Six Characters in Search of an Author Quiz

Answer: Shakespeare

From the play "Macbeth", Banquo is Macbeth's best friend and meets the witches with Macbeth at the start. After Banquo's unlawful killing, his ghost haunts Macbeth, or is it just Macbeth's guilty conscience playing tricks on him?

Shakespeare was an actor as well as a playwright, and ran a theatrical troupe called "The Kings Men".

Answer: Shakespeare

Friar Laurence helps Romeo and Juliet by marrying them in secret. His underlying motive is a hope that the marriage will end the terrible feud between the two families. Unfortunately he hastens the tragic end of the lovers by supplying a poison that will fake Juliet's death in order to help them elope. Tragically, his message to Romeo to explain she is really alive does not reach him in time. Kindhearted wise man or meddling old fool? You decide.

In Shakespeare's time death was always near. They suffered several epidemics of the Bubonic Plague. When he was born, his town suffered an outbreak, causing a quarter of its population to die. Later in his life, his theatre, The Globe, was often closed for months on end because mass gatherings were banned. He really was a survivor!

Answer: Shakespeare

From the play "King Lear", Cordelia is the youngest and favourite of the king's three daughters. When he demands they prove their love for him to gain an inheritance, she refuses to join in with the game on the grounds that it is a vain and unjust way to divide the kingdom, and that her two sisters were being false.

Cordelia is pure at heart and loves her father truly, but he is insulted by her refusal and banishes her from his sight. Even after that, she loves him so much that she later forgives him. She is possibly Shakespeare's most lovable character.

Shakespeare had three children: Susanna, and the twins Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet died from the plague at a young age. Shakespeare had four grandchildren, but Susanna's daughter did not have children, and Judith's three sons each died in childhood, so there exist no direct descendants.

Answer: Shakespeare

From the play "Macbeth", Malcolm is son of King Duncan and heir to the throne. After Duncan is murdered, Malcolm is under suspicion and flees the country. Upon discovering that Macbeth is behind the murder plot, Malcolm must raise an army and return to Scotland to claim the throne. He represents order and good in the play. We can only hope he can defeat the greedy and treacherous Macbeths in time.

Shakespeare may have been expected to follow in his father's career as a glove maker, as craftsmen's sons often did. It is likely he had to help his father in the workshop. But his father was also a town councillor, which gave privileges of being able to attend the local school for free where he would have received a good education in Latin and Greek and famous speeches.

Answer: Shakespeare

From the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Bottom is the fool of the play. He is a weaver roaming the woods when Puck, the prankster sprite, swaps Bottom's head for the head of an ass. Meanwhile someone is handing out potions to make people fall in love with each other. There's a mix up and Titania, Queen of the Fairies, falls for Bottom, donkey face and all, and pursues him through the woods. Bottom makes a number of dodgy Shakespearian jokes and Titania thinks they are all hilarious, until the potion begins to wear off. "The course of true love never did run smooth." - Act I, Scene 1.

Shakespeare married when he was just 18. His wife was an older woman, a 26 year old! She outlived him by 7 years. He died when he was 52. She died at 67.

Answer: Shakespeare

From the play "Othello", Desdemona is the tragic victim of Iago's whispering campaign against her. She and her husband Othello are a true love match, faithful and happy, when Iago, perhaps Shakespeare's greatest villain, makes Othello believe that Desdemona has been unfaithful. Othello rages with despair and anger and murders his poor wife only to eventually realise she was, as she had begged him to believe and trust, completely innocent.

A quote from the play: "O beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on."

The green eyed monster appears to be just one of many phrases and words Shakespeare introduced to the language, such was his inventiveness and the popularity of his work.

Answer: Dickens

Pip is the main character in Dickens' thirteenth novel, "Great Expectations". Pip is an empathetic hero, being of entirely good character and a hard worker who tries not to let the tricksters and con artists he meets deflate his spirit. He devotes himself to winning his childhood sweetheart, the cold and aloof Estella. Will he be trapped in the wrong relationship? Will Estella ever love him? Will the travails of his hard life harden and destroy him?

Dickens wrote "Great Expectations" at a time in his life when his marriage (of 22 years and 10 children) had broken up, probably because of an affair the 45 year old seemed to be having with an 18 year old actress. Some historians link the character Estella to that actress, Ellen Ternan.

Answer: Dickens

From "Great Expectations", Miss Havisham is a spooky and sad character. Now a wealthy recluse, she was jilted at the altar by a fraudulent fiance. She was so humiliated and injured that she has refused to change out of her wedding clothes, or tidy away the wedding feast, or even socialise, and now she sits alone in the dark, dressed in her wedding dress everyday. She plots to make Pip fall in love with her ward Estella merely so she can break Pip's heart in revenge against love.

