III. Are the statements true or false? Correct the false statements.

1. The Cathedral Church of Christ, Canterbury, is not an important church in England.

2. The Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England or Anglican Church.

3. The Cathedral did not attract many pilgrims in the Middle Ages, but today it is a place of mass pilgrimage.

4. Thomas Becket was not murdered but died a natural death.

5. Thomas's shrine was an ordinary tomb, poorly decorated.

6. In his childhood Chaucer was sent to school where he did not study well, though he loved to read books.

7. During Chaucer's service at the court he studied poetry and wrote his poems at his office at the court.

8. In the time of Chaucer people travelled mostly in carriages.

9. People usually made pilgrimages to Canterbury alone, they did not like to come in groups.

10. Today few people visit Canterbury because Becket's shrine is no longer in the church.

IV. Answer the questions.

1. Why do all Anglican churches throughout the world look at Canterbury Cathedral as their spiritual centre?

2. Where is the Cathedral located?

3. Why was Thomas Becket murdered?

4. Who murdered Thomas Becket?

5. How did the Christian world react to Becket's martyrdom?

6. Who ordered the destruction of Thomas Becket's shrine? Why?

7. Did Henry VIII make use of any of the jewels which decorated Becket's tomb?

8. What role did Chaucer play for the development of the English language?

9. Were there any famous old poems in English literature before Chaucer's time?

10. How many people took part in the pilgrimage described by Chaucer?

Points for discussion

1. The relationship between Henry II and Thomas Becket.

2. The role of Chaucer in the development of English literature.

3. The 29 people at Tabard Inn and Harry Bailey's suggestion.

Shakespeare and Shakespeareland

In the little village of Stratford-on-Avon, on a spring morning in the year 1564, a boy was born in the home of John and Mary Shakespeare. John Shakespeare was a man of some importance in Stratford. He was one of the town officers (chief alderman) and a dealer in corn, meat, leather, wool. He was also a maker of gloves. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a wealthy farmer living not far from town.

The Stratford of those days was a quiet little place of some 200 houses. To the neighbouring villages it was something of a capital, but a very sleepy capital from our point of view. Standing on the River Avon, it was the meeting point where the forests of the north met the open farm lands of the south. Here the roads from the great towns met, and there­fore the main bridge of the town known as Clopton Bridge because it was built by H.Clopton in 1500, played an important role in the life of the town. Stratford was full of orchards, gardens and trees. In 1582 there were nearly a thousand elms in and around the town.

The Shakespeares lived in a well-built house of rough stone, covered outside with plaster and crossed with heavy beams of dark oak. The house is still standing in Hen­ley Street and is visited every year by thousands of tourists. Inside are the living room, kitchen, cellar, the room where William Shakespeare was born, and other upstairs rooms all furnished in the style of the 16th century. Here you can see a unique collec­tion of books, manuscripts and other re­markable things. The garden contains trees, plants and flowers mentioned in Shake­speare's plays and poems.

The parents did not know that their son, William, was going to be such an important person in English poetry and drama, and that his plays would still be so popular four hundred years later in Britain and all over the world.

Other children came into the Shakespeare family, and it was a pleasant life that they led in the old plastered house with the dark oak beams. The Avon River flowed quietly through the meadows at the end of the next street, and the country all around seemed like a great playground. For several years young Will attended the Stratford Grammar School, where he learned Latin and busied himself with such studies as the boys of that day would do.

Strolling companies of players sometimes came to Stratford, and as Will's father was the officer to whom they came to get permission to act their plays, it is probable that Will saw them and was greatly interested, for he loved to see a play. The plays were usually performed out of doors, or perhaps in the courtyard of some inn, and the people who followed the play either stood, or if it were in an inn court, may have looked out of the windows or sat upon the balconies that often stretched around the sides of the court at each storey of the inn. The players would sometimes raise a rough stage of boards; sometimes they would act their play upon the green field; but there were hardly any decorations. The audience had to imagine a great deal, but the actors wore fine costumes and made a great show in their bright clothes; and all the citizens of the town poured out to see the plays.

When Will Shakespeare was about eleven, it became known in Stratford one afternoon that Queen Elizabeth was to visit one of the greatest lords of his time, the Earl of Leicester, at his castle near Stratford. All the people from Stratford and the surrounding countryside hurried to see the Queen and the show. John Shakespeare was there, and, of course, he took Will with him. There were plays and shows of all kinds, like a great fair, and there was the great queen.

