【英语时差8,16】史学家的莎士比亚

OK. Well, compared with China, Shakespeare’s England was a very very small place Li, a very small place. You know if Ming Dynasty China maybe had one hundred million people, England had three million people. So we are talking about a very small place but at this moment in the history of England, very great energies of history were coming out and above all, this was caused by the changes in education, where grammar school education was possible for much more people in the population than any time before in history anywhere in the world. So Shakespeare, first of all, is product of this revolution in education. Second, Shakespeare is born at a time of great psychological change. For a thousand years before his time, England had been a Christian¹ Catholic country owing allegiance to the Pope in Rome. But, in the time of Shakespeare’s father, the old religion was swept away and a new religion of Protestantism was put in. So Shakespeare is born, just, as we say, on the cusp, on this moment of change and this will condition the way he looks at history.

 

1 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。