May Quiz - Fives!
Ah, May! The lusty month of May! Winter recedes, the sun warms, and everyone’s thoughts, here at Open Letters and elsewhere, turn to procreation, rampant and repeat procreation. The fifth month of the present calendar brings with it a nosegay of pure joys. So it’s only fitting that we commemorate it by centering our quiz this time around on the number five: five questions, at least five answers to each. Try your luck, and see if you can procreate yourself (intellectually speaking, of course) to the correct answers.
1. Name five authors who hit it big before they were thirty.
2. Name five authors who are buried in Boston’s gorgeous Mount Auburn Cemetery.
3. Name five out of the long list of England’s Poets Laureate (naturally, discounting John Dryden, the one everybody knows)
4. March madness notwithstanding, it’s May that deranges people. Name five authors who spent time in nuthouses.
5. Finally, in the lenient spirit of this most lenient of months, name five American novels whose titles are also proper names.
Last month’s Shakespeare-themed quiz occasioned a torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passionate (albeit mostly incorrect) answers. And who out-heroded Herod to earn the palm? The cryptically named H. Doran, from an undisclosed location, who scored a 4½ out of 10. Congrats to Mr/Ms/Mrs Doran, who will receive a copy of the second edition of the great Riverside Shakespeare. The answers are below.
1. Only one character in the plays of Shakespeare has the honor of being called a “beagle” - name the lucky person (one extra point if you can supply the name of the person paying the compliment)
- Maria in ‘Twelfth Night’ - complimented by Sir Toby Belch
2. One can think of few fates worse in the Shakespeare corpus than to be married to King Lear’s twin towers of bitchiness, Regan and Goneril. Name the two gentlemen who have that unlucky distinction, and match up husband and harpy.
- Regan’s wife is the Duke of Cornwall; Goneril’s little lady is the Duke of Albany
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 terror into the hearts of his enemies.
- ‘Hamlet’ (the pelican is Laertes)
4. Who is it who’s reputed to be “as tall a man as any’s in Illyria”?
- The beanpole is Sir Andrew Aguecheek in ‘Twelfth Night’ (although in staged versions he always turns out to be shorter than advertised)
5. “Full fathom five thy father lies” …. yes, yes, but who’s doing the speaking? To whom? About whom?
- Ariel, to Ferdinand, about the King of Naples
6. Shakespeare shares the year of his birth with another literary giant. Name the hapless also-ran.
- Cervantes, the loser
7. In ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ who is it we’re told spends their time “upon a lazy bed, the livelong day”?
- Achilles and Patroclus!
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)
- It was, in fact, Steve Donoghue
9. Who is it who refers to himself (with somewhat dubious veracity) as “vigilant as a cat to steal cream”?
- Falstaff, in ‘Henry IV Part I’
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?
- Autolycus in ‘A Winter’s Tale’
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