Q 01/05

In Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, the speaker wonders whether to compare the beloved to what, then calls it less lovely?

A) A red rose

B) A summer's day

C) A spring morning

D) A clear night

Answer · why

B) A summer's day

A summer's day proves too short, too hot and too windy to match the beloved, whose beauty the poem promises to keep alive for as long as people can re...

Q 02/05

Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, which mocks flattering love poems, opens by saying the mistress's eyes are nothing like what?

A) The moon

B) The sea

C) The sun

D) The sky

Answer · why

C) The sun

The sun is only the first compliment refused: her lips are paler than coral and her breath reeks, yet the speaker ends by calling his love as rare as ...

Q 03/05

Which metre, also the rhythm of the verse in Shakespeare's plays, is used in all but one of his sonnets?

A) Iambic pentameter

B) Trochaic tetrameter

C) Dactylic hexameter

D) Anapaestic trimeter

Answer · why

A) Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter gives each line five beats and roughly ten syllables. The lone exception is Sonnet 145, written in shorter lines of four beats.

Q 04/05

Which Shakespeare play opens with a sonnet spoken by a Chorus and has its lovers share another when they meet?

A) Antony and Cleopatra

B) Troilus and Cressida

C) Much Ado About Nothing

D) Romeo and Juliet

Answer · why

D) Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet share fourteen lines when they first speak, trading metaphors of saints and their devotees.

Q 05/05

Some scholars think Shakespeare's Sonnet 145 puns on the surname of which woman, whom he wed at eighteen?

A) Anne Hathaway

B) Mary Arden

C) Anne Whateley

D) Mary Fitton

Answer · why

A) Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway is perhaps hidden in the words 'hate away' near the poem's end, a pun Andrew Gurr proposed in 1971. Other scholars doubt the two sounded...