新GRE高频阅读机经原文：英国女演员地位

　　英国女演员地位
　　根据寂静“有一个讲 English Actress 的长阅读。 大致是分析为什么 1860(?记不清什么时候了)之后 English Actresses were accepted by the audiences. 第一段都是在讲几种解释，然后一一否定掉。第二段就给出了作者支持 的解释：好像是...差异来着忘了。第三段就记到说 King 通过影响 aristocrats 从而影响了 audiences 对 Actresses 的态度。有个题问道 King 的意义。”
　　原文应该是从Katharine Eisaman Maus的Playhouse Flesh and Blood": Sexual Ideology and the Restoration Actress （1979）中节选的。
　　文章谈到1660年第一个actress登台。尽管是重要的一步，但不是没有先例，e.g., Queen Henrietta Maria。是什么导致了观众观念的转变呢？难道audience突然意识到应该relinquish a set of absurd scruples?
　　The orthodox explanation of the actresses' new acceptability is, if not entirely wrong, at least seriously insufficient. Orthodox explanation说actress出现是因为人们不满老用boys来演女人。作者随后说这种论证没有证据，因为多数观众都挺满意男孩演的Juliets, Cleopatras.. 另外有人说人们开始追求naturalism，作者也反对，因为the standard of naturalism changes from generation to generation.
　　1660开始的新的戏剧种类教Restoration theater，比之前更public的剧院更加intimate。女演员一直在restoration theater表演，所以已经被一小群人accepted.
　　作者的观点：sexual explicitness。17世纪女人低于男人的hierarchical structure已经过时了. Charles I 喜欢court drama，因为大家都dress up显示地位；然而Charles II喜欢带着面具和一帮aristocrats and rich Londoners一起party. 整个时代都趋向于更平等的社会地位。但是这同时也使人们更注重什么是typically "male" or "female"。人们开始觉得女性是非常unique and delicate的，需要独特的actress来present the female personality on stage.
　　发个关于1660年前后actress没地位的机经文章
　　In the past, only men could become actors in some societies. In the ancient Greece and Rome[13] and the medieval world, it was considered disgraceful for a woman to go on the stage, and this belief persisted until the 17th century, when in Venice it was broken. In the time of William Shakespeare, women's roles were generally played by men or boys.[14]
　　When an eighteen-year Puritan prohibition of drama was lifted after the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. Margaret Hughes is credited by some as the first professional actress on the English stage.[15] This prohibition ended during the reign of Charles II in part due to the fact that he enjoyed watching actresses on stage.[16] The first occurrence of the term actress was in 1700 according to the OED and is ascribed to Dryden.[7]
　　In Japan, men (onnagata) took over the female roles in kabuki theatre when women were banned from performing on stage during the Edo period. This convention has continued to the present. However, some forms of Chinese drama have women playing all the roles.
　　In modern times, women sometimes play the roles of prepubescent boys. The stage role of Peter Pan, for example, is traditionally played by a woman, as are most principal boys in Britishpantomime. Opera has several "breeches roles" traditionally sung by women, usually mezzo-sopranos. Examples are Hansel in Hänsel und Gretel, Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier.
　　Women in male roles are uncommon in film with the notable exceptions of the films The Year of Living Dangerously and I'm Not There. In the former film Linda Hunt played the pivotal role of Billy Kwan, for which she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the latter film Cate Blanchett portrayed Jude Quinn, a representation of Bob Dylan in the sixties, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Women playing men in live theatre is particularly common in presentations of older plays, such as those of Shakespeare, that have large numbers of male characters in roles where the gender no longer matters in modern times.[citation needed]
　　Having an actor dress as the opposite sex for comic effect is also a long-standing tradition in comic theatre and film. Most of Shakespeare's comedies include instances of overt cross-dressing, such as Francis Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The movie A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum stars Jack Gilford dressing as a young bride. Tony Curtisand Jack Lemmon famously posed as women to escape gangsters in the Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot. Cross-dressing for comic effect was a frequently used device in most of the thirty Carry On films. Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams have each appeared in a hit comedy film (Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire, respectively) in which they played most scenes dressed as a woman.