English Reading Comprehension

What time did the author arrive at Queenstown motel?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was the second day of a long-awaited winter holiday in Queenstown, New Zealand, three years ago. My three sisters and I arrived at our motel at about 10 pm, amidst rain, sleet and total darkness. Coming from warm, well-lit Singapore, it was unnerving. But the wood fire in the lobby and the warm, welcoming smile of our landlady eased my apprehension.
“You poor darlings! You are frozen!” she said as we checked in. “But don’t worry, I have turned on the electric blankets in your rooms and your beds will be soft and warm.”
She kept up the friendly chatter as she led us to our rooms, her torch revealing soft, falling snow and a wet asphalt road. We settled in and after a wash-up, crawled gratefully into our snug beds.
In the morning, I pulled back my curtains and for a split-second I was breathless. A winter wonderland stretched out before me: Lake Wakatipu surrounded by the snow-clad mountains of the Remarkables. A thick layer of fresh snow covered the ground. The clear, cobalt sky greeted the golden rays of the rising sun.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Lost in nature’s beauty, I had not heard our landlady knock and enter the room. “Make sure you are well wrapped up today. The weather is like quicksilver and turns nasty in a split second. Head back the minute you see snowfall.”
I nodded. By the time we set out to explore Queenstown’s well-stocked shops, the day was bright and sunny, and I started to wonder if she was being unduly cautious.

The author was accompanied by:

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was the second day of a long-awaited winter holiday in Queenstown, New Zealand, three years ago. My three sisters and I arrived at our motel at about 10 pm, amidst rain, sleet and total darkness. Coming from warm, well-lit Singapore, it was unnerving. But the wood fire in the lobby and the warm, welcoming smile of our landlady eased my apprehension.
“You poor darlings! You are frozen!” she said as we checked in. “But don’t worry, I have turned on the electric blankets in your rooms and your beds will be soft and warm.”
She kept up the friendly chatter as she led us to our rooms, her torch revealing soft, falling snow and a wet asphalt road. We settled in and after a wash-up, crawled gratefully into our snug beds.
In the morning, I pulled back my curtains and for a split-second I was breathless. A winter wonderland stretched out before me: Lake Wakatipu surrounded by the snow-clad mountains of the Remarkables. A thick layer of fresh snow covered the ground. The clear, cobalt sky greeted the golden rays of the rising sun.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Lost in nature’s beauty, I had not heard our landlady knock and enter the room. “Make sure you are well wrapped up today. The weather is like quicksilver and turns nasty in a split second. Head back the minute you see snowfall.”
I nodded. By the time we set out to explore Queenstown’s well-stocked shops, the day was bright and sunny, and I started to wonder if she was being unduly cautious.

Which of the following may be inferred from the passage?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

On the grassy slope below me was god’s precinct, a sacred spot, entered on pain of death. Indeed, worshippers of old believed that, once there, neither man nor beast could cast a shadow. In times past they had processed up this mountain in the night to reenact a ritual human sacrifice to their god — or so ancient sources tell us. At the festive meal, a person who chanced to eat human flesh mixed with the flesh of sacrificed animals would transform into a werewolf. In fact, Lykaion signifies wolf.
These enigmatic rites were celebrated not by an uncivilised people in a forgotten land but rather in the heart of classical Greece during its so - called Golden Age. The practitioners of these rites were respected Greek citizens, not fringe cultists, who worshiped Zeus, the king of the Gods. In a way, these rites were no more bizarre than countless mainstream festivals of the time: During the Athenian Thesmophoria, women retrieved the decayed bodies of piglets from pits into which they had tossed the dead animals months earlier, and in the rites of the goddess Artemis that took place at Brauron little girls impersonated bears. Like all periods of history, the Classical Age of Greece, which lasted from about 500 B.C. until the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., was complex and contradictory, a mix of superstition and rationality that blended revolutionary concepts and age - old traditions. Classical Greece is rightly regarded as a high - water mark of civilisation. Yet the living, breathing people who created this culture did not exist merely to turn out masterpiece after masterpiece for the later Western world to study, though it may seem that way to students of the humanities reluctant to embrace the less enchanting aspects of the culture. Because so much of Western culture has its roots in classical Greece, it is easy to overlook the living context from which this heritage arose. We focus on what we know, ignoring the features that strike us as bizarre or even repugnant. The great masterpieces of ancient Greece are our heritage, but it is doubtful that any modern Western person can fully comprehend their background. How can we, in the 21st century, envision the magic spells of the sorceress Medea? Or the magic behind the routine spilling of animal blood as sacrifice? Or the use of curse objects to summon ghosts from the underworld to harm one’s enemies? Yet these practices and beliefs, as much as the spirit of democracy and the value of aesthetic beauty, formed the nerves and sinews of ancient Greek culture. To professional classicists this is old news, but to the layman these unfamiliar aspects of Classical Greece are shocking. Unfamiliar as well, to the layman, are the centuries of earlier Greek life that laid the foundation for the famous “Golden Age” we study in school. For these reasons, I determined that when I travelled to Greece, I would visit all these different eras and rituals. I would pay tribute to the Parthenon — but also examine the “voodoo dolls” in the Kerameikos Museum in Athens. On the island of Euboea, north of Athens, an unusual site demonstrates that the Golden Age did not spring into existence fully formed but instead was centuries in the making. On a nondescript hillock overlooking the sea near the town of Lefkandi, a tenth - century B.C., a grave was revealed when ground was dug up for a house. The work unearthed the remains of an elaborate cremation and burial, uncannily similar to the burials of heroes described in Homer’s Iliad. In addition to the deceased’s bones, carefully wrapped in a piece of fabric and placed in an heirloom bronze urn, excavators found evidence of a building nearly 160 feet in length that had once covered the burial site. Dating from the era traditionally known as Greece’s Dark Age — some three and a half centuries that began with the collapse of the Mycenaean world — the Lefkandi finds were a reminder that however murky or “dark” this historical period may be to us, to the people of the time it was life. The Dark Age was an age of many things: oral bards continued the tradition of transmitting the Homeric masterpieces, the Iliad and Odyssey; distinctive pottery with geometric patterns was made throughout Greece; and as the Lefkandi site indicated, people built impressive structures to bury their dead in a manner befitting heroes. Like the carefully preserved bronze urn, two centuries older than the bones it contained, ideas — and culture — were passed on from generation to generation of the Greek people.

