Unit 3
Text Young William Shakespeare
I. Author
 Jennifer Bassett is an experienced teacher and
the writer. She lives and works in the Devon , in
the northwest of England. Jennifer is the Series
Editor of the Oxford Bookworms Library, for
which she has written the original stories OneWay Ticket, The President's Murderer, The
Phantom of the Opera, and William
Shakespeare, along with many adaptations.
She is series co-adviser, with H.G Widdowson,
of the Oxford Bookworms Collection. Jennifer
has also written original stories for the English
Today Readers and Storylines series
II. Introduction to William Shakespeare
 Will was born in 1564
in Stratford-on-Avon,
Warwickshire,
England and died in
1616. He was one of
the greatest poet and
playwright, one of the
founders of realism in
world literature, and a
great master of the
English language. He
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
was skilled in many
poetic forms.
 He has been universally acknowledged
to be the summit of the English
Renaissance. Within about twenty-two
years of his writing career, he gave to
the world 38 plays, no two of which
invoke the same feeling or image among
the audience. He wrote lots of comedies,
tragedies, histories and poetry. His
plays have been translated into every
major living language, and are
performed more often than those of any
other playwright.
莎士比亚故居
莎士比亚墓










Comedy (17) :
All’s Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Love’s Labours Lost
Measure for Measure
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merchant of Venice
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado About Nothing







Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter’s Tale











Tragedy (10):
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus











History (10):
Henry IV, part 1
Henry IV, part 2
Henry V
Henry VI, part 1
Henry VI, part 2
Henry VI, part 3
Henry VIII
King John
Richard II
Richard III







Poetry (5):
The Sonnets
A Lover’s Complaint
The Rape of Lucrece
Venus and Adonis
Funeral Elegy by W.S.
He also wrote 154 sonnets, two long
narrative poems, and several other poems.
The popularity of Shakespeare is not confined
to the English or European people only. His
name has been known to the Chinese people
for a hundred years. He is world famous.
Pic. of some of Will’s comedies
Pic. of some of Will’s tragedies
III. Structure of the Text
 Part I – Will as a naughty boy & a school boy.
 Part II – Will as a glove-maker.
 Part III – Will as a husband.
 Part IV – Will as an actor and playwright.
IV. Text Analysis
 ambition – the object or goal desired 抱负,雄心

Her ambition is the presidency.

她的抱负是成为一名总统.
 fortune – luck
 He decided to go home for the holidays, and his
fortune turned for the worse.
 他决定回家度假，没想到他的运气变坏了.
 cover – to deal with; treat of 论及;处理

The book covers the feminist movement.
 enraged – angry
Stratford
 Stratford-upon-Avon is
situated in the heart of
the English midlands. A
market town dating back
to medieval times,
Stratford is today most
famous as the birthplace
of the Elizabethan
playwright William
Shakespeare.
 Why was Farmer Nash’s face red with anger?
 Because he found Will was stealing his apples.
 Why did Will dare to pick apples at Farmer
Nash’s orchard?
 Because he thought Farmer Nash had gone to
the market.
 Simile(明喻) – a figure of speech in which two
essentially unlike things are compared, often in
a phrase introduced by ‘like’, ‘as’, ‘as if’, ‘as
though’.
 (1) The check fluttered to the floor like a bird

with a broken wing.
 (2) He jumped back as if he had been stung

and the blood rushed into his wrinkled face.


