English Literature Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The Wild Gallant is a comedy by John Dryden, first staged in 1663, and it was his first play to be produced. Dr. Johnson wrote the tragedy Irene, Ben Jonson wrote comedies such as Volpone and The Alchemist, and Pope wrote no plays of this name. So only Dryden fits. The play was first acted in 1663 and was not a success, but it started Dryden's career as a dramatist and he later wrote Marriage a la Mode and All for Love. Ben Jonson wrote Volpone, Dr. Johnson wrote Irene, and Pope wrote no plays.

Answer: C

All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1677) is Dryden's tragedy based on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. It keeps the same lovers but compresses the action to the last hours and writes it in blank verse with attention to the unities. Hamlet, Cymbeline and Romeo and Juliet are Shakespeare's plays but are not the source of Dryden's play. Dryden's play of 1677 is a response to Shakespeare's play and treats the last day of the love of Antony and Cleopatra in Alexandria. It was written in blank verse, which Dryden said he wrote in imitation of Shakespeare's style.

Answer: A

The printed key is 'An accident of chance'. What was confirmed: the question comes from a reading of Beckett's treatment of a martyr, and the option is the one the key marks. What was not confirmed: the passage the question refers to is not given in the booklet, and the option could not be traced to a source in this review, so the key is kept as printed. The other options, someone who has lost his will to a higher one, someone mourned and celebrated, and someone who desires nothing for himself, are the ones the key rejects.

Answer: A

Wole Soyinka founded the theatre group called The Guerrilla Unit, in the early 1970s, to carry out street theatre that criticised the political situation in Nigeria. Chinua Achebe, Ken Saro-Wiwa and Buchi Emecheta are Nigerian writers known for fiction and other work and did not found this group. Soyinka wrote and directed political satires for the Guerrilla Unit in the early 1970s, performed in the street and in the university, after he returned from prison and exile. The other writers are Nigerian novelists who are not linked with this group.

Answer: B

The key is that both statements are correct and the first explains the second. The question asks for the best evaluation of the two statements; the key accepts both and reads statement 1, that Doctor Faustus is a conservative reaction to a world expanding in knowledge and pleasures, as the reason for statement 2, that Marlowe wrote the finest poetry with one eye on convention and one on the new. This is a critical judgment and it was not independently confirmed here; the key is kept as printed. The options saying only 1 or only 2, or that both are incorrect, are the ones the key rejects.

Answer: A

Polonius sends Reynaldo to Paris to spy on his son Laertes, in Act 2 Scene 1 of Hamlet, telling him to ask about Laertes' behaviour indirectly. Ophelia is his daughter, Marcellus is a soldier on the battlements, and Guido is not a character in the play. Polonius tells Reynaldo to find out how Laertes is behaving in Paris by spreading small false stories and watching how others respond, which shows the old man's habit of spying. Ophelia is later used as a decoy for Hamlet, and Marcellus is on the guard duty at Elsinore.

Answer: A

Mephistopheles is the one who, in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, tells Faustus that Lucifer fell because of his aspiring pride and insolence. The question speaks of a conscious echo of Faustus' story, and the speaker is the devil's servant in that play. Umbriel is a gnome in The Rape of the Lock, and a Gnome is a spirit there, so they do not carry the echo. In the conjuring scene Faustus asks Mephistopheles how he can be out of hell, and the spirit replies that this is hell and that Lucifer fell by aspiring pride and insolence, and he then tells Faustus to leave such frivolous demands. This scene is the one echoed in the question.

Answer: D

Fortinbras's father, the elder Fortinbras of Norway, was killed by Hamlet's father, the old King Hamlet, in single combat, and the lands they staked were forfeit to Denmark. Prince Hamlet, Laertes and young Fortinbras were not the killers, so the key is Hamlet's father. In the play Old Hamlet fought Old Fortinbras, who had challenged him, and the winner claimed the lands staked, and Young Fortinbras now wants them back, which is why he marches through Denmark. Prince Hamlet and Laertes were not yet involved in that old duel.

Answer: A

In the churchyard scene of Hamlet (Act 5 Scene 1) the gravedigger digs up the skull of Yorick, the king's jester, and Hamlet remembers him with the words 'Alas, poor Yorick'. It is not Reynaldo's, Ophelia's or his father's skull. Ophelia is buried in the same scene but her body is not the skull he lifts. Hamlet takes up Yorick's skull and recalls that he was a fellow of infinite jest who had carried him on his back as a child. The gravedigger tells him that it has lain in the earth for twenty-three years, which is why the scene is about the shortness of life.

Answer: B

In Pygmalion, when Pickering asks Doolittle whether he has no morals, Doolittle answers 'Can't afford them, Governor'. He explains that a poor man cannot keep middle-class morality, and that he is one of the undeserving poor. The other options are not what he says in reply. Shaw makes Doolittle a dustman who sees himself as the undeserving poor, a man who cannot afford middle-class morality, and the reply shows his wit and cheerful frankness. The other replies in the options are not given in the scene.