填空题 A. mysterious B. collaboration C. bound D. candidly
E. similarly F. optimum G. rumble H. outlive
I. moment J. scramble K. contested L. speculations
M. literary N. compensate O. abbreviation
Phew, what a relief. It seems that the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare"s Globe won"t have to change their names any time soon. The squabble so beloved by academics, conspiracy (阴谋) theorists and Hollywood film-makers—which only surfaced in the mid-19th century but continues to 11 on—over the authorship of Shakespeare"s plays, may finally be called to a halt by a new book.
In Shakespeare Beyond Doubt, leading scholars organize the arguments and evidence to prove that Shakespeare really did write Shakespeare"s plays. It puts paid to 12 that Shakespeare was the Earl of Oxford (as suggested by the movie Anonymous), or Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon, or even Queen Elizabeth Ⅰ when she was having a day off from running the country. Great. That means the rest of us can just go on seeing and enjoying the astonishing plays, which may have 13 authorship, but which are constantly revealing in their examination of what it means to be human.
Except that it won"t. The arguments, between those who want to rewrite 14 history and those who don"t, will keep going, constantly fueled by any kind of conspiracy theory—the madder the better—and the fact that there is now so much money, and so many academic careers, 15 up in the Shakespeare industry.
There is a 16 in Alan Bennett"s play Kafka"s Dick when one of the characters, Sydney, admits he"d much rather "read about writers than read what they write". His wife, Lynda, is 17 uninterested in the poems of WH Auden, but alights on juicy tidbits(趣闻) about the poet including his preference for not wearing underpants. It sometimes seems as if the 18 authorship debate around Shakespeare"s plays is full of Sydneys and Lyndas—people for whom the life of the writer is infinitely more important than the works themselves.
The plays are what count and they will 19 the debate, no matter whose name is on the title page, whether written alone or in 20 , and whether someone can definitively prove whether the author was wearing underpants or not. So it should be, because the play"s the thing.