[转贴]Shakespeare's Birthday

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<TABLE borderColor=#ffffff cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width=580 border=6><TBODY><TR class=Verdana18b vAlign=top><TD class=title1 align=middle><FONT size=4>Shakespeare&#39;s Birthday <!-- #EndEditable --></FONT></TD></TR><TR class=Verdana9b vAlign=top><TD class=title2 align=middle><SPAN class=english9><!-- #BeginEditable "title2" --><FONT size=4>April 23<!-- #EndEditable --></FONT></SPAN></TD></TR><TR class=english9 vAlign=top><TD class=english9 align=left height=117><!-- #BeginEditable "content" --><FONT size=4><IMG height=181 src="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-04/23/20020409_1489_shakespeare_0.jpg" width=150 align=left>The actual date of Shakespeare&#39;s birth is not known, but, traditionally, April 23, St George&#39;s Day, has been Shakespeare&#39;s accepted birthday, and a house on Henley Street in Stratford, owned by William&#39;s father, John, is accepted as Shakespeare&#39;s birth place. If Shakespeare was indeed born on Sunday, April 23, the next feast day would have been St. Mark&#39;s Day on Tuesday the twenty-fifth. St. Mark&#39;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. </FONT><><FONT size=4>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. </FONT></P><TABLE width="25%" align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><FONT size=4><IMG height=129 src="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-04/23/20020409_1489_shakespeare_1.jpg" width=180></FONT></TD></TR><TR align=middle bgColor=#e4e4e4><TD><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=4>Rear garden of Shakespeare&#39;s Birthplace</FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><><FONT size=4>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 &#39;lost years&#39; 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&#39;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. </FONT></P><><FONT size=4>Shakespeare&#39;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.</FONT></P><P><FONT size=4>Drama was a nation-wide activity in Shakespeare&#39;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&#39;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.</FONT></P><P><FONT size=4>Some of Shakespeare&#39;s most famous tragedies were written in the early 1600s, including Hamlet and, after James I&#39;s accession, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.<BR><BR></FONT></P><TABLE width="25%" align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><