Part 3: Text Structure in an Informational Text Answers

Descriptive details help the reader

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.These [the miracle plays] go out of favor when the privy council decrees that they are too close to Catholicism and should stop. Those at York cease in 1569. In Chester the citizens defy the privy council and continue performing their play about Noah’s Flood well into the 1570s. The Coventry mystery plays are finally suppressed in 1579, so this is the town to visit if you want to catch one later in the reign. The Guary miracle play in Cornwall continues for some years but is so amateurish it can hardly be seen as a threat.

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.The Elizabethan theater as we know it develops slowly. In 1562 the play Gorboduc, the first English play to include blank verse, is performed in front of the queen at the Inner Temple in London. This is written by two gentlemen, Thomas Sackville (the future earl of Dorset) and Thomas Norton, and leaves a lasting impression. Its tale of a kingdom torn between two heirs has great significance for the audience of the day. Other plays follow, drawing on classical themes as well as on ancient British and medieval history, written by (among others) John Heywood, John Pickering, and Lewis Wager. A sign of their success is the construction in 1567 of the first purpose-built theater, the Red Lion, built by John Brayne in Whitechapel.

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.More theaters open their doors to the public. The Rose is built by Philip Henslowe at Southwark, not far from the bear-baiting and bull-baiting arenas, in 1587. Eight years later Francis Langley erects the Swan on a site nearby; and in 1596 Richard Burbage builds the Blackfriars Theatre, an indoor venue, although it does not open its doors until 1599.

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.In 1587 Thomas Kyd produces The Spanish Tragedy, and soon afterward Christopher Marlowe brings out the first part of Tamburlaine the Great. . . . They employ new verse forms, allowing different spoken rhythms, and compose bold speeches with greater resonance and meaning. The new conceptual framework of a revenge tragedy in particular allows them to portray powerful emotions voiced by strong characters. Suddenly it is possible to show so much more passion on the stage.

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.In their stead, people increasingly choose to see secular plays on historical and moral themes. These are performed up and down the country by theater companies called after lords, for example "Lord Sussex’s Men,” "Lord Strange’s Men,” "the Lord Admiral’s Men,” and "Lord Leicester’s Men.” The reason for these names is that, while unattached actors are liable to be arrested for vagrancy, the Act of 1572 specifically excludes players properly authorized by lords from being considered vagabonds.

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.As you approach the theaters you will notice that they all seem to be round; in fact, they are polygonal—the Globe is twenty-sided, the Rose fourteen-sided. Whichever one you choose, you can expect to queue with two thousand other people to get in. You will see people standing in hats with pipes in hand, and women in their headdresses, all chatting, with an eye open for people they know. Entrance costs a penny: this allows you to stand in the yard in front of the stage, an uncovered area (hence the need for a hat).

Which of the following sentences signals a sequence of events?

Which option shows the text signaling the sequence of events?

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.In 1574 the city authorities are given powers to restrict playhouses, forcing the actors to find new premises in the suburbs. This becomes a golden opportunity for John Brayne and his brother-in-law, James Burbage, who in 1576 build a new theater, simply called The Theatre, at Shoreditch, just half a mile north of Bishopsgate. The following year a second theater, the Curtain, is built just two hundred yards away. Despite some heavy opposition from Puritan preachers and moralists, both theaters are successful.

Which sentence most effectively helps readers envision a scene?

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.By the end of the reign he [Jonson] has married, had two children and lost one, tried to become an actor and failed, become a playwright, been arrested for a scurrilous play and released, killed another actor in a duel, been arrested again and put on trial for murder, and escaped hanging by pleading benefit of the clergy. The play for which he is arrested, The Isle of Dogs, coauthored with Thomas Nashe, is so slanderous and offensive that the privy council orders the closure not just of the play but of every theater in London.

Which excerpt most effectively conveys a conversational and engaging tone?

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.Eight years later Francis Langley erects the Swan on a site nearby; and in 1596 Richard Burbage builds the Blackfriars Theatre, an indoor venue, although it does not open its doors until 1599. Most important of all, Shakespeare, Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, and their partners dismantle The Theatre and remove its beams to a new site at Southwark, where it is rebuilt in 1599 as the Globe. When Edward Alleyn builds the Fortune on the northern edge of the city in 1600, the array of Elizabethan theaters is complete.