Card 0 of 35
Adapted from Richard III by William Shakespeare, I.i.1-42
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.
Which of the following is NOT presented in this passage?
Let’s consider what is presented in the passage, starting at the beginning. The passage opens with exposition - a war has ended, and the speaker’s society is now at peace. He doesn’t like this, as he can’t fit in. We are then given some characterization about why he can’t fit in: he was born prematurely. We are then given insight into his motivations: “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, / To entertain these fair well-spoken days, / I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days.” After this, we are told something about which characters are related to one another in that the speaker refers to “my brother Clarence.” The only answer choice that doesn’t appear in the passage is a plea to the audience. While the passage is constructed like an aside although there are no other characters on stage, and the speaker addresses the audience directly, he never pleads with his listeners or asks them to do anything.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from Act 1, Scene 1, ln. 78-119 of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (1604) in Vol. XIX, Part 2 of The Harvard Classics (1909-1914)
FAUSTUS**:** How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
I’ll have them read me strange philosophy
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;
I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces;
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge,
I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.
\[Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS\]
Come, German Valdes and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference.
Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,
Know that your words have won me at the last
To practice magic and concealed arts:
Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy
That will receive no object, for my head
But ruminates on necromantic skill.
Philosophy is odious and obscure,
Both law and physic are for petty wits;
Divinity is basest of the three,
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile:
’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.
Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;
And I that have with concise syllogisms
Gravell’d the pastors of the German church,
And made the flowering pride of Wittenberg
Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits
On sweet Musaeigus, when he came to hell,
Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,
Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.
Which of the following is Faustus NOT contemplating in this passage?
Faustus is NOT considering leaving Wittenberg in order to accept an opportunity to study in Asia. The latter half of Faustus' speech goes to great lengths to explain that he will no longer be studying conventionally, but will be exploring occult powers. While his early ruminations on what he will do with his power do mention Asia, this is a fantastical listing of potential options, and should not be taken as a legitimate weighing of options.
This is also the most limited and literal of the options. In this speech, Faustus is considering matters of the occult in a broad scope and is broadly dismissing earthly disciplines as a whole, not specific academic postings at different locations.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, III.i.1126-1185 (1623)
Enter Judges, Senators and Tribunes, with MARTIUS and QUINTUS, bound, passing on to the place of execution; TITUS going before, pleading
Titus Andronicus: Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay!
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent
In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept;
For all my blood in Rome's great quarrel shed;
For all the frosty nights that I have watch'd;
And for these bitter tears, which now you see
Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks;
Be pitiful to my condemned sons,
Whose souls are not corrupted as 'tis thought.
For two and twenty sons I never wept,
Because they died in honor's lofty bed.
\[Lieth down; the Judges, &c., pass by him, and Exeunt\]
For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write
My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears:
Let my tears stanch the earth's dry appetite;
My sons' sweet blood will make it shame and blush.
O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain,
That shall distill from these two ancient urns,
Than youthful April shall with all his showers:
In summer's drought I'll drop upon thee still;
In winter with warm tears I'll melt the snow
And keep eternal spring-time on thy face,
So thou refuse to drink my dear sons' blood.
\[Enter LUCIUS, with his sword drawn\]
O reverend tribunes! O gentle, aged men!
Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death;
And let me say, that never wept before,
My tears are now prevailing orators.
Lucius: O noble father, you lament in vain:
The tribunes hear you not; no man is by;
And you recount your sorrows to a stone.
Titus Andronicus: Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead.
Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you,—
Lucius: My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.
Titus Andronicus: Why, tis no matter, man; if they did hear,
They would not mark me, or if they did mark,
They would not pity me, yet plead I must;
And bootless unto them \[—\]
Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me;
And, were they but attired in grave weeds,
Rome could afford no tribune like to these.
A stone is soft as wax,—tribunes more hard than stones;
A stone is silent, and offendeth not,
And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.
\[Rises\]
But wherefore stand'st thou with thy weapon drawn?
Lucius:To rescue my two brothers from their death:
For which attempt the judges have pronounced
My everlasting doom of banishment.
Titus Andronicus:O happy man! they have befriended thee.
Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey
But me and mine: how happy art thou, then,
From these devourers to be banished!
In the bolded and underlined lines, Titus addresses what and/or whom?
In the indicated lines, Titus is addressing the tribunes ("hear me grave fathers," "O reverend tribunes") and the earth ("O earth, I will befriend thee"). While Lucius enters the stage during this speech, Titus does not directly address him in the indicated lines. While Titus does speak as the only person in the room, he is still addressing the absent tribunes in the highlighted section of the passage. At no point does he address himself directly in a soliloquy.
The key to answering this question is to look for markers that reveal to whom Titus is speaking. "O" is a common marker of address in Shakespeare's works. Another technique is to examine all the uses of the second person ("you," "thee," etc.) and trace these instances of the second to a specific subject who is being addressed.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
PROSPERO:
Prospero says that he has used his magical powers to do all of the following EXCEPT ___________________.
In the final line of the speech, Prospero states, “…I’ll drown my book.” But he says nothing about drowning his enemies. We’re looking for the one answer that is not supported by the text, so “drown his enemies” is correct.
Prospero does mention causing an eclipse (lines 9-10), changing the weather (lines 10-12), creating earthquakes (lines 14-15), and raising the dead (lines 16-17).
Passage adapted from William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Passage adapted from Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (1897)
Translated by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard (in public domain)
\[Cyrano speaks to Roxane.\]
CYRANO:
Roxane is physically located _________________.
Lines 18, 19, and 22 tell us that Roxanne is somewhere above Cyrano among leafy tree branches. We know that she is probably invisible to him, because he asks whether she’s trembling and then says that he can feel her doing so (rather than seeing her.) Line 22 tells us that the tremors of Roxane’s hand are coming down through the branches to reach him. All of this emphasizes Cyrano's worshipful attitude to Roxane: saying she's "throned", and expressing amazement that anything he can do would have the power to affect her.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Passage adapted from Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (1897)
Translated by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard (in public domain)
\[Cyrano speaks to Roxane.\]
CYRANO:
Roxane’s hand is trembling (lines 19-22) most likely because __________________.
Cyrano believes that his eloquence may have touched Roxane emotionally and made her understand his feelings. He hopes that her trembling hands mean that this moment is as significant for her as it is for him. This speech gives us very little further information about what Roxane is doing while Cyrano is talking. All we know is that she doesn't speak or laugh or interrupt him in any way. Therefore we have no reason to think that she's reacting negatively to what he says.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
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 5
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; 10
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, 15
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight; 20
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
(1597)
The imagery in the first fifteen lines of this excerpt emphasizes Queen Mab's __________________.
The images in the first fifteen lines of this excerpt serve primarily to highlight Queen Mab's smallness. We learn that "she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone
on the forefinger of an alderman," that she can crawl over men's noses, that her wagon wheels are made from spiders' legs and her chariot from an empty hazelnut. There is no evidence to support the other possible answers..
Passage adapted from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597).
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Passage adapted from Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (1897)
Translated by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard (in public domain)
\[Cyrano speaks to Roxane.\]
CYRANO:
Roxane’s hand is trembling (lines 19-22) most likely because __________________.
Cyrano believes that his eloquence may have touched Roxane emotionally and made her understand his feelings. He hopes that her trembling hands mean that this moment is as significant for her as it is for him. This speech gives us very little further information about what Roxane is doing while Cyrano is talking. All we know is that she doesn't speak or laugh or interrupt him in any way. Therefore we have no reason to think that she's reacting negatively to what he says.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from Richard III by William Shakespeare, I.i.1-42
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.
Which of the following is NOT presented in this passage?
Let’s consider what is presented in the passage, starting at the beginning. The passage opens with exposition - a war has ended, and the speaker’s society is now at peace. He doesn’t like this, as he can’t fit in. We are then given some characterization about why he can’t fit in: he was born prematurely. We are then given insight into his motivations: “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, / To entertain these fair well-spoken days, / I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days.” After this, we are told something about which characters are related to one another in that the speaker refers to “my brother Clarence.” The only answer choice that doesn’t appear in the passage is a plea to the audience. While the passage is constructed like an aside although there are no other characters on stage, and the speaker addresses the audience directly, he never pleads with his listeners or asks them to do anything.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from Act 1, Scene 1, ln. 78-119 of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (1604) in Vol. XIX, Part 2 of The Harvard Classics (1909-1914)
FAUSTUS**:** How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
I’ll have them read me strange philosophy
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;
I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces;
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge,
I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.
\[Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS\]
Come, German Valdes and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference.
Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,
Know that your words have won me at the last
To practice magic and concealed arts:
Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy
That will receive no object, for my head
But ruminates on necromantic skill.
Philosophy is odious and obscure,
Both law and physic are for petty wits;
Divinity is basest of the three,
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile:
’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.
Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;
And I that have with concise syllogisms
Gravell’d the pastors of the German church,
And made the flowering pride of Wittenberg
Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits
On sweet Musaeigus, when he came to hell,
Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,
Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.
Which of the following is Faustus NOT contemplating in this passage?
Faustus is NOT considering leaving Wittenberg in order to accept an opportunity to study in Asia. The latter half of Faustus' speech goes to great lengths to explain that he will no longer be studying conventionally, but will be exploring occult powers. While his early ruminations on what he will do with his power do mention Asia, this is a fantastical listing of potential options, and should not be taken as a legitimate weighing of options.
This is also the most limited and literal of the options. In this speech, Faustus is considering matters of the occult in a broad scope and is broadly dismissing earthly disciplines as a whole, not specific academic postings at different locations.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, III.i.1126-1185 (1623)
Enter Judges, Senators and Tribunes, with MARTIUS and QUINTUS, bound, passing on to the place of execution; TITUS going before, pleading
Titus Andronicus: Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay!
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent
In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept;
For all my blood in Rome's great quarrel shed;
For all the frosty nights that I have watch'd;
And for these bitter tears, which now you see
Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks;
Be pitiful to my condemned sons,
Whose souls are not corrupted as 'tis thought.
For two and twenty sons I never wept,
Because they died in honor's lofty bed.
\[Lieth down; the Judges, &c., pass by him, and Exeunt\]
For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write
My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears:
Let my tears stanch the earth's dry appetite;
My sons' sweet blood will make it shame and blush.
O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain,
That shall distill from these two ancient urns,
Than youthful April shall with all his showers:
In summer's drought I'll drop upon thee still;
In winter with warm tears I'll melt the snow
And keep eternal spring-time on thy face,
So thou refuse to drink my dear sons' blood.
\[Enter LUCIUS, with his sword drawn\]
O reverend tribunes! O gentle, aged men!
Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death;
And let me say, that never wept before,
My tears are now prevailing orators.
Lucius: O noble father, you lament in vain:
The tribunes hear you not; no man is by;
And you recount your sorrows to a stone.
Titus Andronicus: Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead.
Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you,—
Lucius: My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.
Titus Andronicus: Why, tis no matter, man; if they did hear,
They would not mark me, or if they did mark,
They would not pity me, yet plead I must;
And bootless unto them \[—\]
Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me;
And, were they but attired in grave weeds,
Rome could afford no tribune like to these.
A stone is soft as wax,—tribunes more hard than stones;
A stone is silent, and offendeth not,
And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.
\[Rises\]
But wherefore stand'st thou with thy weapon drawn?
Lucius:To rescue my two brothers from their death:
For which attempt the judges have pronounced
My everlasting doom of banishment.
Titus Andronicus:O happy man! they have befriended thee.
Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey
But me and mine: how happy art thou, then,
From these devourers to be banished!
In the bolded and underlined lines, Titus addresses what and/or whom?
In the indicated lines, Titus is addressing the tribunes ("hear me grave fathers," "O reverend tribunes") and the earth ("O earth, I will befriend thee"). While Lucius enters the stage during this speech, Titus does not directly address him in the indicated lines. While Titus does speak as the only person in the room, he is still addressing the absent tribunes in the highlighted section of the passage. At no point does he address himself directly in a soliloquy.
The key to answering this question is to look for markers that reveal to whom Titus is speaking. "O" is a common marker of address in Shakespeare's works. Another technique is to examine all the uses of the second person ("you," "thee," etc.) and trace these instances of the second to a specific subject who is being addressed.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
PROSPERO:
Prospero says that he has used his magical powers to do all of the following EXCEPT ___________________.