Dickens wrote under the pseudonym "Boz". This was in part to make his stories seem more exciting, published as they were in serial form in a magazine, but it also allowed him a modicum of anonymity, as he is said to have drawn some characters from real life, including Miss Havisham.

Answer: Dickens

From the novel "Bleak House", Tulkinghorn is a Satan-like character, an excellent lawyer with devious intentions. His intentions are not quite clear to the reader, we just see that he has creepy and sinister behaviour, especially around his client's wife, which adds a sense of danger to the storyline. When he turns to blackmail, given his skill in the law and the many opportunities a clever lawyer has to make money honestly, one can only surmise he enjoys the activity.

Dickens took the chance in "Bleak House" to expose the legal system's flaws, how it was open to abuse, and how it wreaked cruel havoc on individuals and also society. He was a strong believer in social justice and reform.

Answer: Dickens

Old Mr Turveydrop runs the dance academy in "Bleak House", and is a pompous, conceited dandy, mutton dressed as lamb, far too plump for his clothing. He also makes his son do all the work while he pretends to do it.

The term Turveydropian has since entered the language as meaning overly concerned with one's appearance, deportment, demeanour, etc, in a shallow or ridiculous manner.

Dickens contributed many new words to our language. "Boredom" comes from "Bleak House", as does "jog-trotty" which means dull, boring, like the trot of a horse.

Answer: Dickens

Nancy is the girlfriend of the dreaded Bill Sikes in "Oliver Twist". She is part of Fagin's gang, but she feels motherly towards Oliver and tries to warn him to get away. She is eventually punished for this in the harshest way.

At the time Dickens was writing the story, there was a real life murder in the vicinity. A young woman working as prostitute was killed in her bed by her burglar boyfriend. Eliza Grimwood, 25, was murdered in a highly violent manner, described in the newspapers. It was a huge story at the time, like the much later Jack the Ripper murders, and Londoners were deeply shocked. The description of Bill killing Nancy in "Oliver Twist" is uncannily close.

Answer: Dickens

From the novel "Edwin Drood", Rosa Bud is Drood's fiancee but Drood's uncle, who is the choirmaster and local opium addict, is secretly in love with Rosa. When Drood mysteriously disappears, yet another admirer of Rosa declares his interest in her, and soon it is suspected Drood may have been murdered. The suspect list begins to pile up and a shadowy stranger appears...

But there we must stop because Dickens died before he could finish this book. He was 58 and suffered a stroke. He came in from writing a chapter of Drood to have dinner. His sister was with him. He felt very ill and she told him to have a lie down. "On the floor"... he is purported to have said, and fell. The doctor was called from London but no remedy helped and he died the next day.

Queen Victoria sent a personal message of condolence to his wife and family. Not just Britain but the world was mourning. He was the most popular writer of his day.

Despite instructions in his will for a small funeral and a humble burial place, the media and Church lobbied for him to placed in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, along with Chaucer and other such greats, where he now resides.

Answer: King

From the 1974 novel (and 1976 film) "Carrie", Carrie is a high school girl with telekenetic powers and an overbearing mother; the drama explodes at her senior prom.

This was Stephen King's first published novel. It started as a short story which King didn't think was working so he threw it away. His wife discovered it and persuaded him to continue with it. Then it was rejected by about 30 publishers before being printed - but it was an immediate success.

Answer: King

Annie appears in King's 1987 novel "Misery". She is the "number one fan" of author Paul Sheldon. When she discovers he is killing off his main character she kidnaps him, to make him write the story she would rather read.

It was made into a film in 1990 and won Kathy Bates an Oscar for her depiction of Annie. This was the first Oscar awarded to a Stephen King movie.

King has said that his inspiration for "Misery" was an Evelyn Waugh short story called "The Man Who Loved Dickens."

Answer: King

The 1982 novella was called "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Repdemption", and Andy is serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife and her lover. In prison he makes friends with Red, the prison contraband smuggler. Red gets Andy a hammer and a poster of Rita Hayworth, and a plan is dreamt up.

By the 1990s, King had sold millions of books and was the leading name in horror fiction, but he also wrote stories in crime fiction and suspense. He wrote some early novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman as a form of protection for himself, so he could hide from notoriety. He was too popular for that to last, however, and his fans outed him.

Answer: King

In the 1983 novel "Christine", a young man's car seemingly becomes jealous of the teenager's girlfriend and tries to kill her. In the book, the car, Christine, is inhabited by the evil ghost of a previous owner, but the movie changes this to make the car unexplainedly pure evil. Christine the car is apparently unstoppable, too, as it can fix itself if damaged.

