新编英语教程 3 Unit 4 A Man from Stratfort

Unit 4 A Man from Stratford-William Shakespeare

Teaching objectives

1. to be more familiar with narration in chronological order

2. to get a complete understanding about William Shakespeare

Teaching procedure

I. Background information

peare’s birthplace

Theatre in London

Globe Theatre in London The Globe Theatre, where dramatist William Shakespeare

saw his plays performed 400 years ago, has been rebuilt near its original location on

the south bank of the Thames River in London, England. The rebuilt theater opened in

1997 and offers performances of Shakespeare’s plays during the summer. Traditional

materials were used in the rebuilding. A thatched roof covers the galleries where the

audience sits, and the outer walls are made of lime plaster.

peare’s Burial Site

England’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare, died on April 23, 1616, and was

buried in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, shown here.

His epitaph reads:

peare’s sonnets

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The form of the poems is an English variation of the traditional fourteen-line sonnet.

The lines, which each have ten syllables, are arranged into three quatrains, or groups

of four lines, and a final couplet (two successive lines that rhyme). The rhyme scheme

of the sonnets is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. A theme is developed and elaborated in the

quatrains, and a concluding thought is presented in the couplet.

5. Ancient Britain

Ancient Britain, term used to denote the island of Great Britain before the Germanic

invasions. The name Britain comes from the Latin name Britannia, which the ancient

Romans applied to the island, and the name Britain is still widely used to mean Great

Britain or even all of the British Isles.

6. Pre-roman Britain

Before the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century ad, the island was not

significant in the history of Western n the Bronze Age (circa 2000

bc) and about the 6th century bc, Britain was inhabited by Picts and European Celts,

who periodically invaded the British Isles until the 1st century bc.

7. Roman Britain

1) Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 bc to conquer the native peoples, called Britons.

2) By 47, Roman legions had occupied all the island south of the Humber River and

east of the Severn River.

3) In 61 bc Britain became an imperial province of Rome, called Britannia,

administered by Roman governors.

4) At the end of the 3rd century, the Roman army began to withdraw from Britain to

defend other parts of the Roman Empire. Celtic culture again became predominant,

and Roman civilization in Britain rapidly disintegrated. Roman influence virtually

disappeared during the Germanic invasions in the 5th and 6th centuries. Thereafter the

culture of the Angles and Saxons spread throughout the island. Historians refer to

Britain after the Germanic invasions as England, Scotland, and Wales.

eth I (1533-1603)

Elizabeth I (1533-1603), queen of England and Ireland (1558-1603), daughter of

Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was the longest-reigning

English monarch in nearly two centuries and the first woman to successfully occupy

the English throne. Called Glorianna and Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth enjoyed

enormous popularity during her life and became an even greater legend after her

death.

Elizabeth firmly established Protestantism in England, encouraged English enterprise

and commerce, and defended the nation against the powerful Spanish naval force

known as the Spanish Armada. Her reign was noted for the English Renaissance, an

outpouring of poetry and drama led by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and

Christopher Marlowe that remains unsurpassed in English literary history . She was

the last of the Tudor monarchs, never marrying or producing an heir, and was

succeeded by her cousin, James VI of Scotland.

r School

Grammar School, originally a school in which the curriculum emphasized the study of

Greek and Latin grammar and related subjects. In a graded system of public schools

such as that found in the U.S., the term has come to be synonymous with the term

elementary school.

ant plays

1) Hamlet

Hamlet tells the story of the prince’s effort to revenge the murder of his father, who

has been poisoned by Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, the man who then becomes Hamlet’s

stepfather and the king. The prince alternates between rash action and delay that

disgusts him, as he tries to enact the revenge his father’s ghost has asked from him.

The play ends in a spectacular scene of death: As Hamlet, his mother, his uncle, and

Laertes (the lord chamberlain’s son) all lie dead, the Norwegian prince Fortinbras

marches in to claim the Danish throne. Hamlet is certainly Shakespeare’s most

intellectually engaging and elusive play.

2) Romeo and Juliet famous for its poetic treatment of the ecstasy of youthful love.

