Q 01/05

In the novel Frankenstein, which character carries the surname Frankenstein, a name popularly misapplied to another?

A) The creature itself

B) The creature's maker

C) The sea captain Robert Walton

D) The family's lakeside villa

Answer · why

B) The creature's maker

The creature's maker, Victor Frankenstein of Geneva, is the one the name belongs to; the creature has no name at all, and the mix-up was already being...

Q 02/05

What was the real name of Mark Twain, whose pen name is a riverboat leadsman's cry for two fathoms of water?

A) Eric Blair

B) Charles Dodgson

C) Samuel Clemens

D) William Porter

Answer · why

C) Samuel Clemens

Samuel Clemens took the name from his years piloting Mississippi steamboats, where 'mark twain' meant the water was twelve feet deep and safe to pass.

Q 03/05

How old is Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, whose age the Nurse counts to the day in her first scene?

A) 13

B) 15

C) 16

D) 18

Answer · why

A) 13

Juliet is 13, two weeks short of her fourteenth birthday on Lammas Eve; Shakespeare cut the age from 16 in his source poem, and brides that young were...

Q 04/05

In 'Wherefore art thou Romeo?', followed by 'deny thy father and refuse thy name', what does Juliet's 'wherefore' mean?

A) Where

B) Why

C) When

D) Whether

Answer · why

B) Why

Why is the meaning: Juliet is lamenting that Romeo is a Montague, not asking where he is, which is how the line gets played for laughs in parodies.

Q 05/05

In Poe's The Raven, which single word is the bird's reply to every question the grieving speaker asks?

A) Nevermore

B) Evermore

C) Lenore

D) Forever

Answer · why

A) Nevermore

Nevermore is the raven's 'only stock and store', yet the speaker keeps asking questions he knows it will answer the same way, a self-torture Poe built...