Classical Greece is one basis of Western culture and heritage. This statement

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

On the grassy slope below me was god’s precinct, a sacred spot, entered on pain of death. Indeed, worshippers of old believed that, once there, neither man nor beast could cast a shadow. In times past they had processed up this mountain in the night to reenact a ritual human sacrifice to their god — or so ancient sources tell us. At the festive meal, a person who chanced to eat human flesh mixed with the flesh of sacrificed animals would transform into a werewolf. In fact, Lykaion signifies wolf.
These enigmatic rites were celebrated not by an uncivilised people in a forgotten land but rather in the heart of classical Greece during its so - called Golden Age. The practitioners of these rites were respected Greek citizens, not fringe cultists, who worshiped Zeus, the king of the Gods. In a way, these rites were no more bizarre than countless mainstream festivals of the time: During the Athenian Thesmophoria, women retrieved the decayed bodies of piglets from pits into which they had tossed the dead animals months earlier, and in the rites of the goddess Artemis that took place at Brauron little girls impersonated bears. Like all periods of history, the Classical Age of Greece, which lasted from about 500 B.C. until the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., was complex and contradictory, a mix of superstition and rationality that blended revolutionary concepts and age - old traditions. Classical Greece is rightly regarded as a high - water mark of civilisation. Yet the living, breathing people who created this culture did not exist merely to turn out masterpiece after masterpiece for the later Western world to study, though it may seem that way to students of the humanities reluctant to embrace the less enchanting aspects of the culture. Because so much of Western culture has its roots in classical Greece, it is easy to overlook the living context from which this heritage arose. We focus on what we know, ignoring the features that strike us as bizarre or even repugnant. The great masterpieces of ancient Greece are our heritage, but it is doubtful that any modern Western person can fully comprehend their background. How can we, in the 21st century, envision the magic spells of the sorceress Medea? Or the magic behind the routine spilling of animal blood as sacrifice? Or the use of curse objects to summon ghosts from the underworld to harm one’s enemies? Yet these practices and beliefs, as much as the spirit of democracy and the value of aesthetic beauty, formed the nerves and sinews of ancient Greek culture. To professional classicists this is old news, but to the layman these unfamiliar aspects of Classical Greece are shocking. Unfamiliar as well, to the layman, are the centuries of earlier Greek life that laid the foundation for the famous “Golden Age” we study in school. For these reasons, I determined that when I travelled to Greece, I would visit all these different eras and rituals. I would pay tribute to the Parthenon — but also examine the “voodoo dolls” in the Kerameikos Museum in Athens. On the island of Euboea, north of Athens, an unusual site demonstrates that the Golden Age did not spring into existence fully formed but instead was centuries in the making. On a nondescript hillock overlooking the sea near the town of Lefkandi, a tenth - century B.C., a grave was revealed when ground was dug up for a house. The work unearthed the remains of an elaborate cremation and burial, uncannily similar to the burials of heroes described in Homer’s Iliad. In addition to the deceased’s bones, carefully wrapped in a piece of fabric and placed in an heirloom bronze urn, excavators found evidence of a building nearly 160 feet in length that had once covered the burial site. Dating from the era traditionally known as Greece’s Dark Age — some three and a half centuries that began with the collapse of the Mycenaean world — the Lefkandi finds were a reminder that however murky or “dark” this historical period may be to us, to the people of the time it was life. The Dark Age was an age of many things: oral bards continued the tradition of transmitting the Homeric masterpieces, the Iliad and Odyssey; distinctive pottery with geometric patterns was made throughout Greece; and as the Lefkandi site indicated, people built impressive structures to bury their dead in a manner befitting heroes. Like the carefully preserved bronze urn, two centuries older than the bones it contained, ideas — and culture — were passed on from generation to generation of the Greek people.

