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“How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless."
"Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them."
"I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.”
Identify the title and author of the passage.
These lines, exchanged between Jack and Algernon, are from Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest. The play, whose full title is The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, was first performed in 1895. It is a satirical look at Victorian social rules and obligations. The word "bunburying" is famously used in its plot to mean to assume an alter ego in a different locale so as to get out of social obligations. Much of the play's plot and repartee centers around identity, and in particular, confusion surrounding the name "Ernest."
Passage adapted from Act II of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (1895)
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Identify the author and title of the excerpt.
"The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.”
These lines are from George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion. The play centers on Eliza Doolittle, a seemingly simple Cockney flower girl, who Professor Henry Higgins attempts to transform into a sophisticated and well-spoken lady who can pass as a duchess. The name of the play comes from the Greek mythological character, Pygmalion, a sculptor who falls in love with his sculpture when it comes to life. The passage contains two majors clues as to its source material: it mentions "Eliza" and it discusses manners.
Passage adapted from Act V of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (1913)
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I will attend her here,
And woo her with some spirit when she comes.
Say that she rail; why, then, I'll tell her plain,
she sings as sweetly as a nightingail:
Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly washt with dew:
Say she be mute and will not speak a word;
Then I'll commend her volubility,
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence:
If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks,
As though she bid me stay by her a week:
If she deny to be wed, I'll crave the day
When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.
This excerpt is adapted from which of the following Shakespearean plays?
These are lines spoken by Petruchio in William Shakespeare's comedy The Taming of the Shrew. A major clue as to the source work of the lines is their content; here, Petruchio is soliloquizing about how he will woo Katherine ("Kate") despite the fact that she is not interested in him.
(Passage adapted from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, II.i.168-180)
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"You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about . . . anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all.”
Identify the title and author of the excerpt based on the content and style of the writing.
These lines, spoken by Mabel Chiltern, are from Oscar Wilde's 1895 comedic play An Ideal Husband. The play centers on themes of political corruption and honor.
Passage adapted from Act IV of An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1895)
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Determine the title and author of this passage based on its content and style.
“But I can't stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. What's the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, there's no good pretending it’s arranged the other way . . .”
These lines are from the 1893 play Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw. This quote is by Mrs. Warren (a former prostitute and current brothel owner) during a conversation with her daughter, Vivie. Vivie has returned home from college and is finally aware of her mother's occupation, causing much debate throughout the course of the play.
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“True, 'tis an unhappy circumstance of life that love should ever die before us, and that the man so often should outlive the lover. But say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old. For my part, my youth may wear and waste, but it shall never rust in my possession.”
Identify the title of the work from which the passage is adapted.
These lines are adapted from of William Congreve's play The Way of the World, first performed in 1700. The play's main characters, Mirabell and Millamant, are lovers attempting to marry, but Millamant's aunt, Lady Wishfort, tries to foil their plans by getting her own nephew, Sir Wilfull, to marry Millamant instead.
Adapted from The Way of the World by William Congreve, II.i (1700)
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Which of the following is an absurdist, existentialist play that focuses on characters from a Shakespearian tragedy?
This brief overview describes Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, first performed in 1966. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet who are presumably killed off-stage over the course of the play.
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Anthonio Salieri, Constanze Weber, and Emperor Joseph II are characters from which of the following plays?
Anthonio Salieri, Constanze Weber, and Emperor Joseph II are characters in Peter Shaffer's 1979 play Amadeus, which creates a fictionalized plot centering on composers, Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The play is based on the 1830 play by Alexander Pushkin, Mozart and Salieri.
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The Common Man, Sir Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell are characters in which of the following plays?
The Common Man, Sir Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell are characters from the 1960 play A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt. The play follows the life of Sir Thomas More, the sixteenth-century Chancellor of England—a "man of conscience."
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This play switches back and forth between the year 1809 and the present. Some of the main characters include Thomasina Coverly, Septimus Hodge, Hannah Jarvis, and Bernard Nightingale.
This is a brief overview of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, a play first performed in 1993.
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What play centers on two hit-men, Ben and Gus, who are awaiting their next assignment in a windowless basement?
This overview describes the one-act play The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter.
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This play's title is taken from a line in Shelley's poem "To a Skylark."
The title ofNoel Coward's 1941 comic play, Blithe Spirit, is taken from a the first line of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark":
"Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
The play itself focuses on novelist Charles Condomine and medium Madame Arcati's failed attempt to conduct a seance.
Passage adapted from "To a Skylark" l.1-5 by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)
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I pray you all gyve your audyence,
And here this mater with reverence,
By fygure a morall play;
The somonynge of Everyman, called it is,
That of our lyves and endynge shewes,
How transytory we be all daye:
This mater is wonders precyous,
But the entent of it is more gracyous,
And swete to bere awaye.
