Supplementary reading: Great Personalities

• Writers

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, the greatest English writer, and probably the greatest playwright who has ever lived, was born on the 23d of April, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon.

In spite of his fame we know very little about his life. At the age of 6 he was sent to school, but had to leave it at the age of 13. His father, John Shake- speare, was a glove-maker, and when he fell into debt, William had to help him in the trade.

At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway. Ann was 8 years older than her husband and the marriage wasn't a happy one.

When Shakespeare was 21, he went to London. Nobody can be sure about the first job of Shakespeare, but later he became an actor and a shareholder of a very successful acting company. Then the theatre was rebuilt into the Globe. Shakespeare's Globe was rather different from modern theatres. The plays were performed in the open air and the audience got wet if it rained. There was no scenery and the only lighting was the daylight. Women in those days weren't allowed to act in public and all the parts (even Juliet) were played by men.

Shakespeare wrote 37 plays: 10 tragedies (such as "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet", "King Lear", "Othello", "Macbeth"), 17 comedies (such as "As You Like It", "The Twelfth Night", "Much Ado About Nothing"), 10 historical plays (such as "Henry IV","Richard III"). He also left 7 books of poems.

Most of Shakespeare's plays were not published in his lifetime.

Shakespeare spent the last years of his life at Stratford, where he died on the same date as his birthday, the 23d of April, 1616. He was buried in the church of Stratford.

Vocabulary:

acting company – театральная труппа

audience [`o:diəns] – зрители

church – церковь

comedy – комедия

daylight – дневной свет

fame – слава

glove-maker – перчаточник

shareholder [`∫eə,həuldə] – один из владельцев, "дольщик"

in public – публично, на людях

in spite of – несмотря на

it's highly probable – весьма вероятно

lighting – освещение

marriage [`mærid3] – брак

playwright [`pleirait] – драматург

scenery – декорации

stage – сцена

successful [sək`sesful] – удачливый, имеющий успех

trade – ремесло

tragedy – трагедия

troop – труппа

to be buried [berid] – быть похороненным

to be sure [`∫uə] about smth. – быть уверенным насчёт чего-л.

to fall into debt – влезть в долги

to get wet – промокнуть

to hold (held) – держать

to perform – играть, исполнять художественное произведение

Questions:

1. When and whеre was Shakespeare born?

2. What was his father?

3. When did he marry? What do you know about his wife?

4. In what way was Shakespeare's Globe different from modern theatres?

5. How many plays did Shakespeare write? Have you read any of his plays?

6. When and where did Shakespeare die?

Fedor Dostoevsky

The Russian writer Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881) is regarded as one of the world's great novelists. Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821, in a Moscow hospital where his father was a physician. At the age of 13 Fedor was sent to a Moscow boarding school, and then to a military engineering school in St. Petersburg. After graduating he resigned his commission in order to devote his time to writing. His works "The Crime and a Punishment", "The Idiot", "The Brothers Karamazov" and others are famous for their psychological depth.

In April 1849 a lot of people, among which was Dostoevsky, were imprisoned for their revolutionary ideas. Dostoevsky and several others were sentenced to be shot, but at the last minute their sentence was changed to four years of hard labour in a prison in Omsk, Siberia.

He read and reread the New Testament, the only book he had, and built a mystical creed, identifying Christ with the common people of Russia. He had great sympathy for the criminals. As a child Dostoevsky suffered from mild epilepsy, and it grew worse in prison.

After four years in prison, he was sent as a private to a military station in Siberia. There in 1857 he met and married a widow named Marie Isaeva. In 1860 Dostoevsky was back in St. Petersburg. The next year he began to publish a literary journal that was soon suppressed. In 1862 he visited Western Europe and saw the difference between Russia and European countries. Dostoevsky had been separated from his wife but visited her in Moscow before her death in 1864. In 1867 he married his young stenographer, Anna Snitkina.

Dostoevsky died on February 9, 1881, in St. Petersburg.