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  3. There’s a lot of money in religion. Look at the tax-free income of American TV evangelists, or at St Peter’s and all the goodies

There’s a lot of money in religion. Look at the tax-free income of American TV evangelists, or at St Peter’s and all the goodies

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问题     There’s a lot of money in religion. Look at the tax-free income of American TV evangelists, or at St Peter’s and all the goodies in the Papal collection, or the real estate holdings of Australia’s Presbyterian Church. Heavens above, even a minor religious cult can provide its leader with a few hundred Rolls-Royces.
1. Shakespeare as a new religion
    So this isn’t just another magazine column. It’s a prospectus, seeking your investment in a new religion based on Shakespeare.
2. Shakespeare is, by any measure, extraordinary
    Though studied at every university, he never attended one. He didn’t own a radio, visit Web sites or watch television. Though his plays were set in Scotland, Rome, Verona and France, he never visited any of them, limiting his travels to commutes between Stratford and London. The poor fellow never had the opportunity to marvel at the view from an aeroplane window or to behold the respective universes revealed by microscope or telescope.
3. A giant in human history
    Shakespeare is profound on virtually any topic you care to choose. On most issues Shakespeare is erudite and insightful. Not to mention witty. In the era of silent film alone, there were more than 500 features based on his plays and not just because they were out of copyright. Since then, there have been thousands of films inspired by his texts and while Jesus is much discussed in churches on Sunday, Shakespeare packs live theatres across the planet six days a week plus matinees. Put Bill on the scales of literature and you need hundreds of other writers to balance his contribution.
4. Did Shakespeare write his plays?
    There are people who still deny that the world is round. So, just as some question whether Jesus ever existed, there are crackpots who insist that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare.
5. A greatest celebrity in the world
    Were he alive today, Bill’s royalties would make him wealthier than any royalty. He’d be among the greatest celebrities on Earth, eclipsing even Nicole Kidman. Were he in Australia, he’d be able to make a marvellous contribution to the revived republican debate on both sides of the argument. Had he lived in France, he(and Hamlet)would have been a great help to the existentialists, particularly to Camus when writing The Outsider.
    But back to basing a religion on Shakespeare. True, he hasn’t risen from the dead. But, better than that, he’s never got around to dying. He remains not only alive but livelier than almost anyone else in human history. Even more so than George Bernard Shaw, who regarded himself as immensely superior. Shakespeare’s genius is either God-given or, perhaps, he was an extraterrestrial. Either way, send me your cheques and you, too, can profit from a religious Shakesperience. Hallowed be His name.
[A]Yes, Dante has made a contribution, while Dickens, Dostoyevsky and David Williamson haven’t been entirely a waste of time. But all those novelists, poets, playwrights and pundits amount to little more than a handful of gravel to Bill’s Qomolangma.
[B]The principal arguments sound snobbish, apparently based on the fact that he was a working-class scrubber, whereas Marlowe, their preferred author, was more aristocratic and educated.
[C]In the U. S. , he could have sued Leonard Bernstein for plagiarism over West Side Story, among countless others, for copyright infringements.
[D]Shakespeare is not only alive but livelier than almost anyone else in human history.
[E]Well, if you can create one out of an unknown carpenter from Nazareth, whose authenticated utterances amount to no more than a few hundred words, then think what you could get out of the most celebrated playwright in history.
[F]He was entirely ignorant of quantum mechanics, germ theory, biology, geology and the theory of evolution and his understanding of human beings was unaided or untainted by Sigmund Freudianism. So how come this playwright was so smart? So wise? So intelligent?
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答案A
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