“Students of the humanities” are called reluctant by the author because

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

On the grassy slope below me was god’s precinct, a sacred spot, entered on pain of death. Indeed, worshippers of old believed that, once there, neither man nor beast could cast a shadow. In times past they had processed up this mountain in the night to reenact a ritual human sacrifice to their god — or so ancient sources tell us. At the festive meal, a person who chanced to eat human flesh mixed with the flesh of sacrificed animals would transform into a werewolf. In fact, Lykaion signifies wolf.
These enigmatic rites were celebrated not by an uncivilised people in a forgotten land but rather in the heart of classical Greece during its so - called Golden Age. The practitioners of these rites were respected Greek citizens, not fringe cultists, who worshiped Zeus, the king of the Gods. In a way, these rites were no more bizarre than countless mainstream festivals of the time: During the Athenian Thesmophoria, women retrieved the decayed bodies of piglets from pits into which they had tossed the dead animals months earlier, and in the rites of the goddess Artemis that took place at Brauron little girls impersonated bears. Like all periods of history, the Classical Age of Greece, which lasted from about 500 B.C. until the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., was complex and contradictory, a mix of superstition and rationality that blended revolutionary concepts and age - old traditions. Classical Greece is rightly regarded as a high - water mark of civilisation. Yet the living, breathing people who created this culture did not exist merely to turn out masterpiece after masterpiece for the later Western world to study, though it may seem that way to students of the humanities reluctant to embrace the less enchanting aspects of the culture. Because so much of Western culture has its roots in classical Greece, it is easy to overlook the living context from which this heritage arose. We focus on what we know, ignoring the features that strike us as bizarre or even repugnant. The great masterpieces of ancient Greece are our heritage, but it is doubtful that any modern Western person can fully comprehend their background. How can we, in the 21st century, envision the magic spells of the sorceress Medea? Or the magic behind the routine spilling of animal blood as sacrifice? Or the use of curse objects to summon ghosts from the underworld to harm one’s enemies? Yet these practices and beliefs, as much as the spirit of democracy and the value of aesthetic beauty, formed the nerves and sinews of ancient Greek culture. To professional classicists this is old news, but to the layman these unfamiliar aspects of Classical Greece are shocking. Unfamiliar as well, to the layman, are the centuries of earlier Greek life that laid the foundation for the famous “Golden Age” we study in school. For these reasons, I determined that when I travelled to Greece, I would visit all these different eras and rituals. I would pay tribute to the Parthenon — but also examine the “voodoo dolls” in the Kerameikos Museum in Athens. On the island of Euboea, north of Athens, an unusual site demonstrates that the Golden Age did not spring into existence fully formed but instead was centuries in the making. On a nondescript hillock overlooking the sea near the town of Lefkandi, a tenth - century B.C., a grave was revealed when ground was dug up for a house. The work unearthed the remains of an elaborate cremation and burial, uncannily similar to the burials of heroes described in Homer’s Iliad. In addition to the deceased’s bones, carefully wrapped in a piece of fabric and placed in an heirloom bronze urn, excavators found evidence of a building nearly 160 feet in length that had once covered the burial site. Dating from the era traditionally known as Greece’s Dark Age — some three and a half centuries that began with the collapse of the Mycenaean world — the Lefkandi finds were a reminder that however murky or “dark” this historical period may be to us, to the people of the time it was life. The Dark Age was an age of many things: oral bards continued the tradition of transmitting the Homeric masterpieces, the Iliad and Odyssey; distinctive pottery with geometric patterns was made throughout Greece; and as the Lefkandi site indicated, people built impressive structures to bury their dead in a manner befitting heroes. Like the carefully preserved bronze urn, two centuries older than the bones it contained, ideas — and culture — were passed on from generation to generation of the Greek people.

