新外研版高一英语必修二unit4课文

必修二unit4课文

Understanding ideas.

When HAMLET meets Peking OPERA.

1. I thought I knew a lot about Hamlet. As a high school student with English literature as one of my main subjects, I have to! Shakespeare's Hamlet is probably the most important play buy the most important writer in English. Almost everybody knows "To be, or not to be", right? Having seen quite a few productions of hamlet and read the play many times, I was full of confidence until the packing opera came to town！

2. Dating back to the 18th century, the Peking Opera has over 200 years of history. Does this man is easier than a Shakespeare play to understand? To find out the answer I just had to go and see the revenge of Prince Zidan-the Peking Opera version of Hamlet.

3. Starting with an orchestra playing traditional Chinese instruments, the opera brought a completely new sound to my Western ears. At first, I thought what I heard was a violin, but later I learned that it was an instrument with two strings called jinghu. Then seeing the main characters come on stage, I was surprised! The costumes and masks were amazing. The performers of course sang in Chinese, but the music, exaggerated movements and mime helped get the meanings across to the

audience. The voices themselves sounded really unique-some of the female voices were so high that I was sure they could break glass! And the stage was really simple: a decorated whip represented a horse, and a screen with Chinese characters, a study. Using such techniques, the oprea had transformed a small stage into the whole universe.

4. Easily my favorite part of the show was how the characters moved on stage. I had never seen Prince Hamlet do a backflip before! That was simply incredible. It was so dazzling and energetic that I wasn't sure if the characters were performers or athletes! Everyone was clapping!

5. Before experiencing the revenge of Prince Zidan, I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it. But in fact, I was on the edge of my seat! Feeling the strong emotions of love, anger, fear and grief in the performance, I could easily recognize the theme of Hamlet. So if you want to see a show that combines music, singing, drama ,poetry and costume design with explosive effect, The Revenge of Prince Zidan ticks all the right boxes!

Developing ideas.

Good Book Bad Movie?

1. They say that "a picture is worth a thousand words", but the briefest look at books and the movies based on them would have anyone questioning this common saying. All too often, great worlds end up being turned into cinematic "turkeys".

2. Good movies need good stories. If so, why has one of the earliest and greatest works in Western storytelling, Homer's The Odyssey, never had an equally great movie based on it? Movies need strong characters. So why have the movies based on The Great Gatsby never been praised as "great"? Movies of course need impressive images, so why has Alice in Wonderland only resulted in movies best described as "interesting"?

3. One of the key reasons behind this is that while a book usually takes a few days to read, a movie typically lasts under two hours. This means that great books can lose plot details and characters when they moved to the big screen. This is something that even the highly successful Harry Potter movies can't escape from, with fans of the books disappointed not to see some of their favorite characters in the movie versions.

4. Movies also disappoint us when things don't look the way we imagined them in the books. Take, for example, the epic movie Troy, which is in part based on Homer's The Iliad and was met with mixed reviews from