April Quiz - Shakespeare!

There’s nothing quite like a good quiz to get the mental juices flowing, but they’ve become intensely problematic in this age of instantaneous Internet content at everybody’s fingertips. Google and Wikipedia and like sites are pirate-coves for the lazy and the cheatful, and so the monthly Open Letters quiz will rely entirely on the honor system: readers are expected to rely on their memories alone. And no quiz would be complete without incentive! The first reader to respond with the highest number of correct answers will receive a book in the mail, courtesy of the editors at Open Letters. Email your answers to quiz@openlettersmonthly.com.

When April rolls around, we think of the birth - and death - of William Shakespeare, who would be 443 this year if he’d taken better care of himself. In honor of the Swan of Avon, our Open Letters Quiz this month will take a quick tour through the bowels of Bardiana.

1. Only one character in the plays of Shakespeare has the honor of being calleda “beagle” - name the lucky person (one extra point if you can supply the nameof the person paying the compliment)

2. One can think of few fates worse in the Shakespeare corpus han to be marriedto King Lear’s twin towers of bitchiness, Regan and oneril. Name the two gentlemen who have that unlucky distinction, and match up husband and harpy.

3. Name the Shakespeare tragedy in which a character compares himself to a pelican - and identify who it was who seems to think this will strike terrorinto the hearts of his enemies.

4. Who is it who’s reputed to be “as tall a man as any’s in Illyria”?

5. “Full fathom five thy father lies” …. yes, yes, but who’s doing thespeaking? To whom? About whom?

6. Shakespeare shares the year of his birth with another literary giant. Name the hapless also-ran.

7. In Troilus and Cressida, who is it we’re told spends their time “upon a lazy bed, the livelong day”?

8. Shakespeare lore treasures the tale of the aging Bard dying as a result of a titanic drinking bout in the company of Ben Jonson and one other man - who was that third man (a note to the wags among you: it wasn’t Steve Donoghue)?

9. Who is it who refers to himself (with somewhat dubious veracity) as “vigilantas a cat to steal cream”?

10. “A quart of ale is a dish for a king” - a sentiment that would certainly be echoed in many parts of South Boston! Who spoke this wise dictum, and in what play?

Last month’s Open Letters quiz on notable “firsts” provoked an outburst of wild and whirling replies. Alas, most of these guesses were woefully wrong.

But one reader rose above the crowd: Congratulations to Nancy Gilmore of Ephreta, Pennsylvania, who correctly answered two of the ten questions! Nancy will receive a copy of a young Winston Churchill’s very first book, “The Story of the Malakand Field Force.” Below are last month’s answers:

1. Who was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature?
- Sinclair Lewis

2. What was Jack Aubrey’s first command?
- The Agamemnon

3. President Theodore Roosevelt was the first to popularize the term muckraker.” From which literary work did he draw the term?
- Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan

4. What was the first movie adapted from a work of literature?
- “Moby Dick”

5. Who was the first Nobel laureate for literature to die in a car accident?
- Albert Camus

6. What was the first book to be printed in paperback?
- “The Lost Horizon,” by James Hilton

7. Who was the first US President to dabble in fiction-writing?
- Andrew Jackson

8. On the first night of Grendel’s attack on Heorot, how many men die?
- Seven

9. Who was the first person to translate Homer into English?
- Chapman

10. Who tells the first of the Canterbury Tales?
- The Knight

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