Why did Swam leave his friend Mohan in the waters?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

It was Sunday. As usual, there was a great rush of merry makers who had come to the river to swim or to bathe. Those who knew how to swim were jumping into the water from the high bridge or the banks of the deep river. Mohan did not know how to swim so he was merely watching others who were enjoying the fun of swimming. However on the insistence of his friend Swam, he sat on his shoulders and both jumped into the water. Unable to carry Mohan along, Swam left him in the flowing water. Mohan shouted for help. There were so many swimmers but nobody came to his rescue since they were indifferent to the plight of a stranger. I had just reached there, so I was in my full dress. Without undressing I jumped into the river and swam up to the drowning boy. Holding his left arm, I brought him out of water in a way that he might not hinder me from swimming safely. The boy was saved which won me great applause from the people. I had jumped into the water without any fear or hesitation as I knew the art of saving drowning people. I had already saved a few lives from drowning.

Why did Swam jump into the water carrying Mohan on his shoulders?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

It was Sunday. As usual, there was a great rush of merry makers who had come to the river to swim or to bathe. Those who knew how to swim were jumping into the water from the high bridge or the banks of the deep river. Mohan did not know how to swim so he was merely watching others who were enjoying the fun of swimming. However on the insistence of his friend Swam, he sat on his shoulders and both jumped into the water. Unable to carry Mohan along, Swam left him in the flowing water. Mohan shouted for help. There were so many swimmers but nobody came to his rescue since they were indifferent to the plight of a stranger. I had just reached there, so I was in my full dress. Without undressing I jumped into the river and swam up to the drowning boy. Holding his left arm, I brought him out of water in a way that he might not hinder me from swimming safely. The boy was saved which won me great applause from the people. I had jumped into the water without any fear or hesitation as I knew the art of saving drowning people. I had already saved a few lives from drowning.

Why did the writer jump into the river without any fear or hesitation?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

It was Sunday. As usual, there was a great rush of merry makers who had come to the river to swim or to bathe. Those who knew how to swim were jumping into the water from the high bridge or the banks of the deep river. Mohan did not know how to swim so he was merely watching others who were enjoying the fun of swimming. However on the insistence of his friend Swam, he sat on his shoulders and both jumped into the water. Unable to carry Mohan along, Swam left him in the flowing water. Mohan shouted for help. There were so many swimmers but nobody came to his rescue since they were indifferent to the plight of a stranger. I had just reached there, so I was in my full dress. Without undressing I jumped into the river and swam up to the drowning boy. Holding his left arm, I brought him out of water in a way that he might not hinder me from swimming safely. The boy was saved which won me great applause from the people. I had jumped into the water without any fear or hesitation as I knew the art of saving drowning people. I had already saved a few lives from drowning.

According to the passage, which of the following has NOT contributed to the popular image of Tsavo lions as savage creatures?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn’t appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the colour of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old—young adults. “This is wonderful!” he said, after staring at them for several moments. “This is what we came to see. They really are maneless.” Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctOral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the maneless males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.
The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton’s show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It’s the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some “maneless” lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions’.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?
The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller’s pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya’s oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, theybehave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. “Remember too,” Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, “Tsavo’s lions have a reputation for ferocity.” Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya Railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African laborers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson’s account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best-seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo’s lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. “People don’t want to give up on mythology,” Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. “I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo’s lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere.”
But tales of their savagery and wiliness don’t all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don’t give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.
And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighborhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.
But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their manelessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species—the latest model, so to speak—while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.

The sentence which concludes the first paragraph, “Now they know better”, implies that

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn’t appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the colour of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old—young adults. “This is wonderful!” he said, after staring at them for several moments. “This is what we came to see. They really are maneless.” Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctOral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the maneless males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.
The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton’s show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It’s the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some “maneless” lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions’.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?
The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller’s pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya’s oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, theybehave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. “Remember too,” Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, “Tsavo’s lions have a reputation for ferocity.” Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya Railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African laborers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson’s account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best-seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo’s lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. “People don’t want to give up on mythology,” Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. “I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo’s lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere.”
But tales of their savagery and wiliness don’t all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don’t give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.
And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighborhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.
But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their manelessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species—the latest model, so to speak—while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.

"The usual dour moral lessons were drawn." Which of the following would be the most likely dour lesson drawn upon Moliere's death?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.

It can be inferred from the passage that Moliere was

I. a play wright II. an actor III. a novelist IV. a poet

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.

We can say that Ms Scott's biographical method is

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.

What is/are the main difficulty(ies) in knowing about the life of Moliere according to the author?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.

Which attitudes is the author referring to when he compares two biographies of Moliere?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.