In the final line of the speech, Prospero states, “…I’ll drown my book.” But he says nothing about drowning his enemies. We’re looking for the one answer that is not supported by the text, so “drown his enemies” is correct.
Prospero does mention causing an eclipse (lines 9-10), changing the weather (lines 10-12), creating earthquakes (lines 14-15), and raising the dead (lines 16-17).
Passage adapted from William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611)
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Passage adapted from Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (1897)
Translated by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard (in public domain)
\[Cyrano speaks to Roxane.\]
CYRANO:
Roxane is physically located _________________.
Lines 18, 19, and 22 tell us that Roxanne is somewhere above Cyrano among leafy tree branches. We know that she is probably invisible to him, because he asks whether she’s trembling and then says that he can feel her doing so (rather than seeing her.) Line 22 tells us that the tremors of Roxane’s hand are coming down through the branches to reach him. All of this emphasizes Cyrano's worshipful attitude to Roxane: saying she's "throned", and expressing amazement that anything he can do would have the power to affect her.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
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 5
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; 10
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, 15
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight; 20
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
(1597)
The imagery in the first fifteen lines of this excerpt emphasizes Queen Mab's __________________.
The images in the first fifteen lines of this excerpt serve primarily to highlight Queen Mab's smallness. We learn that "she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone
on the forefinger of an alderman," that she can crawl over men's noses, that her wagon wheels are made from spiders' legs and her chariot from an empty hazelnut. There is no evidence to support the other possible answers..
Passage adapted from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597).
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from Richard III by William Shakespeare, I.i.1-42
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.
Which of the following is NOT presented in this passage?
Let’s consider what is presented in the passage, starting at the beginning. The passage opens with exposition - a war has ended, and the speaker’s society is now at peace. He doesn’t like this, as he can’t fit in. We are then given some characterization about why he can’t fit in: he was born prematurely. We are then given insight into his motivations: “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, / To entertain these fair well-spoken days, / I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days.” After this, we are told something about which characters are related to one another in that the speaker refers to “my brother Clarence.” The only answer choice that doesn’t appear in the passage is a plea to the audience. While the passage is constructed like an aside although there are no other characters on stage, and the speaker addresses the audience directly, he never pleads with his listeners or asks them to do anything.
Compare your answer with the correct one above
Adapted from Act 1, Scene 1, ln. 78-119 of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (1604) in Vol. XIX, Part 2 of The Harvard Classics (1909-1914)
FAUSTUS**:** How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
I’ll have them read me strange philosophy
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;
I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces;
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge,
I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.
\[Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS\]
Come, German Valdes and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference.
Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,
Know that your words have won me at the last
To practice magic and concealed arts:
Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy
That will receive no object, for my head
But ruminates on necromantic skill.
Philosophy is odious and obscure,
Both law and physic are for petty wits;
Divinity is basest of the three,
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile:
’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.
Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;
And I that have with concise syllogisms
Gravell’d the pastors of the German church,
And made the flowering pride of Wittenberg
Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits
On sweet Musaeigus, when he came to hell,
Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,
Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.
Which of the following is Faustus NOT contemplating in this passage?
Faustus is NOT considering leaving Wittenberg in order to accept an opportunity to study in Asia. The latter half of Faustus' speech goes to great lengths to explain that he will no longer be studying conventionally, but will be exploring occult powers. While his early ruminations on what he will do with his power do mention Asia, this is a fantastical listing of potential options, and should not be taken as a legitimate weighing of options.
This is also the most limited and literal of the options. In this speech, Faustus is considering matters of the occult in a broad scope and is broadly dismissing earthly disciplines as a whole, not specific academic postings at different locations.
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Adapted from Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, III.i.1126-1185 (1623)
Enter Judges, Senators and Tribunes, with MARTIUS and QUINTUS, bound, passing on to the place of execution; TITUS going before, pleading
Titus Andronicus: Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay!
