Read the following passage and then compeleted the sentences that follow by filling in the blanks with appropriate information from the text. You may have to use words that summarize the meaning of some portions of the text or spell the word with the initial letter given.(15 points) However, plays change their meaning over time. The elements that modern audiences find most disturbing in The Merchant of Venice would probably not have bothered the average Elizabethan theatergoer, while conversely, Elizabethans would have been aware of social and religious nuances that may be lost on us. Particularly troubling to modern critics is Shylock's enforced conversion: to the modern sensibility it's difficult to reconcile Portia's fine words about charity with the court's subsequent denial of the Jew's right to the religion that is the very core of his ethnic identity. This is unlikely to have bothered Elizabethan theatergoers. Compared with the fate that was meted out to Catholic heretics like Edmund Campion, Shylock's sentence is lenient. Moreover, conversion of the Jews to Christianity was such a central, and proverbial, part of sixteenth-century apocalyptic that it's unlikely that an Elizabethan audience would have regarded Shylock's sentence as unreasonable. After all, hadn't St. Paul himself said that all Israel shall be saved(Rom. 31:26), which the Geneva Bible glossed as meaning that Christians have a duty to work for the conversion of the Jews by spreading the gospel and "the good tidings of salvation which they preached"? Elizabethan exegetes believed that conversion of the Jews was the last stage in the grand historical plan outlined in Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream(Daniel 2:31—44.6). The surprising thing about The Merchant of Venice is not that Shakespeare could have written a play that seems to give such free expression to anti-Semitic prejudice, but that in an age when dramatists and their audiences had few inhibitions about such matters, it asks us to question that prejudice. Despite Portia's flagrant deception of a court of law, most Elizabethan theatergoers would probably have agreed that by the end of Act IV mercy had been shown and justice done; Shylock's conversion was clearly a matte of being cruel only to be kind. However, that's not to say that Shylock would have been an uncontroversial figure for a contemporary audience. Though he is portrayed as a Jew, his values seem almost indistinguishable from those of a puritan: he is thrifty and self-righteous("What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?" - IV. I. 88); he hates music, masquing and revelry; his house is "sober"(n. v. 36); he places great importance on his family(unlike his wifeless, "prodigal" adversary); and his idea of justice is based on the old lex talionis. Jews may not have been a pressing social issue in Elizabethan England but puritans certainly were... In The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare was more circumspect than he was in the two later plays, and used a politically uncontroversial hate-figure to stand for the puritan sensibility. The link was not entirely arbitrary. As a way of confirming their status as God's chosen people, some fundamentalist puritans actually referred to themselves as Israelites.... The parallel between puritans and Jew was sufficiently familiar to be made a topic of anti-puritan satire.

问答题 The author states that responses to a play man______(1 word)as history goes on.

问答题 Modern audiences may fail to perceive some______(4 words)in The Merchant of Venice which seemed obvious to Elizabethans.

问答题 ______(3 words)most disturbs modern critics because there is a discrepancy between rhetoric and practice in The Merchant of Venice.

问答题 The phrase that means "apportion or allot" in the text is______.

问答题 The verdict on Shylock was in keeping with the contemporary religious expectation and would not be felt______.(1 word)

问答题 What is unexpected about The Merchant of Venice is that it requires the spectators to cast doubt on a______.(1 word)

问答题 The author believes that Portia has blatantly______(1 word)the court of law.

问答题 The second paragraph seems to point out the______(1 word)of moral principles between Shylock and the Puritans.

问答题 The author implies that Shakespeare used Shylock as a safe object of ridicule to represent the ______(2 words)

问答题 Summarize the main idea of this passage in about 30 words.