When William was about thirteen his father fell into debt, and had to sell much of his property, while the boy had to leave school and work.

We do not know what he did. Some say he worked at the butcher's shop, but the most important thing that he did was to notice carefully all the people whom he met, and the river, and the sky, and the meadows, so that he knew how every sort of man and woman looked and behaved, and how every flower grew, and what every season brought. Later he put all this into his plays.

When he was little more than eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a farmer's daughter living at Shottery, only a short walk across the fields from Stratford. You can still see this beautiful thatched (the roof covered with straw) farm house. The original Hathaway furniture and other things are preserved inside. We don't know how William earned his living during these years. He may have worked for his father, or perhaps, he could be a teacher. During these years his three children were born: Susannah, the eldest daughter, then the twins — a son, Hamnet, and Judith, another daughter.

But Shakespeare could not think of staying forever in the village. There was something in him that told him to look farther, and so one day in 1587 he said good-bye to his wife and children, and went to work in London. There is a story that says this is because he killed some deer which belonged to a lord nearby, and that he had to run away.

When in London, he went straight to the theatre to get some work there. Finding nothing better to do, he began by holding the horses of the fine gentlemen who came to see the plays. It is said that a little later he began to call out the names of the actors and the plays which they performed. After a time he was given a small part to act. But he soon showed that he had the talent to change old plays so that they could be more easily acted. Then he began to write plays himself, and almost before he knew it he was famous. All the actors wanted to act Shakespeare's plays, and all the people wanted to see them acted, because there was life in them, and because they showed men and women as they really were.

By 1592 he was an important member of a well-known acting company, and in 1599 the famous Globe Theatre was built on the south bank of the river Thames. It was in this theatre that most of his plays were performed, and like all theatres of those days, it was a round building with the stage in the centre open to the sky. If it rained, the actors got wet. If the weather was too bad, there was no acting.

By 1603, when Queen Elizabeth I died, Shakespeare was the leading poet and dramatist of his time. In spite of his fame Shakespeare did not grow proud. He worked hard, writing at one time of his life about two plays a year. He returned often to Stratford to see his family, bought a good house for them, paid his father's debts, and when he had earned all that he thought he needed, returned to Stratford in 1613.He spent the rest of his days looking after his farm and living the life of a country gentleman. He died there in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, the most famous writer of his time and of all times. Everyone loved him. He was kind, gentle, full of fun, a good friend, and a great companion. He is buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, which is a beautiful church whose slender spire is reflected in the quietly flowing Avon. The approach through the churchyard is beautiful, a long paved walk bordered by lime trees. Inside the church you can read the registers containing the lines about Shakespeare's baptism and his burial. Here you can see his monument and gravestone with the famous words, which are supposed to have been written by the poet himself.

Most of his plays are poems written in blank verse — that is, verse without rhyme. Parts of them are in prose. The greatest of the plays are perhaps "The Merchant of Venice", "Julius Caesar", "Hamlet", "King Lear", "Macbeth", and "The Tempest".

Stratford-upon-Avon is one of the most attractive country towns in England. Located on the banks of the winding River Avon in the green heart of England, it still preserves the atmosphere of the market town that Shakespeare knew some three and a half centuries ago. If you arrive by road from London you will enter the town by way of Clopton Bridge which exists since the Middle Ages.

Memories of Shakespeare are everywhere. In fact you can follow the poet's footsteps from the house where he was born in Henley Street to the poet's tomb in Holy Trinity Church. You may also visit the splendid Royal Shakespeare Theatre located on the banks of the Avon and opened in 1932. It was built with money collected from people in Britain and especially the U.S.A. Here each year from April to November, a season of Shakespeare's plays is performed before an audience of enthusiasts, coming from all over the world. The theatre also has an interesting picture gallery and museum. One of the most pleasant ways of spending a quiet hour or two in Stratford in order to feel the atmosphere of the days of Shakespeare is to take a boat on the River Avon and explore the beautiful countryside. No wonder Shakespeare is known as the "Swan of Avon". It is an interesting fact that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 on St.George's Day who is the patron saint of England, and he died on the saint's day in 1616.Every 23rd April is a special day in Stratford, as the bells of Holy Trinity Church ring out. Flags from many nations are put up, and the Mayor leads a big procession to lay flowers on Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church.

Comprehension Check