2021年12月四级 第2套 Section A 选词填空

Questions __26__ to __35__ are based on the following passage.

It is commonly believed that the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. But it is impossible to know the __26__ day on which he was born.

Church records show he was baptized (施洗礼) on April __26__, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newly born baby. Shakespeare's date of death is __27__ known, however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 and had retired to Stratford three years before.

Although few plays have been performed or analyzed as extensively as the 38 plays Shakespeare wrote, there are few surviving details about his life. This __28__ of biographical information is due primarily to his social __29__; he was not a noble, but the son of a leather trader.

Shakespeare __30__ attended the grammar school in Stratford, where he would have studied Latin and read __31__ literature. He did not go to university and at age 18 married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his __32__. They had four children, including the twins, Hamnet and Judith. Nothing is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare's __33__ as a dramatist in London in the early 1590s.

In a million words written over 20 years, he __34__ the full range of human emotions and conflicts with a __35__ that remains sharp today. As his great contemporary the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson said, "He was not of an age, but for all time.