2017届高考英语二轮复习阅读理解素材：17_高考复习指南

2017届高考英语二轮复习阅读理解素材：17

　　3. You speak Shakespeare

　　In spite of his flowery language, Shakespeare created many of the words or expressions we use in English today. We owe him: eyeball, bloodstained, radiance（辐射，光辉）, assassination and lackluster（无光泽的）, to name but a few.

　　4. Shakespeare's daughter was illiterate

　　In that period, literacy was a skill, useful in certain trades and professions, mainly male. Shakespeare was a man of his time, and his time did not value literacy in women.

　　5. Shakespeare did not care about posterity

　　It seems that Shakespeare did not care whether his plays survived or not. This may partly reflect the low esteem in which plays - a form of literature - were held at the time.

　　6. Shakespeare has no descendants

　　His only son, Hamnet, died at the age of 11. His daughter Susanna had no children and all his daughter Judith's children died young. None of his 3 brothers married. The Shakespeare line effectively ran out within 25 years of the poet's death.

　　7. Shakespeare has had some heavyweight haters

　　Not everyone has concurred in Shakespeare's greatness as a writer. Voltaire thought "Hamlet" the work of a "drunken savage"; George III said: "Was there ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so!" And George Bernard Shaw got quite carried away in his detestation of the poet: "It would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him." That was in a newspaper. Imagine if Shakespeare had been on Twitter.