您现在的位置: Language Tips> Easy English> Festival> April  
   
 





 
Shakespeare's Birthday(莎士比亚诞辰纪念日)
[ 2002-04-09 01:00 ]

Shakespeare's Birthday
April 23
Shakespeare's Birthday(莎士比亚诞辰纪念日)The actual date of Shakespeare's birth is not known, but, traditionally, April 23, St George's Day, has been Shakespeare's accepted birthday, and a house on Henley Street in Stratford, owned by William's father, John, is accepted as Shakespeare's birth place. If Shakespeare was indeed born on Sunday, April 23, the next feast day would have been St. Mark's Day on Tuesday the twenty-fifth. St. Mark's Day was still held to be unlucky, as it had been before the Reformation, when altars and crucifixes used to be draped in black cloth, and when some claimed to see in the churchyard the spirits of those doomed to die in that year.

William Shakespeare was born in 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon. Located in the centre of England, the town was (and still is) an important river-crossing settlement and market centre. His father, John, trained as a glove-maker and married Mary Arden, the daughter of Robert Arden, a farmer from the nearby village of Wilmcote.

Shakespeare's Birthday(莎士比亚诞辰纪念日)
Rear garden of Shakespeare's Birthplace

We do not know when or why Shakespeare left Stratford for London, or what he was doing before becoming a professional actor and dramatist in the capital. There are various traditions and stories about the so-called 'lost years' between 1585 and 1592, a period for which there is virtually no evidence concerning his life. One tale tells how he was caught poaching deer in Charlecote Park, near Stratford, and went off to London to avoid prosecution. A plausible early tradition claims Shakespeare was a schoolmaster for some years. When he was growing up, drama was a significant part of Stratford's social life. Not only did local people put on amateur shows, but the town was visited regularly by London-based companies of actors and Shakespeare may have joined one of them.

Shakespeare's first printed works were two long poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). 1n 1594, Shakespeare joined others in forming a new theatre company, under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain, with Richard Burbage as its leading actor. For almost twenty years Shakespeare was its regular dramatist, producing on average two plays a year. Burbage played roles such as Richard III, Hamlet, Othello and Lear.

Drama was a nation-wide activity in Shakespeare's time but only in London were there buildings designed specifically for performing plays. Performances took place in the afternoons, with the actors playing on a raised stage which projected halfway into the theatre. All the women's roles were performed by boys. The audience, which either stood in the yard around the stage or sat in the galleries, represented a wide social mix of people, but actors were generally regarded as rogues and vagabonds.

Some of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies were written in the early 1600s, including Hamlet and, after James I's accession, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.

Shakespeare's Birthday(莎士比亚诞辰纪念日)
Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried, and the River Avon

From around 1611 Shakespeare seems largely to have disengaged himself from the London theatre world and to have spent his time at his Stratford house, New Place. In March 1616 he signed his will, in which he left substantial property and other bequests to his family and friends, including theatre colleagues in the King's Men.

Shakespeare died in Stratford, aged fifty-two, on 23 April 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church two days later. Within a short time a monument to him was put up, probably by his family, on the wall close to his grave. His widow, Anne, died in 1623 and was buried beside him. Shakespeare's family line came to an end with the death of his grand-daughter Elizabeth in 1670.

中国日报网英语点津版权说明:凡注明来源为“中国日报网英语点津:XXX(署名)”的原创作品,除与中国日报网签署英语点津内容授权协议的网站外,其他任何网站或单位未经允许不得非法盗链、转载和使用,违者必究。如需使用,请与010-84883631联系;凡本网注明“来源:XXX(非英语点津)”的作品,均转载自其它媒体,目的在于传播更多信息,其他媒体如需转载,请与稿件来源方联系,如产生任何问题与本网无关;本网所发布的歌曲、电影片段,版权归原作者所有,仅供学习与研究,如果侵权,请提供版权证明,以便尽快删除。
相关文章 Related Story
 
 
 
本频道最新推荐
 
最新英国大学排名出炉
世界杯来临 英国人宿醉上班人数或飙升
Quote unquote
“折腾”和“动车”的雷人说法
全球城市生活质量调查 维也纳蝉联榜首
翻吧推荐
 
论坛热贴
 
关于工资的英语词汇大全
关于职业装的英语词汇
余光中《尺素寸心》(节选)译
中国译协中译英最新发布各类专业术语直译
功夫熊猫经典台词双语