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent
In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept;
For all my blood in Rome's great quarrel shed;
For all the frosty nights that I have watch'd;
And for these bitter tears, which now you see
Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks;
Be pitiful to my condemned sons,
Whose souls are not corrupted as 'tis thought.
For two and twenty sons I never wept,
Because they died in honor's lofty bed.
\[Lieth down; the Judges, &c., pass by him, and Exeunt\]
For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write
My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears:
Let my tears stanch the earth's dry appetite;
My sons' sweet blood will make it shame and blush.
O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain,
That shall distill from these two ancient urns,
Than youthful April shall with all his showers:
In summer's drought I'll drop upon thee still;
In winter with warm tears I'll melt the snow
And keep eternal spring-time on thy face,
So thou refuse to drink my dear sons' blood.
\[Enter LUCIUS, with his sword drawn\]
O reverend tribunes! O gentle, aged men!
Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death;
And let me say, that never wept before,
My tears are now prevailing orators.
Lucius: O noble father, you lament in vain:
The tribunes hear you not; no man is by;
And you recount your sorrows to a stone.
Titus Andronicus: Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead.
Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you,—
Lucius: My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.
Titus Andronicus: Why, tis no matter, man; if they did hear,
They would not mark me, or if they did mark,
They would not pity me, yet plead I must;
And bootless unto them \[—\]
Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me;
And, were they but attired in grave weeds,
Rome could afford no tribune like to these.
A stone is soft as wax,—tribunes more hard than stones;
A stone is silent, and offendeth not,
And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.
\[Rises\]
But wherefore stand'st thou with thy weapon drawn?
Lucius:To rescue my two brothers from their death:
For which attempt the judges have pronounced
My everlasting doom of banishment.
Titus Andronicus:O happy man! they have befriended thee.
Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey
But me and mine: how happy art thou, then,
From these devourers to be banished!
In the bolded and underlined lines, Titus addresses what and/or whom?
In the indicated lines, Titus is addressing the tribunes ("hear me grave fathers," "O reverend tribunes") and the earth ("O earth, I will befriend thee"). While Lucius enters the stage during this speech, Titus does not directly address him in the indicated lines. While Titus does speak as the only person in the room, he is still addressing the absent tribunes in the highlighted section of the passage. At no point does he address himself directly in a soliloquy.
The key to answering this question is to look for markers that reveal to whom Titus is speaking. "O" is a common marker of address in Shakespeare's works. Another technique is to examine all the uses of the second person ("you," "thee," etc.) and trace these instances of the second to a specific subject who is being addressed.
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PROSPERO:
Prospero says that he has used his magical powers to do all of the following EXCEPT ___________________.
In the final line of the speech, Prospero states, “…I’ll drown my book.” But he says nothing about drowning his enemies. We’re looking for the one answer that is not supported by the text, so “drown his enemies” is correct.
Prospero does mention causing an eclipse (lines 9-10), changing the weather (lines 10-12), creating earthquakes (lines 14-15), and raising the dead (lines 16-17).
Passage adapted from William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611)
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Passage adapted from Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (1897)
Translated by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard (in public domain)
\[Cyrano speaks to Roxane.\]
CYRANO:
Roxane is physically located _________________.
Lines 18, 19, and 22 tell us that Roxanne is somewhere above Cyrano among leafy tree branches. We know that she is probably invisible to him, because he asks whether she’s trembling and then says that he can feel her doing so (rather than seeing her.) Line 22 tells us that the tremors of Roxane’s hand are coming down through the branches to reach him. All of this emphasizes Cyrano's worshipful attitude to Roxane: saying she's "throned", and expressing amazement that anything he can do would have the power to affect her.
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Passage adapted from Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (1897)
Translated by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard (in public domain)
\[Cyrano speaks to Roxane.\]
CYRANO:
Roxane’s hand is trembling (lines 19-22) most likely because __________________.
Cyrano believes that his eloquence may have touched Roxane emotionally and made her understand his feelings. He hopes that her trembling hands mean that this moment is as significant for her as it is for him. This speech gives us very little further information about what Roxane is doing while Cyrano is talking. All we know is that she doesn't speak or laugh or interrupt him in any way. Therefore we have no reason to think that she's reacting negatively to what he says.
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