Friday, April 6, 2012

Oscar Wilde Reading Comprehension

Instructions:

Read the following text. Then, do the reading comprehension activity below.

Oscar Wilde's spectacular fall from grace is one of the best-known and most tragic stories in the history of literature. Born in Dublin in 1854, the son of an eye surgeon and a well-known poet, Wilde graduated from Oxford in 1878 and moved to London where he rapidly became a celebrity and the most prominent figure in the Aesthetic movement. A lecture tour to the United States and Gilbert and Sullivan's mockery of him in their comic operetta Patience only increased his fame. He published poetry, fairy tales and a scandalously successful novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, about a golden youth who retained his beauty while the marks of his sins showed only on his painted portrait. In 1884, Wilde married Constance Lloyd and moved into the house in Tite Street, Chelsea, which is now marked by a blue plaque. By the mid-1890s he was the feted author of epigrammatic comedies like Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. But in 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry, disapproving of Wilde's friendship with his son Lord Alfred Douglas, sent a note addressed to Wilde, "posing as a Sodomite." Unwisely, Wilde decided to sue for libel and set in motion a sequence of events that ended with him prosecuted and imprisoned for homosexuality. After his release from prison Wilde was a broken man and he died in exile in Paris in 1900. Stories of his last words emphasise that he retained his wit to the end. Seriously ill in a cheap Paris hotel room he is reputed to have said, "This wall-paper will be the death of me - one of us will have to go".

Text taken from http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/


Reading comprehension quiz

Choose the correct answer to the questions based on the reading about Oscar Wilde. Each question has only one correct answer. Once you have finished, hit the "Grade Me" button to see your score.

  1. Oscar Wilde became famous...

  2. even though he was poorly educated.
    in a short period of time.
    while he was at university.

  3. Dorian Gray was an unusual character because...

  4. he had gold coloured hair.
    he repeatedly painted his own portrait.
    he never aged physically.

  5. Why was it unwise of Wilde to sue for libel?

  6. It meant his homosexuality was discovered and he was arrested.
    He lost the court case and went to prison.
    He was taking a powerful Lord to court and so he was never going to win.

  7. When Wilde left prison...

  8. he resumed his place in celebrity London.
    he was very ill and soon died.
    he had no desire for his former life and had lost his drive and ambition.

No comments:

Post a Comment