warrior1991 wrote:
AndrewNI need help in understanding the meaning of option D.
Director's claim :- The play that is being performed today cannot be more closer than it is to the original production.
Harlequin :- His style resembles that of Marx. But Marx's style was also not of 20th century but of 16th century.So harlequin's style is also old school.
(D) the performance of the actor who plays Harlequin in La Finestrina does not serve as evidence against the director’s claim
In my opinion actor's performance suggests that the style is copied even in modern day. This evidence serves against (counter to)the director claim that this production is as similar to the original production as is possible in a modern theater. Hello,
warrior1991. You have things a little mixed up at the end, so I will do my best to explain (D) in the context of the passage.
Quote:
Theater Critic: The play La Finestrina, now at Central Theater, was written in Italy in the eighteenth century. The director claims that this production is as similar to the original production as is possible in a modern theater. Although the actor who plays Harlequin the clown gives a performance very reminiscent of the twentieth-century American comedian Groucho Marx, Marx’s comic style was very much within the comic acting tradition that had begun in sixteenth-century Italy.
The considerations given best serve as part of an argument that
(D) the performance of the actor who plays Harlequin in La Finestrina does not serve as evidence against the director’s claim
How about we start with the answer choice? Everything up to the verb phrase of the main clause,
does not serve, is about the character Harlequin and how the actor plays that character. We are not concerned with specifics yet. Meanwhile, the noun phrase at the end of the answer choice,
evidence against the director's claim, draws attention to the claim in question. Lucky for us, we see that the second line of the passage starts with
the director claims, so all we have to do is match information.
Evidence against the claim would work to negate it, as in,
this production is not as similar to the original production as is possible in a modern theaterNow, since our verb phrase in (D) tells us
not to go against the claim the director made, we should leave it intact and consider it valid. So, do both halves of (D) surrounding the verb phrase work in tandem? Does the portrayal of Harlequin fall in line with the way the character may have been portrayed in eighteenth-century Italy, when the play was written? In a word, yes. It is possible, according to the passage. Why? Because the modern-day actor playing Harlequin seems to do so in the style of Groucho Marx, but the passage informs us that this comic style was not just around in the 1700s in Italy, but that it was
very much within a two-century-old
comic acting tradition. Thus, the Groucho-esque portrayal of Harlequin by the modern-day actor would not fly in the face of the claim the director has made. The story checks out, and that is why (D) is the answer (in addition to other answers failing to build accurately off the passage).
I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask.
- Andrew
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