Stage a

Approaching the Topic

Read, intone and learn by heart the following text about the Priestleys:

Mr. Priestley is not a young man, but he is not old. He is about forty-four years old. He is a good-looking man, tall, handsome, rather thin with dark-brown hair just beginning to go grey. He is always very well-dressed, but quietly in good taste. He usually wears suits of dark brown, dark blue or dark grey.

He speaks quietly and pleasantly but there is strength under his quietness, and every student in his class knows this. He is quiet and pleasant because he is strong. Strength is generally quiet; weakness often is not.

Mrs. Priestley is a pleasant-looking woman of about forty, with warm brown hair and soft dark-brown eyes. She is kind and gentle.

The Priestleys have two children, John and Margaret. John is eighteen, six foot tall, and a fine manly fellow. He is strong both in body and character, and intelligent like his father.

Margaret is only eleven. She is a lovely little girl with golden hair and dark blue eyes and a spirit that is always bright and happy, full of joy and gaiety.

Answer the questions on the text:

1. Is Mr. Priestley a middle-aged man?

2. Has he good looks?

3. What does he look like?

4. What kind of clothes does he prefer to wear?

5. Mr. Priestley lacks taste absolutely, doesn’t he?

6. What makes a person strong?

7. Is Mr. Priestley a strong-willed personality?

8. Are husband and wife the same age?

9. What are Mrs. Priestley’s traits of character?

10. Can you call her pretty?

11. How many children are there in the family? Who are they?

12. How old are the children?

13. What is John like?

14. Do you like Margaret’s appearance?

15. Do you think the family is united?

Reading Skills

Retell the texts below paying special attention to the descriptions of people’s appearance.

1.

Aunt Emily

Of all my relatives, I like my Aunt Emily the best. She’s my mother’s youngest sister. She has never married, and lives alone in a small village near Bath. She’s in her late fifties, but she’s quite young in spirit. She has a fair complexion, thick brown hair which she wears in a bun, and dark brown eyes. She has a kind face, and when you meet her, the first thing you notice is her smile. Her face is a little wrinkled now, but I think she is still rather attractive. She is the sort of person you can always go to if you have a problem.

She likes reading and gardening, and she still goes for long walks over the hills. She’s a very active person. Either she’s making something, or mending something, or doing something to entertain herself. She’s extremely generous, but not very tolerant with people who don’t agree with her. I hope I’m as contented as she is when I’m her age.

2.

The colonel [k:nl] is a fine-looking man. His hair is white. So is his moustache. His face is cleanly shaven showing a bronzed complexion. The expression of his face is kind though firm.

The colonel has three sons. Basil, the eldest of the boys, is seventeen years of age. He is a fine-looking lad though not handsome. He looks very brave and strong. His hair is straight and black. He is, in fact, the son of his father.

How very unlike him is Lucien, the second of age. Lucien is delicate, with a light complexion and very fair hair. He is more like what his mother was, for she was a blonde.

The colonel’s youngest son is a quick-witted, curly-haired boy – cheerful at all times.

3.

Among the passengers there were two who interested me very much. One, a man of about thirty, was one of the tallest men I ever saw. He had yellow hair, a thick yellow beard, a handsome face and large eyes. His face made me think of someone I had seen before but at the time I could not remember who it was. The big man’s name was Sir Henry Curtis.

The other man was short, stout and dark. He was always very neat and clean-shaven; he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye, and he never took it out. At first I thought he even slept in it, but I afterwards found that this was not so. He put it in his trousers pocket when he went to bed, together with his false teeth of which he had two beautiful sets. (H.R. Haggard)

4.

Cedric was not tall, but broad-shouldered, long-armed and powerfully-made. His face was broad with large blue eyes, open and frank features, fine teeth and a well-formed head. He was frank but of a hasty temper. There was pride and jealousy in his eyes, for his life had been spent in maintaining his rights. His long yellow hair was not yet grey, although he was almost sixty. (W. Scott)

5.

Edward Reigart was a tall pale man of forty. His face spoke of his cleverness and kindness. He made a good impression.

But how different was his companion! He looked like a fox; his face was selfish and cruel. He was a short man, thinly-built, but he did not look weak. He had black hair. His large-nosed face was deathly pale. He was about fifty. (M. Reid)

6.

I saw a lady standing at the window with her back turned towards me. The instant my eyes rested on her, I was struck by the rare beauty of her form. Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat; her head set on her shoulders with an easy firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of a man, for it occupied its natural place, it filled out its natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully underformed by stays.

She had not heard my entrance into the room; and I allowed myself the luxury of admiring her for a few moments. Then I moved one of the chairs near me and she turned towards me immediately. The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from the far end of the room, set me in a flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the window – and I said to myself, “The lady is dark.” She moved forward a few steps – and I said to myself, “The lady is young”. She approached nearer – and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), “The lady is ugly!”

The lady’s complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and prominent jaw, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually low down on her forehead. Her expression – bright, frank and intelligent – appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete. To see a face as this, to be charmed by the modest graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs betrayed their beauty when they moved, and then to be almost repelled by the masculine form and masculine look of the features in which the perfectly shaped figure ended – was to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep, when we recognize yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradictions of a dream. (W. Collins)