The play dramatizes the fate of two lovers victimized by the feuds and

misunderstandings of their elders and by their own hasty temperaments.

3) A Midsummer Night’s Dream: presents a happy blend of fantasy and realism, and

may have been intended for performance at an aristocratic wedding. The comedy

weaves together a number of separate plots involving three different realms: one

inhabited by two pairs of noble Athenian lovers; another by members of the fairy

world—notably, King Oberon, Queen Titania, and the mischievous Puck; and the

third by a group of bumbling and unconsciously comic townspeople who seek to

produce a play for wedding celebrations.

II. pre-reading questions

1. How much do you know about the life of William Shakespeare? Try to find some

interesting stories about this great man and share with your classmates?

2. What kind of man do you suppose William Shakespeare to be?

III. main idea

Although thousands of books have been written about William Shakespeare, very

little is known of his personal life. The only handwriting left by Shakespeare which

we still have now is a number of his signatures and one is on his will. It seemed that

he died a man of considerable wealth. His birthplace, Stratford-Upon-Avon, has also

been a tourist spot, though visitors understand little of his work and know even less of

his life. He might have had worked with some visiting theater companies. However,

his experience was unaccounted for in the 7 years since 1585. he then appeared in

London as an actor and playwright. Over the coming 15 years, he contributed more

than 30 plays to the world and some marvelous verse. How did he get so much

knowledge on such a wide range of subjects? Who was the “dark lady” that made him

so sad? Where had his manuscripts gone to? Maybe, these questions can only be

partly answered if we uncover a bundle of his letters some day in the future.

IV. Language points

Para. 1

Why was Shakespeare’s will the will of a comfortably off man?

(A comfortably off man is a man who is well-off or wealthy.) When Shakespeare died,

he left in his will quite a large sum of money to his daughter and handsome furniture

to his wife, which showed that he was quite well-to-do. So we can say that his will

was the will of a comfortably off man.

How would you define a literary genius?

He is one who has an exceptionally great creative and inventive capacity in writing.

Why did the writer say “Historically speaking, Shakespeare lived only yesterday”?

From the historical point of view, four hundred years is only a short period of time.

Besides, historians set the date 1453 as the beginning of modern history. Shakespeare

was born in 1564 and died in 1616. So to the historians, Shakespeare lived only

yesterday.

1. legacy:

money or property bequeathed to another by will遗产，遗赠; something handed

down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past遗产

He received a small legacy in his father’s will.

inheritance: a property, title, or quality of mind and body received by inheritance

继承物（如财产、头衔、品行、体貌等）

The lawyer told him to claim his inheritance as soon as possible.

律师告诉他应尽快提出继承遗产的要求。

His good looks are inheritance from his mother.

他从母亲那里继承了一副好相貌。

heritage: property that is or can be inherited; an inheritance遗产，继承财产：继承

的或可被继承的财产；继承物; something that is passed down from preceding

generations; a tradition遗留物，传统：由前辈传下来的东西；传统; the status

acquired by a person through birth; a birthright与生俱来的权利：通过出生而得到

的地位；长子继承权：

We must take care to preserve our national heritage.

我们必须注意保护自己的民族遗产。

Poverty was his heritage.

他出生在一个贫困家庭。

2. the second largest

Hainan Island is the second largest island in China.

The Amazon is by far the longest river in the world.

可以修饰形容词副词最高级的词：by far, very, quite far, 序数词

这是我见过的最最好的医院。

It was by far the best hospital I had every seen.

它的质量是最高的。

It was of the very highest quality.

这是这家商店最最贵的自行车。

This is quite far the most expensive bicycle in the shop.

tably off, well off, badly off (poor), worse off, straight off, better off

那些过着富裕生活的农民从未想过要迁居到大都市去生活。

It never occurred to those comfortably off farmers that they would move to a

metropolitan city.

学校的教学设备贫乏。

The school is rather badly-off for equipment.

你最好骑自行车。

You’d be better off with a bicycle.

由于生病，玛丽的情况比以前更糟糕了。

Owing to illness, Mary is now worse off than before.

