III. Rewrite and Cloze-Test Design 15%
Rewrite the following article into a short passage within 150-250 words and design 5 cloze questions for B2-level high school students.
Anyone with more than a superficial knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays must necessarily entertain some doubt concerning their true authorship. Can scholars honestly accept the idea that such masterworks were written by a shadowy actor with limited formal education and a social position that can most charitably be called “humble”? Obviously, the real author had to have intimate knowledge of life within royal courts and palaces, yet Shakespeare was a commoner, with little firsthand experience of the aristocracy. Common sense tells us that the plays must have been written by someone with substantial expertise in the law, the sciences, classics, foreign languages,
and the fine arts. Someone, in other words, like Shakespeare’s eminent contemporary, Sir Francis Bacon.
The first person to suggest that Bacon was the actual author of the plays was Reverend James Wilmot. Writing in 1785, Wilmot argued that someone of Shakespeare’s educational background could hardly have produced works of such erudition and insight. But a figure like Bacon, a scientist and polymath of legendary stature, would certainly have known about, for instance, the circulation of the blood as alluded to in Coriolanus. And, as an aristocrat, Bacon would have possessed the familiarity with court life required to produce Love’s Labour’s Lost. Delia Bacon (no relation to Sir Francis) was next to make the case for Francis Bacon’s
authorship. In 1856, in collaboration with Nathaniel Hawthorne, she insisted that it was ridiculous to look for the creator of Hamlet among “that dirty, doggish group of players, who come into scene of the play Hamlet summoned like a pack of hounds to his service.” Ultimately, she concluded that the plays were composed by a committee consisting of Bacon, Edmund Spenser, Walter Raleigh, and several others.
Still, some might wonder why Bacon, if indeed the plays were wholly or partially his work, would not put his own name on them. But consider the political climate of England in Elizabeth times. Given that it would have been politically and personally damaging for a man of Bacon’s position to associate himself with such controversial plays, it is quite understandable that Bacon would hire a lowly actor to take the credit and the consequences.
But perhaps the most convincing evidence of all comes from the postscript of a 1624 letter sent to Bacon by Sir Tobie Matthew. “The most prodigious wit that I ever knew … is your lordship’s name,” Matthew wrote, “though he be known by another.” That name, of course, was William Shakespeare.
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