新编英语教程 unit 4.pptVIP

unit 4 Text I A Man from Stratford – William Shakespeare ;;;;;1 On March 25th, 1616, fifty-two-year-old Master William Shakespeare signed his will leaving the famous legacy of his “second best bed and furniture” to his wife and the greater part of his estate to his married daughter, Susanna Hall. It was the will of a comfortably off man, for the income from the estate probably amounted to about $200 a year, which was a lot of money over three hundred and sixty years ago. For historians, the most interesting part of the will was that signature, because it and other signatures are all we have left of the handwriting of the worlds literary genius. There is no country where Shakespeares work is not read with something very like awe because there is something fascinating about a man whose work was so much better than that of anyone else. ;Yet in spite of the thousands of books that have been written about this amazing writer, almost every detail of his personal life is supposition rather than fact. Historically speaking, Shakespeare lived only yesterday but his activities, like those of nearly every playwright of his day, are so vague that he could have been born in Roman times. 2 Shakespeares birthplace, the little town of Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, had made a thriving business out of its most famous citizen for a long time. It is a popular place for tourists from all over the world, even though many of them would have the greatest of difficulty in understanding Shakespeares Elizabethan English. However, he has such a fine reputation that it is well worth the journey just to be able to look at the swans that swim on his river, and gaze at the cottage where Anne, his wife, lived before their marriage, and then to see his plays at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. ;3 To plot Shakespeares life is to become involved in a kind of detective story where there are plenty of clues but very little else. Nobody even knows the exact date of his birth, although the reg