The story sayth—Man, in the begynnynge,
Loke well, and take good heed to the endynge,
Be you never so gay:
Ye thynke sinne in the begynnynge full swete,
Whiche in the ende causeth the soule to wepe,
When the body lyeth in claye.
Here shall you se how Felawship and Jolyte,
Both Strengthe, Pleasure and Beaute,
Wyll vade from the as floure in maye;
For ye shall here, how our heven kynge
Calleth Everyman to a generall rekenynge:
Gyve audyence, and here what he doth saye.
The above text is taken from an anonymous example of which kind of drama?
The text is from a play titled Everyman and written in the late fifteenth century. Although this type of drama was written and performed during medieval times, the actual literary form was known as a morality play. Morality plays (called “interludes” at the time) can be recognized by their moral themes and their allegorical structures, in which protagonists encounter various personifications of virtues and must choose between good and evil.
Adapted from Everyman: A Morality Play, ln. 1–20 (1903 I. Sackse ed.)
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LORENZO: My lord, though Bel-imperia seeme thus coy,
Let reason holde you in your wonted ioy:
In time the sauage bull sustaines the yoake,
In time all haggard hawkes will stoope to lure,
In time small wedges cleaue the hardest oake,
In time the \[hardest\] flint is pearst with softest shower;
And she in time will fall from her disdaine,
And rue the sufferance of your freendly paine.
Who is the author of this play?
In Thomas Kyd’s play The Spanish Tragedie (1587) is an example of a new type of Elizabethan play: the revenge play. The work, a bloody tragedy set in Portugal and Spain, features the characters Hieronimo, Bel-imperia, Lorenzo, Balthazar, and Horatio. Some elements from this work (most notably the ghosts and the play-within-a-play structure) appear later in the more famous Hamlet, and T.S. Eliot alludes to the play in his poem, The Waste Land.
Adapted from The Spanish Tragedie by Thomas Kyd, 2.ii.1–8
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MEPHISTOPHELES: Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are tortured and remain forever.
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place, for where we are is hell,
And where hell is must we ever be.
And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that is not heaven.
Who is the author of this play?
These lines are taken from Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604), a famous play based on the German legend of Faust. The excerpted lines are part of a well known monologue by Mephistopheles, the devil to whom Dr. Faustus sells his soul.
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ACT 1. SCENE 1.1.
\[ENTER VOLPONE AND MOSCA\]
VOLPONE: Good morning to the day; and next, my gold:
Open the shrine, that I may see my Saint.
… Hail the world's soul, and mine! more glad than is
The teeming earth to see the long'd-for sun
Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram,
Am I, to view thy splendour darkening his;
That lying here, amongst my other hoards,
Shew'st like a flame by night; or like the day
Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled
Unto the centre.
The above lines open a comedic play by which author?
One of Ben Jonson’s best known plays, Volpone (Italian for “sly fox”) satirizes lust and avarice through a fictional set of Venetian nobles; Volpone, Mosca, Corbaccio, and Voltore are among the most important characters.
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What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing. No, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain?
From which Shakespeare play is this monologue taken?
Although not as famous as the “To be or not to be” monologue, this excerpt is one of Hamlet’s better known soliloquies from the eponymous play. In it, he agonizes about the correct course of action to avenge his dead father, the former king of Denmark.
Adapted from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare II.ii.1632-1646 (1603)
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O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Over men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces, of the smallest spider web;
Her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
From which Shakespearean play is this monologue taken?
This fanciful monologue is taken from Romeo and Juliet, in which Mercutio is a close friend to Romeo and Benvolio. In this famous excerpt, Mercutio is discussing a fairy queen that visits people while they sleep.
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FIRST WITCH: When shall we three meet againe?
In Thunder, Lightning, or in Raine?
SECOND WITCH: When the Hurley-burley's done,
When the Battaile's lost, and wonne
THIRD WITCH: That will be ere the set of Sunne
FIRST: Where the place?
SECOND: Upon the Heath
…
ALL: Padock calls anon: faire is foule, and foule is faire,
Houer through the fogge and filthie ayre.
These three witches appear as characters in which Shakespearean tragedy?
These witches appear in the opening lines of Macbeth and predict the protagonist’s eventual downfall and ruin. They are also responsible for the famous line “double, double toil and trouble.”
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CALIBAN: All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me
And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin—shows, pitch me i' the mire,
Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but
For every trifle are they set upon me;
Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me
And after bite me, then like hedgehogs which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount
Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
All wound with adders who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.
From which Shakespearean play is this monologue taken?
In The Tempest, one of Shakespeare’s last plays, the Milanese duke, Prospero, and his daughter, Miranda, interact with the monstrous Caliban, the sprite Ariel, and the shipwrecked prince Ferdinand. The play is widely regarded as one of Shakespeare’s best and is sometimes noted as a prototype for both post-colonial literature and as a launching point for post-colonial criticism.
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