新GRE閱讀高頻原文：英國女演員地位.

　　看一下GRE閱讀高頻題目，了解GRE考試出題特征。這是一片典型的介紹英美文化的文章，文章是長閱讀。這樣的題材非常受到GRE考試的歡迎，所以有關(guān)于這類的文章，也需要大家有所了解。

　　英國女演員地位

　　根據(jù)寂靜“有一個講 English Actress 的長閱讀。 大致是分析為什么 1860(?記不清什么時候了)之后 English Actresses were accepted by the audiences. 第一段都是在講幾種解釋，然后一一否定掉。第二段就給出了作者支持 的解釋：好像是...差異來著忘了。第三段就記到說 King 通過影響 aristocrats 從而影響了 audiences 對 Actresses 的態(tài)度。有個題問道 King 的意義?！?/p>

　　原文應(yīng)該是從Katharine Eisaman Maus的Playhouse Flesh and Blood": Sexual Ideology and the Restoration Actress (1979)中節(jié)選的。

　　文章談到1660年第一個actress登臺。盡管是重要的一步，但不是沒有先例，e.g., Queen Henrietta Maria。是什么導(dǎo)致了觀眾觀念的轉(zhuǎn)變呢?難道audience突然意識到應(yīng)該relinquish a set of absurd scruples?

　　The orthodox explanation of the actresses&apos new acceptability is, if not entirely wrong, at least seriously insufficient. Orthodox explanation說actress出現(xiàn)是因為人們不滿老用boys來演女人。作者隨后說這種論證沒有證據(jù)，因為多數(shù)觀眾都挺滿意男孩演的Juliets, Cleopatras.. 另外有人說人們開始追求naturalism，作者也反對，因為the standard of naturalism changes from generation to generation.

　　1660開始的新的戲劇種類教Restoration theater，比之前更public的劇院更加intimate。女演員一直在restoration theater表演，所以已經(jīng)被一小群人accepted.

　　作者的觀點：sexual explicitness。17世紀(jì)女人低于男人的hierarchical structure已經(jīng)過時了. Charles I 喜歡court drama，因為大家都dress up顯示地位;然而Charles II喜歡帶著面具和一幫aristocrats and rich Londoners一起party. 整個時代都趨向于更平等的社會地位。但是這同時也使人們更注重什么是typically "male" or "female"。人們開始覺得女性是非常unique and delicate的，需要獨特的actress來present the female personality on stage.

　　發(fā)個關(guān)于1660年前后actress沒地位的機經(jīng)文章

　　In the past, only men could become actors in some societies. In the ancient Greece and Rome[13] and the medieval world, it was considered disgracul for a woman to go on the stage, and this beli persisted until the 17th century, when in Venice it was broken. In the time of William Shakespeare, women&aposs roles were generally played by men or boys.[14]

　　When an eighteen-year Puritan prohibition of drama was lifted after the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. Margaret Hughes is credited by some as the first professional actress on the English stage.[15] This prohibition ended during the reign of Charles II in part due to the fact that he enjoyed watching actresses on stage.[16] The first occurrence of the term actress was in 1700 according to the OED and is ascribed to Dryden.[7]

　　In Japan, men (onnagata) took over the female roles in kabuki theatre when women were banned from performing on stage during the Edo period. This convention has continued to the present. However, some forms of Chinese drama have women playing all the roles.

　　In modern times, women sometimes play the roles of prepubescent boys. The stage role of Peter Pan, for example, is traditionally played by a woman, as are most principal boys in Britishpantomime. Opera has several "breeches roles" traditionally sung by women, usually mezzo-sopranos. Examples are Hansel in H?nsel und Gretel, Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier.

　　Women in male roles are uncommon in film with the notable exceptions of the films The Year of Living Dangerously and I&aposm Not There. In the former film Linda Hunt played the pivotal role of Billy Kwan, for which she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the latter film Cate Blanchett portrayed Jude Quinn, a representation of Bob Dylan in the sixties, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Women playing men in live theatre is particularly common in presentations of older plays, such as those of Shakespeare, that have large numbers of male characters in roles where the gender no longer matters in modern times.[citation needed]

　　Having an actor dress as the opposite sex for comic fect is also a long-standing tradition in comic theatre and film. Most of Shakespeare&aposs comedies include instances of overt cross-dressing, such as Francis Flute in A Midsummer Night&aposs Dream. The movie A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum stars Jack Gilford dressing as a young bride. Tony Curtisand Jack Lemmon famously posed as women to escape gangsters in the Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot. Cross-dressing for comic fect was a frequently used device in most of the thirty Carry On films. Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams have each appeared in a hit comedy film (Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire, respectively) in which they played most scenes dressed as a woman.