (If you do not know the difficulties which the Curies encountered to gather their facts, as they investigated the mysterious uranium rays, I advise you to read the remarkable story in the book Madame Curie by her daughter Eve. ) This leads to step three: organising the facts and studying the relationships that emerge. (These rays were different from anything known. How can this be explained Did this radiation come from the atom itself It might well be that other materials also emit radiation. Madame Curie investigated and found this was so. She invented the word radioactivity for this phenomenon. She followed this with further experimental work on only "active" radioelements. ) Step four is the statement of a hypothesis or theory: that is, framing a general truth that has emerged and that may be modified as new facts emerge. (In July 1898, the Curies announced the probable presence in pitchblende ores of a new element endowed with powerful radioactivity. This was the beginning of the discovery of radium. ) Then follows the clearer statement of the theory. (In December 1898, the Curies reported to the Academy of Sciences: "The various reasons we have enumerated lead us to believe that the new radioactive substance contains a new element to which we propose to give the name of Radium. The new radioactive substance certainly contains a very strong proportion of bariums in spite of that its radioactivity is considerable. The radioactivity of radium therefore must be enormous. ") And the final step is the practical test of the theory--the prediction of new facts. This is essential because from this flows the possibility of control by man of the forces of nature that are newly revealed. Note how Marie Curie used deductive reasoning in order to push on. "This kind of detective work is basic to the methodology of science. Further, she was concerned with probability and not certainty-in her investigations. Also, although the Curies were doing the basic research work at great expense to themselves in hard physical toil, they knew that they were part of an international group of people all concerned with their search for truth. Their reports were published and immediately examined by scientists all over the world. Any flaws in their argument, would be pointed out to them immediately. What happened in scientific circles after the Curies had completed the final step

A. Scientists used deductive reasoning to test their investigations,
B. Scientists were concerned with probability in their investigations.
C. Scientists read their reports and examined their investigations.
D. Scientists were critical of their investigations.

TEXT F On May 12, 1946, Louis Alexander Slotin was carrying out an experiment in the laboratories at Los Alamos with seven other men. Slotin was good with his hands; he liked using his head; he was bright and a little daring-- in short, he was like any other man who is happy in his work. At Los Alamos, Slotin, then aged thirty-five, was concerned with the assembly of pieces of plutonium, each of which alone is too small to be dangerous and which will only sustain a chain reaction when they are put together. Atomic bombs are, in fact, detonated in this way, by suddenly bringing together several harmless pieces of plutonium so that they form a larger, explosive mass. Slotin himself had tested the assembly of the first experimental bomb which had been exploded in New Mexico in July, 1945. Now, nearly a year later, Slotin was again doing an experiment of this kind. He was nudging several pieces of plutonium toward one another, by tiny movements, in order to ensure that their total mass .would be large enough to make a chain reaction; and he was doing it, as experts are tempted to do such things, with a screwdriver. The screwdriver slipped, the pieces of plutonium came a fraction too close together and suddenly the instruments everyone was watching registered a great upsurge of neutrons, which is the sign that a chain reaction had begun. The assembly was filling the room with radioactivity. Slotin moved at once; he pulled the pieces of plutonium apart with his bare hands. This was virtually an act of suicide for it exposed him to the largest dose of radioactivity. Then he calmly asked his seven co-workers to mark their precise positions at the time of the accident in order that the degree of exposure to the radioactivity each one received could be fixed. Having clone this and alerted the medical service, Slotin apologized to his companions, and predicted what turned out to be exactly true: that he thought that he would die and that they would recover. Slotin had saved the lives of the seven men working with him by cutting to a minimum the time during which the assembly of plutonium was giving out neutrons and radioactive rays. He himself died of radiation sickness nine days later. The setting for his act, the people involved, and the disaster are scientific, but this is not the reason why I tell Slotin’s story. I tell it to show that morality shall we call it heroism in this case has the same anatomy the world over. There are two things that make up morality. One is the sense that other people matter: the sense of common loyalty, of charity and tenderness, the sense of human love. The other is a clear judgment of what is at stake: a cold knowledge, without a trace of deception, of precisely what will happen to oneself and to others if one plays either the hero or the coward. This is the highest morality: to combine human love with an unflinching, scientific judgment. I tell the story of Louis Slotin for another reason also. He was an atomic physicist who made a different choice from mine. He was still working on bombs when he died, a year after World War II ended. The essence of morality is not that we should all act alike but that each of us should deeply search his own conscience--and should then act steadfastly as it tells him to do. What is the main point of the passage

A. To warn people of the dangers of atomic power.
B. To describe the heroism of Louis Slotin.
C. To make a statement about what morality means.
D. To express the author’s view of a scientist’s duty.

America is a country that now sits atop the cherished myth that work provides rewards, that working people can support their families. It’s a myth that has become so divorced from reality that it might as well begin with the words "Once upon a time". Today 1.6 million New Yorkers suffer from "food insecurity", which is a fancy way of saying they don’t have enough to eat. Some are the people who come in at night and clean the skyscrapers that glitter along the river. Some pour coffee and take care of the aged parents of the people who live in those buildings. The American Dream for the well-to-do grows from the bowed backs of the working poor, who too often have to choose between groceries and rent. In a new book called "The Betrayal of Work", Beth Shulman says that even in the booming 1990s one out of every four American workers made less than $8. 70 an hour, an income equal to the government’s poverty level for a family of four. Many, if not most, of these workers had no health care, sick pay or retirement provisions. We ease our consciences, Shulman writes, by describing these people as "low skilled", as though they’re not important or intelligent enough to deserve more. But Iow-skilled workers today are better educated than ever before, and they constitute the linchpin (SYNC) of American industry. When politicians crow (得意洋洋地说) that happy days are here again because jobs are on the rise, it’s these jobs they’re really talking about. Five of the 10 occupations expected to grow big in the next decade are in the lowest-paying job groups. And before we sit back and decide that’s just the way it; is, it’s instructive to consider the rest of the world. While the bottom 10 percent of American workers earn just 37 percent of our average wage, their counterparts in other industrialized countries earn upwards of 60 percent. And those are countries that provide health care and child care, which eases the economic pinch considerably. Almost 40 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, a family with a car and a house in the suburbs felt prosperous. Today that same family may well feel poor, overwhelmed by credit card debt, a second mortgage and the cost of the stuff that has become the backbone of American life. When the middle Class feels poor, the poor have little chance for change, or even recognition. We learn from the passage that the difference in pay between the lowest paid and the average worker in America is ______ than. that in other industrialized countries.

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