Vocabulary Notes
shareholder – акціонер
timber – лісоматеріали
performance – вистава, п’єса
to go up in flames – загорітися
forgery – фальсифікація, підробка
tenement – багатоквартирний будинок, гуртожиток
dimensions – виміри
pit – партер (задні ряди за кріслами)
excavation – розкопки
nutshell – горіхова шкаралупа
rectangular stage platform – трикутна сценічно платформа
'apron stage' – авансцена (сцена-фартух)
width – ширина
depth – довжина
trap door – опускні двері
«cellarage» – підвал, льох
«tiring house» – артистична вбиральня
props – скорочено від properties, реквізит, бутафорія
rush matting – очерет
E x e r c i s e s
I. Answer the questions:
1. Who was the owner of the Globe theatre?
2. When the theatre was built?
3. When did the theatre go up in flames?
4. When did the “Shakespeare’s Globe” open?
5. What was the structure of the theatre?
6. What were the dimensions of the theatre?
II. Find the correct word for the phrase:
1. someone who performs in a play or a film —
2. a building or place with a stage where plays and shows are performed —
3. someone who owns shares in a company or business —
4. a theatrical work that is intentionally humorous —
5. clothing worn by an actor on stage during a performance —
6. the theatre of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and often extended to the close of the theatres in 1640 —
7. a person who writes plays —
8. practice sessions in which the actors and technicians prepare for public performance through repetition —
9. a long speech by a single character —
10. cosmetics and sometimes hairstyles that an actor wears on stage to emphasize facial features, historical periods, characterizations, and so forth —
Doris lessing
Doris May Lessing is a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer.
Lessing was born in Iran, then known as Persia, on 22 October 1919, to Captain Alfred Tayler and Emily Maude Tayler, who were both English and of British nationality. Her father, who had lost a leg during his service in World War I, met his future wife, a nurse, at the Royal Free Hospital where he was recovering from his amputation. Alfred Tayler and his wife moved to Kermanshah, Iran, in order to take up a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia and it was there that Doris was born in 1919. The family then moved to the then British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1925 to farm maize, among other plants, when her father purchased around one thousand acres of bush. Lessing's mother attempted to lead an Edwardian lifestyle amidst the rough environment, which would have been easy had the family been wealthy; in reality, such a lifestyle was not feasible. The farm failed to deliver any monetary value in return.
Lessing was educated at the Dominican Convent High School, a Roman Catholic convent all-girls school in Salisbury (now Harare). She left school at the age of 14, and was self-educated from there on; she left home at 15 and worked as a nursemaid. She started reading material that her employer gave her, on politics and sociology and began writing around this time. In 1937, Lessing moved to Salisbury to work as a telephone operator, and she soon married her first husband, Frank Wisdom, with whom she had two children (John and Jean), before the marriage ended in 1943.
Following her first divorce, Lessing's interest was drawn to the popular community of the Left Book Club, a communist book club which she had joined the year before. It was here that she met her future second husband, Gottfried Lessing. They were married shortly after she joined the group, and had a child together (Peter), before the marriage failed and ended in divorce in 1949. After these two failed marriages, she has not been married since.
Because of her campaigning against nuclear arms and South African apartheid, Lessing was banned from that country and from Rhodesia for many years. She moved to London with her youngest son in 1949. Her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, was published in 1950. Her breakthrough work, The Golden Notebook, was written in 1962.
In 1984, Doris Lessing attempted to publish two novels under a pseudonym, Jane Somers, to show the difficulty new authors faced in trying to have their works in print. The novels were declined by Lessing’s UK publisher, but were later accepted by another English publisher, Michael Joseph, and in the US by Alfred A. Knopf. The Diary of a Good Neighbour was published in England and the US in 1983, and If the Old Could in both countries in 1984, both as written by Jane Somers. In 1984, both novels were re-published in both countries (Viking Books publishing in the US), this time under one cover, with the title The Diaries of Jane Somers: The Diary of a Good Neighbour and If the Old Could, listing Doris Lessing as author instead of listing Jane Somers.
She declined a dame hood, but accepted appointment as a Companion of Honour at the end of 1999 for "conspicuous national service". She has also been made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.
In 2007, Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was 87, making her the oldest winner of the literature prize at the time of the award and the third oldest Nobel Laureate in any category. She also stands as only the eleventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature by the Swedish Academy in its 106-year history.
Lessing's fiction is commonly divided into three distinct phases: the Communist theme (1944–1956), when she was writing radically on social issues, the psychological theme (1956–1969), and after that the Sufi theme, which was explored in the Canopus in Argos sequence of science fiction (or as she preferred to put it "space fiction") novels and novellas.