Reread paragraphs 2 and 3 of the text. Then answer the multiple-choice questions that follow. From Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson 2 Shakespeare’s plays, it is held, so brim with expertise—on law, medicine, statesmanship, court life, military affairs, the bounding main, antiquity, life abroad—that they cannot possibly be the work of a single lightly educated provincial. The presumption is that William Shakespeare of Stratford was, at best, an amiable stooge, an actor who lent his name as cover for someone of greater talent, someone who could not, for one reason or another, be publicly identified as a playwright.

3 The controversy has been given respectful airing in the highest quarters. PBS, the American television network, in 1996 produced an hour-long documentary unequivocally suggesting that Shakespeare probably wasn’t Shakespeare. Harper’s Magazine and The New York Times have both devoted generous amounts of space to sympathetically considering the anti-Stratford arguments. The Smithsonian Institution in 2002 held a seminar titled “Who Wrote Shakespeare?” The best-read article in the British magazine History Today was one examining the authorship question. Even Scientific American entered the fray with an article proposing that the person portrayed in the famous Martin Droeshout engraving might actually be—I weep to say it—Elizabeth I. Perhaps the most extraordinary development of all is that Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London—built as a monument for his plays and with aspirations to be a world-class study center—became, under the stewardship of the artistic director Mark Rylance, a kind of clearinghouse for anti-Stratford sentiment.

Which statement best critiques the way Bryson uses rhetorical appeals in paragraphs 2 and 3 to support his thesis?

A.) The author includes sources effectively to gain credibility with his audience and prove his trustworthiness to readers.
B.) The author cites experts as an appeal to logos to prove that people who doubt Shakespeare’s authorship use sound reasoning.
C.) The author relies on emotional language to appeal to pathos in order to make anti-Shakespeare sentiment seem foolish.
D.) The author undercuts his own persuasiveness by using appeals to pathos to cruelly mock people who believe someone else wrote Shakespeare’s works.