Read carefully the passages given below and answer the questions that follow
In the spring of 1616, Francis Beaumont and William Shakespeare died within a few weeks of each other. Beaumont became the first dramatist to be honoured with burial in the national shrine of Westminister Abbey. Shakespeare was laid to rest in the provincial obscurity of his native stratford - upon - Avon.
We now think of Shakespeare as a unique genius, but these two very different burials are a reminder that in his own time, though widely admired, he was but one of the constellation of theatrical stars. How is it, then that in the 18th and 19th centuries Shakespeare’s fame outstripped that of all his peers? In the same year that Beaumont and Shakespears died, Ben Jonson became the first English dramatist to publish a collected edition of his own plays. Seven years later, Shakespeare’s fellow actors John Hemings and Henry Condell followed with their folio-sized collection of William Shakespeare’s Comedies Histories and Tragedies, published according to the true original copies. Whereas Jonson’s works got only a single reprint after his death, Shakespeare’s Folio got reprinted three times before the end of the century. Later on, Dryden and his contemporaries took considerable liberties in polishing and “improving” Shakespeare’s plays for performance. According to the law of poetic justice, wholly innocent characters should not be allowed to die : Nahum Tate therefore rewrote. King Lear (1681) with a happy ending in which Cordelia marries Edgar.
It is universally acknowledged that Shakespeare’s gift of poetic invention surpassed that of any writer before or since Shakespeare endures because, with each new turn of history, a new dimension of his work opens up before us. His plays will always strike a resonance with the times.
Early in 1934, when the French Socialist government was close to collapse, a new translation of Coriolanus was staged in Paris. The production was perceived as an attack on democratic institutions. Later on, the same play was staged in the The Maly Theatre Company in Stalin’s Moscow which sought to demonstrate that Coriolanus was an “enemy of people” and therefore Shakespeare was a true socialist. But he was neither an absolutist nor a democrat, but the fact is that he continues to live through his work four centuries after his death.
(i) How was Francis Beaumont honoured?
(ii) Give one example to show that Shakespeare was more famous than his peers.
(iii) Why was the play ‘King Lear’ written again?
(iv) Why does Shakespeare still live?
(v) How was the play Coriolanus perceived in Paris and Moscow?
(vi) In his own time Shakespeare was thought to be
(a) a unique genius
(b) an absolutist
(c) one of the constellation of theatrical artists
(d) a democrat
(vii) Frame a question based on the underlined part of the passage
(viii) Pick out words from the passage which mean the same as :-
(a) regarded with respect.
(b) to be greater and better than.
