Reading Comprehension 55

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Answer the questions according to the reading.

Gladstone O'Neill

When he died on November 27,1953, Gladstone O'Neill was universally recognized as one of the major dramatists of the modern world. Four times a Pulitzer Prize-winner, he had also been awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature. His plays have been translated into most major languages and read by more people than those of any other playwright except W. Shakespeare and maybe G. Barnard Shaw. O'Neill was a puzzle to his friends - a genuinely shy, brooding, complicated man in whom cruelty alternated with touching kindness. He was both naive and worldly. One biographer found him "sentimental one instant, hard as nails the next." His widow, after 26 years with O'Neill, said, "To understand his work you must understand the man, for the work and the man are one."

1. According to the passage, O'Neill ----.

A) knew nearly all the important dramatists of the modern world
B) passed away in the 20th century
C) only had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature
D) knew more than four languages
E) was a very complicated man

2. We can infer from the passage that ----.

A) O'Neill's cruelty affected his friends very much
B) not only Shakespeare but Bernard Shaw appreciated his works
C) O'Neill sometimes had childlike behavior
D) his wife couldn't understand O'Neill either
E) O'Neill was very easygoing

3. We can easily infer from the passage that ----.

A) his wife divorced O'Neill after 26 years-long marriage
B) there's a close connection between O'Neill and his works
C) it's not necessary to understand him in order to understand his works
D) he was an emotional person
E) his plays were not understood by many of the great writers

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