as brave as a lion as clear as crystal

as dark as pitch
as white as snow
 metaphor (暗喻) – a figure of speech in which a
word or phrase that ordinarily designates one
thing is used to designate another, thus making
an implicit comparison
 a sea of troubles 忧愁之海
 “All the world's a stage” (Shakespeare)
 “整个世界一台戏” (莎士比亚)
 metonymy (借喻) – a figure of speech in which
one word or phrase is substituted for another
with which it is closely associated, as in the use
of “Washington” for “the United States
government” or of “the sword” for “military
power”, “crown” for “king” .
 The Queen of Egypt
 Cleopatra VII (69-30 B.C.), noted for her beauty and
charm, was the last queen of Ancient Egypt. She
earned her own place in fame with her brilliance, wit
and determination. She was brilliant, strong-willed,
quick-witted, and fluent in nine languages. She had a
charismatic personality, was a born leader and a very
ambitious monarch. It has been said that Rome feared
only two people, Hannibal and Cleopatra. She was
Julius Caesar's lover, the wife of Mark Anthony but
was defeated by Octavian.
 Greek historian birds Dior • Casey said: "She was
fascinated by the two greatest Romans, but destroyed
in a third of these people (Octavian) hands."
Cleopatra
 King Solomon
 Thousands of years ago. There was a very clever king
with the name of Solomon. There are many stories
about him. Here is one of them which shows how
clever he was. Once there were two women. They
lived in the same house, and each had a baby. One
night, one of the babies died, and its mother took the
other woman's child, and put it in her own bed instead.
The next morning they had a quarrel. "No, this is my
child, the dead one is yours, " said the other. Each one
wanted the living baby, but no one could tell whom it
belonged to. So they went to see King Solomon.
When King Solomon heard their story, he said, "Bring
me a knife, cut the child in two, and give each woman
one half. " "That's very fair, oh, bright King!" said the
dead baby's mother. "Give her my child, let it be hers,
but don't kill the child. Oh, King!" cried the other
woman in tears. Then King Solomon pointed to the
woman in tears and said, "Give the child to her, for
 Puritan – (1) a member of a group of English
Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries
advocated strict religious discipline along with
simplification of the ceremonies and creeds of
the Church of England.
 清教徒,兴起于16和17世纪的英国新教徒一派的成员，
主张严格的宗教原则和英国教堂的仪式及教义的从简
 (2) one who lives in accordance with Protestant
precepts(戒律), especially one who regards
pleasure or luxury as sinful.
 清教徒似的人,尤指那些把快乐或奢侈看作罪恶的根据
新教戒律生活的人
 The term "Puritan" first began as a taunt or
insult applied by traditional Anglicans to those
who criticized or wished to "purify" the Church
of England. "Puritan" refers to two distinct
groups: "separating" Puritans, such as the
Plymouth colonists, who believed that the
Church of England was corrupt and that true
Christians must separate themselves from it;
and non-separating Puritans, such as the
colonists who settled the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, who wished to reform the established
church but not separation. The idea of
compacts or covenants(公约；合同) was central
to the Puritans' conception of social, political,
and religious organizations.
 Everyone was happy. For a while. Why?
 Because Will was not happy with his life in
Stratford and he wanted to get away from it.
 monotonous – boring
 do costumes – take care of clothes for actors
and actresses worn in plays
 properties – 道具
 versatile – capable of doing many things

competently 多才多艺的










V. Writing style
1. 1st-person narration, making the story
believable.
2. figure of speech: simile, metaphor,metonymy
VI. Ex. about the text
VII. Homework:
(1) Fast reading
(2) Home reading
(3) Preview Unit 7
 personification - a figure of speech in which
inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed
with human qualities or are represented as
possessing human form
 Four evergreen shrubs stood at each corner,
where they struggled to survive the dust and
fumes from a busy main road.
 But the houses were cold, closed, unfriendly.
 hyperbole (夸张) - a figure of speech in which
exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as
in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs
a ton.
 irony（反语） - the use of words to express
something different from and often opposite to
their literal meaning for humorous or rhetorical
effect.
 She was not so young as I expected and in
appearance imposing (因外貌或形体而使人印象
深刻，作者在此以讽刺挖苦的口吻描述一个贪吃
而肥胖的女人) rather than attractive.
 parody （仿拟）– a figure of speech that
imitates the characteristic style of an author or a
work for comic effect or ridicule
 To lie or not to lie – the doctor’s dilemma.
 (To be or not to be, that is the question.)
 oxymoron (矛盾修饰法) - a rhetorical figure in
which incongruous or contradictory terms are
combined, as in a deafening silence and a
mournful optimist一种把互相矛盾或不调和的词合
在一起的修辞手法，如在 震耳欲聋的沉默和 悲伤
的乐观
 alliteration (头韵) - the repetition of the same
consonant sounds or of different vowel sounds
at the beginning of words or in stressed
syllables
 在一组词的开头或重读音节中对相同辅音或不同
元音的重复
 A miserable, merry Christmas.
 Profits of praise.