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PART TWO Time: 25 minutes
READING Points: 15
Task 1 Questions 1-6
Read the answers about William Shakespeare. Choose an appropriate question for
each answer. Write the letter of the question in the box. An example (0) has been
done for you. There is one extra question that you do not need.
A. Who was he?/ Why was he so famous?
B. Are his plays long?
C. What was life like then?
D. What was the Globe like?
E. What are his most famous works?
F. Was Shakespeare a highly-educated man?
G. What happened to the Globe?
H. What were theatres like in Elizabethan times?
For the
teacher
+/-
(0) …E….. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado
About Nothing - he wrote a lot.
(1) ………. It was built on the Thames Bankside where there was a lot of gambling
and low-life. The theatre was built from wood that used to be in the Shoreditch
Theatre but after an argument Shakespeare and friends dismantled the theatre
beam by beam and built the Globe where most of his plays were performed.
(2) ………. Most of them were germ-ridden flea-pits. Due to the fleas there were
often outbreaks of the plague that started in theatres. If more than 40 people died
the theatres would be temporarily shut. They were also full of vice and crime.
Many employers disapproved of them because people went to the theatre instead
of work.
(3) ……….. Some last up to three hours but there is a company called the Reduced
Shakespeare Company that has shortened his plays and they perform all 36 of his
plays in an hour. It’s very amusing!
(4) ……….. A sequence of good things followed by bad things; the roof caught fire
and the whole theatre burned down. Luckily it was rebuilt. Unluckily it was then
closed down by puritans and subsequently demolished. The entire theatre was
then rebuilt in the 1990s and audiences can once again watch Shakespeare’s plays
in a similar theatre to the one they were written for.
(5) ……… In Elizabethan times people enjoyed quite blood-thirsty entertainment –
they attended public executions, bear-baiting, and cock-fighting. However, unlike
today in Britain, a large percentage of the population went to the theatre very
frequently. It was a major place to congregate. Where you were allowed to sit
depended on your social status. Also, there were no actresses, the parts of females
were played by men. All actors were paid next to nothing.
(6) ………. Actually not much is known about him. His parents weren’t hugely
wealthy and young William Shakespeare did not receive much of an education. In
fact, some people say it is almost impossible that he wrote the plays because they
use such a wide vocabulary. People can’t work out how Shakespeare’s
vocabulary got so large. This is why it has been said someone else wrote them.