单项选择题

Children as young as four will study Shakespeare in a project being launched today by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The RSC is holding its first national conference for primary school teachers to encourage them to use the Bard’s plays imaginatively in the classroom from reception classes onwards. The conference will be told that they should learn how Shakespearian characters like Puck in?A Midsummer Night’s Dream?are “jolly characters” and how to write about them.
At present, the national curriculum does not require pupils to approach Shakespeare until secondary school. All it says is that pupils should study “texts drawn from a variety of cultures and traditions” and “myths, legends and traditional stories”.
However, educationists at the RSC believe children will gain a better appreciation of Shakespeare if they are introduced to him at a much younger age. “Even very young children can enjoy Shakespeare’s plays,” said Mary Johnson, head of the learning department. “It is just a question of pitching it for the age group. Even reception classes and key stage one pupils (five-to-seven-year-olds) can enjoy his stories. For instance, if you build up Puck as a character who skips, children of that age can enjoy the character. They can be inspired by Puck and they could even start writing about him at that age.”
It is the RSC’s belief that building the Bard up as a fun playwright in primary school could counter some of the negative images conjured up about teaching Shakespeare in secondary schools. Then, pupils have to concentrate on scenes from the plays to answer questions for compulsory English national-curriculum tests for 14-year-olds. Critics of the tests have complained that pupils no longer have the time to study or read the whole play—and therefore lose interest in Shakespeare.
However, Ms. Johnson is encouraging teachers to present 20-minute versions of the plays—a classroom version of the?Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)?which told his 37 plays in 97 minutes—to give pupils a flavour of the whole drama.
The RSC’s venture coincides with a call for schools to allow pupils to be more creative in writing about Shakespeare. Professor Kate McLuskie, the new director of the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute - also based in Stratford—said it was time to get away from the idea that there was “a right answer” to any question about Shakespeare. Her first foray into the world of Shakespeare was to berate him as a misogynist in a 1985 essay but she now insists this should not be interpreted as a criticism of his works—although she admits: “I probably wouldn’t have written it quite the same way if I had been writing it now. What we should be doing is making sure that someone is getting something out of Shakespeare,” she said. “People are very scared about getting the right answer. I know it’s difficult but I don’t care if they come up with a right answer that I can agree with about Shakespeare.”
What’s Puck’s characteristic according to your understanding of the passage?

A.Rude,rushandimpolite
B.Happy,interestingandfulloffun
C.Dull,absurdandridiculous
D.Shrewd,cunningandtricky

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I was eight years old the first time I fainted. I was at friend’s house, and a bee stung me on the back of the neck. I had felt nothing but a slight pinch and the bug was soon wiped away and flushed down the toilet, but since I looked pale I was urged to call my mother. As I told her what had happened, I felt myself blacking out, sinking to the floor, vaguely aware that I was still gripping the receiver.Perhaps I was allergic to the bee sting—the only one I’ve ever gotten, although to this day I have a phobia about bees, wasps, and other insects. But the image of an eight-year-old in Keds crumpling to the ground while he describes his injury to his Mommy seems to return us to Freudian territory. Note the umbilical image of the phone cord.Call me fanciful. Still, I’m afraid these undertones are hardly dissipated by the second fainting incident I can recall, which practically reeks of the family romance. This took place one weekend morning while we were gathered in the kitchen to eat breakfast. My mother stood at the stove making French toast, which she had already served to the kids; my father, seated at the table, was cutting a bagel with a sharp bread knife. Contrary to every principle of kitchen safety, he was holding the bagel in his hand and cutting inward, and eventually he made a neat, shallow incision in his palm. The blood was profuse.Being a hematologist, my father didn’t panic: this was just business as usual. But my mother stopped flipping French toast and collapsed to the floor. I, inspired by the blood and my mother’s collapse and the powerful odors of syrup and sugar rising from my plate, slumped forward. My forehead went into the syrup. I heard a roar—it seemed to me that I was being clutched beneath the armpits and whirled around—and then my father shook me back into consciousness. He had already attended to my mother.Still think I’m fanciful? Then listen to this. Out of curiosity I asked my mother when her first fainting episode had occurred.She paused, thought it over, and came up with the following. At the age of thirteen, she went to visit her father in the hospital, who only the day before had had his appendix removed. Aside from her father, still conked out from the anesthesia, the other person in the room was a nurse, who was busy changing the dressing on the patient’s incision, which hadn’t quite closed. For some reason, the nurse had to leave the room. At this point, she asked my mother to hold the soiled dressing in place until she returned. My mother complied. Standing over her dazed father, gingerly holding a used bandage over a hole in his lower abdomen, the thirteen-year-old grew lightheaded. I assumed the nurse returned before she hit the floor.The author’s mother fainting might be assumed to be related to _____.

A.appendix
B.abdomen
C.nurse
D.blood