Q 01/05

The asp that kills Cleopatra is smuggled past her Roman guards in a basket of which fruit?

A) Dates

B) Figs

C) Grapes

D) Olives

Answer · why

B) Figs

Figs hide the snakes when a rustic clown carries them in, and Cleopatra remarks how poor an instrument may do a noble deed. A guard later spots the sl...

Q 02/05

In Antony and Cleopatra, age cannot wither the queen, 'nor custom stale her infinite' what?

A) Majesty

B) Beauty

C) Variety

D) Cunning

Answer · why

C) Variety

Variety is the point of the tribute: other women cloy the appetites they feed, the speaker goes on, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.

Q 03/05

Which everyday phrase does Cleopatra coin when she brushes off her past love for an earlier Roman?

A) Salad days

B) Wild-goose chase

C) Green-eyed monster

D) Heart of gold

Answer · why

A) Salad days

Salad days were, she says, when she was green in judgment and cold in blood. The phrase only caught on in the 19th century, and Elizabeth II used it i...

Q 04/05

Which Nile creature does a tipsy Antony describe to a drunken fellow ruler as shaped 'like itself'?

A) The hippopotamus

B) The ibis

C) The scarab

D) The crocodile

Answer · why

D) The crocodile

The crocodile, Antony adds with a straight face, is as broad as it has breadth, just as high as it is, and of its own colour too. His befuddled listen...

Q 05/05

Which blunt Roman officer gives the famous barge speech about Cleopatra, then later deserts Antony?

A) Agrippa

B) Enobarbus

C) Maecenas

D) Ventidius

Answer · why

B) Enobarbus

Enobarbus has a far bigger role in the play than in Shakespeare's source. His barge speech, though, follows that source almost word for word.