READING COMPREHENSION 2

  The Ring at Caster bridge 

1 Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow : 

1. The Ring at Caster bridge was merely the local name of one of the 

finest Roman amphitheaters, if not the very finest remaining in Britain. 

Caster bridge announced old Rome in every street, alley, and precinct. It 

looked Roman, bespoke the art of Rome, concealed dead men of Rome. It was impossible to dig more than a foot or two deep about the town fields and gardens without coming upon some tall soldier or other of the Empire, who had laid there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a space of fifteen hundred years.

2. Imaginative inhabitants, who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of a comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens, were quite unmoved by these hoary shapes. They had lived so long ago, their time was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to pass. The Amphitheater was a huge circular enclosure, with a notch at opposite extremities of its diameter north and south. It was to Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to modern Rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude. The dusk of evening was the proper hour at which a true impression of this suggestive place could be received. Standing in the middle of the arena at that time there by degrees became apparent its real vastness, which a cursory view from the summit at noon-day was apt to obscure. 3. Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet accessible from every part of the town, the historic circle was the frequent spot for appointments of a furtive kind. Apart from the sanguinary nature of the games originally played therein, such incidents attached to its past as these: that for scores of years the town gallows had stood at one corner; that in 1705 a woman who had murdered her husband was half-strangled and then burnt there in the presence of ten thousand spectators. In addition to these old tragedies, pugilistic encounters almost to the death had come off down to recent dates in that secluded arena, entirely invisible to the outside world save by climbing to the top of the enclosure, which few townspeople in the daily round of their lives ever took the trouble to do. 

4. Some boys had latterly tried to impart gaiety to the ruin by using the central arena as a cricket-ground. But the game usually languished for the aforesaid reason - the dismal privacy which the earthen circle enforced, shutting out every appreciative passer's vision, every commendatory remark from outsiders - everything, except the sky; and to play at games in such circumstances was like acting to an empty house. Henchard had chosen this spot for meeting his long-lost wife. As Mayor of the town, with a reputation to keep up, he could not invite her to come to his house till some definite course had been decided on.(498 words) 

Adapted from: The Mayor of Caster bridge, Thomas Hardy (1886) 1.1 On the basis of your understanding of the above passage, answer the following questions briefly:

(a) What was the name given by the locals to the ancient Amphitheatre at Casterbridge? 

(b) What was the attitude of the local residents to the unearthed remains of dead Romans? 

(c) Over the years what had the amphitheater been used for by the locals?

(d) Why had the boys stopped using the amphitheater for their game of cricket?

(e) Why did Henchard want to keep secret his meeting with his long-lost Wife?

 

(f) What was the shape of the amphitheater? 

1.2 Choose the meaning of the words/phrases given below from the given Options:  

(a) Concealed (Para 1)) 

(i) silent (ii) hidden (iii) dead (iv) lonely 

(b) Hoary (Para 2) 

(i) unimaginative (ii) buried (iii) ancient (iv) mummified 

(c) Pugilistic encounters (Para 3) 

(i) vindictive meetings (ii) powerful fights (iii) boxing matches (iv) brave acts (d) Secluded (Para 3) 

(i) one (ii) private (iii) close (iv) hidden 

1.3 (a)How did some boys try to impart gaiety to the ruins? (b)Why are the inhabitants called ‘imaginative’?