我立刻告诉了他我对此事的看法。

I told him straight off what I thought about the matter.

4. for, because, as, since

原因状语从句通常由because, since, as引导。because引导的从句可以放在主句

前，也可放在主句后面，表示直接的原因或理由，着重点在从句。回答why

问句、用于强调结构都用because。如:

He had to do a part-time job after work because he needed money for his marriage.

---Why didn’t he come yesterday?

---Because he had something important to do.

It was because he lost it that he found it more valuable than ever.

since和as引导的原因从句更多见于句首，表示明显的、已知的事实，语气比

because弱，分别可译作“既然”、“由于”，着重点在主句。

Since you have to stay at home, why don’t you do some shopping on computer?

As the weather is fine, let’s go fishing.

for也可引导表示原因的句子，但它是个并列连词，通常表示一种推测的原因

或附加的说明，语气最弱，一般不放在句首，前面常有逗号分隔。

It must have rained last night, for the ground is wet.

5. … the income from the estate probably amounted to about ￡200 a year …

… in all probability (most likely), the money he made from his estate reached about

￡200 a year…

amount to

to add up in number or quantity:总共，合计

我们每个月在食物上的开销通常合计是200元。

Our monthly expenditure on food usually amounts to 200 yuan.

to be equivalent or tantamount等于，如同

老师课前不备课就如同玩忽职守。学生旷课就如同违反纪律。

Failure to prepare a lesson well before class on the part of the teacher amounts to

negligence of duty; whereas failure to attend the class on time on the part of the

student amount to a breach of discipline.

那个计划无关紧要。

That plan will never amount to anything.

6. Literary

Literary works/style

Literal meaning/translation

Literate illiterate

7. genius: a person of extraordinary intellect and talent:天才

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.

genuine: actually possessing the alleged or apparent attribute or character:真的

All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

genus: Biology A taxonomic category ranking below a family and above a species and generally

consisting of a group of species exhibiting similar characteristics. 【生物学】 类，属：分类

学中介于科和种之间的特级，由包含显示相似特点的种所组成的群。

Similar genera are grouped into families.

8. There is no country where Shakespeare’s work is not read with something very like

awe because there is something fascinating about a man …

People all over the world read Shakespeare’s work with a feeling of profound

respect and wonderment because there is something about him which made people

charmed …

no… not…

所有被王医生治疗过的人无不被他一丝不苟的工作所感动的。

No one who was treated by Dr. Wang was not moved by his conscientious work.

到过北京的人没有一个不对长城的华丽和威严留下深刻的印象。

No person who has been to Beijing will not be impressed by the magnificence and

grandeur of the Great Wall.

凡是听到她不幸的遭遇的人无不深表同情。

No one who has heard about her misfortune will not feel deep sympathy for her.

9. … almost every detail of his personal life is supposition rather than fact.

We do not base every minute and particular detail of his personal life so much on

facts as on guesswork.

rather than

年青人应该成为社会的财富而不是威胁或祸根。

Young people should be an asset to society rather than a menace or a curse.

这扇门这么低，那个高个子进屋是无法挺直身子，只能低头猫腰进入。

It was such a low door way that the tall man had to bend his head rather than keep

upright when entering the room.

我们宁可租房也不愿立刻买房。

We would rather rent the house than buy it outright.

他提出这个问题是出于好奇心，而非出于求知欲。

He asked the question out of curiosity rather than out of his desire for knowledge.

10. … But his activities, like those of nearly every playwright of his day, are so vague

that he could have been born in Roman times.

We are so uncertain about his activities that we might as well say that he was born

when the Romans occupied Britain a long time ago.

Para. 2

1. … had made a thriving business out of its most famous citizen for a long time.

Because of its most famous citizen, Stratford-upon-Avon has made a lot of money

for a long time.

make … out of

令人难以置信的是他在两年内竟然把这些普通的女孩子训练成了世界一流的

长跑运动员。

It is unbelievable that he should have made world-class long distance runner out of

these ordinary girls within two years.

2. … he has such a fine reputation that it is well worth the journey just to be able …

… he enjoys such high prestige that it is worthwhile to make a journey to

Stratford-upon-Avon just to be able …

worth

不值得浪费纸把它打印出来。

It’s not worth the paper it is printed on.

越稀有越值钱。

The rarer it is, the more it is worth.

It is worth seeing（hearing, reading）.

Para. 3

1. What is meant by the sentence: “To plot Shakespeare’s life is to become involved in

a king of detective story where there are plenty of clues but very little else?

Anyone who wants to make an outline of Shakespeare’s life finds himself in a

difficult situation. He is like a detective trying to find out about a case. He has only a

lot of clues but hardly any facts or evidence.

Parish Church

Para. 4

1. conviction:

the judgment of a jury or judge that a person is guilty of a crime as charged判罪

This was her third conviction for cheating.

这是她第三次被判犯有欺诈罪。

the state of being convinced:

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

生活中至高无上的幸福是确信我们为人所爱。

这位年轻学者专心致志地开发新型地电脑翻译软件，他深信在不久的将来自己

会成名。

This young scholar devoted all his attention to the development of a new type

of computer translation software in the full conviction that he would make a name

in the near future.

convict:

law To find or prove (someone) guilty of an offense or crime, especially by the

verdict of a court:【法律】 宣告有罪：发现或证明（某人）犯有某种过错或罪

行，尤指经过法庭的裁定：

He was convicted of murder.

他被判犯有谋杀罪。

The jury convicted the defendant of manslaughter.

陪审团判定被告犯有杀人罪。

Para. 5

What is meant by “… (he) realized in a flash that this was the life for him and talked

one of the managers into giving him a job”?

It means “After Shakespeare had seen some of the performances put on by some of

the theatrical companies, he came to see instantly that he ought to take up theatre as

his career, and he persuaded one of the managers to give him a job.”

1. in a flash:

immediately, at once, right away, straight off

他在餐厅享用美味的晚餐时，听到车子的警报声，猛然间他想起自己停在外面

马路上的车子未上锁。

While enjoying his delicious dinner in a restaurant, he heard that the car alarm and

realized in a flash that he left his car outside in the street unlocked.

2. talk sb. into /out of doing sth.

他们说服我参加来宴会。

They talk me into coming to the party.

他们竭力说服她放弃诉讼，但都无济于事。

They tried their best to talk her into giving up the lawsuit, but in vain.

露茜说服她妈妈在她去外婆家时不送她。

Lucy talked her mother out of seeing her off to her grandparents.

3. He can next be traced in 1592 in London …

… after that we know he was in London in 1592.

4. Shakespeare soon became sufficiently well-known for managers and other

influential people to refer to him in writing.

Soon Shakespeare became so famous that managers and other powerful people

often mentioned him in their writings.

refer to

这个著名的政治家被许多作家在他们的作品中提到。

The famous statesman is referred to by many writers in their writing.

5. make a name: become famous

What is the implied meaning of the sentence “We know that as well as working on old

plays he rapidly made a name for himself as an author of entirely new ones and also

performed as an actor at court?

The sentence means: “He soon became famous by not only improving or revising the

old plays but also writing completely new plays and acting in the plays for the queen.”

The implied meaning of this sentence is that Shakespeare was gifted both in creative

writing and in acting in the theatre.

Para. 6

since

她六月去乡下过暑假并且从那时起就一直呆到现在。

She went to the country in June to spend her summer holidays and has remained

there ever since.

我们的班长两个星期前发高烧病倒了，此后一直卧床不起。

Our monitor was suddenly down with a high fever a fortnight ago and has been

keeping to his bed ever since.

Para. 7

斯密斯先生什么也没有留给他的孩子们除了他的手稿。

Mr. Smith left nothing to his children but his manuscripts.

我们班没有一个同学参加校友会除了鲍勃。

None of my classmates came to the Alumni Meeting but Bob.

V. Writing techniques

the first paragraph, the text is organized in the usual chronological order.

flashback technique is used.

technique of cyclic return is employed.

tone of the text can be described as emotional.

riate temporal reference points are used to enable readers to trace the flow of

events.

VI. library work: Shakespeare in my eyes