King has written about murderous cars in more than one novel! In 1999, though, he was victim of a freak accident when a van drove into him and left him with severe injuries and a month in hospital. The doctors considered amputating his leg but he pulled through and recovered. He was left in constant pain, however, and announced his retirement from writing.

Then in 2001, he published a new novel,"Dreamcatcher", to slightly mixed reviews but he was back! He went on to write many more books.

Answer: King

"Hearts in Atlantis" is a 1999 collection of novellas and short stories connected by recurring characters. Brautigan, a quiet man with either psychic powers or paranoia, first appears in the short story "Low Men in Yellow Coats" (this was loosely adapted into a film called "Hearts in Atlantis" with Anthony Hopkins). He later figures in "The Dark Tower".

King started writing as a child and has a lasting interest in the supernatural, and even as an adult he is not immune from superstition - he fears the number 13! But in "Hearts of Atlantis" he takes the opportunity to explore more realistic horrors such as the Vietnam war and the effect it may have on a psyche.

Answer: King

In King's 1996 novel "The Green Mile", John Coffey is a death row inmate who reveals supernatural healing powers when a pesky prison mouse is brought back to life after eating poison. The guards hope to get Coffey to heal the dying wife of the warden, then, realising he has a divine spirit they begin to believe he is innocent, but with all this belief now, how can they execute him?

Inspired by Charles Dickens, King wrote this novel in serialised form, publishing it in six monthly installments, separate books, from March to August. All of them made the best seller list and it won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel 1996.

Answer: Grisham

From the novel "The Client", a streetwise 11 year old boy witnesses a mafia crime scene, goes into hiding, finds himself a lawyer. Enter Reggie Love, a recovering alcoholic and divorcee, who sometimes gets too involved in her cases. She is determined to protect her young witness from harm, but first she has to persuade him to talk.

The 1994 movie version starred Susan Sarandon as Reggie. The 1993 book was John Grisham's fourth novel, a legal thriller as was his style. Grisham never set out to be a writer. He started as a lawyer but after a year knew he had to write some of the stories he was hearing.

Answer: Grisham

In the movie "A Time To Kill", Matthew McConaughey played Brigance, a young, white, idealistic lawyer, defending a black man in a racially charged case. The character of Brigance appears in three Grisham novels: "A Time to Kill", "Sycamore Row", and "A Time For Mercy".

"A Time To Kill" was the first book Grisham ever wrote. It was rejected 28 times before a publisher agreed to print 5000 copies. Sales were poor enough that Grisham purchased 1000 of those copies to try to sell them himself. He continued to write his second book though: "The Firm".

Answer: Grisham

"Not since Nancy Drew has a nosy, crime-obsessed kid been so hard to resist." - New York Times review.

In Grisham's legal thriller series for children, Theodore is a 13 year old who knows a lot about law because both his parents are lawyers. He is an only child who has grown up around judges and courts and police and knows his local ones by name. He would like to be a judge when he grows up. Meanwhile his friends and classmates can rely on him for sound legal advice. The series of seven original books is suitable for ages 8-14.

Grisham joked that he invented Theodore to compete with Harry Potter when he realised JK Rowling was overtaking him in the best seller lists!

Answer: Grisham

In Grisham's second novel "The Firm", Mitchell "Mitch" Y McDeere is an up and coming young lawyer who gets an offer he can't refuse from the biggest firm in town. Little does he know that working for this company is like a deal with the devil.

Unlike the slow sales of his first novel, "The Firm" was snapped up by a movie company before it was even published. In 1991, it made the New York Times best seller list for 40 weeks and cemented Grisham as an author of merit.

In the 1993 movie directed by Sydney Pollack, Tom Cruise plays Mitch, with a supporting cast of Holly Hunter and Gene Hackman. With an intense and intriguing plot, it was the highest grossing R rated film of the year.

In 2023, Grisham published the long awaited sequel - "The Exchange".

Answer: Grisham

Quincy Miller is a young black man framed by a prejudiced police force for murder, and serving a life sentence. He contacts the Guardian Ministries, an innocence group run by lawyer Cullen Post. It's his last chance, and forces are afoot to prevent Post from clearing Miller's name, any way possible.

This 2019 novel, "The Guardians", is inspired by Grisham's deep involvement with The Innocence Project, a real life organisation that seeks to exonerate the wrongfully convicted using DNA evidence. Grisham is anti Death Penalty.

He has written about 50 fiction books but his first non-fiction one is about a series of wrongful convictions surrounding a single murder case. It is called "The Innocent Man". In 2018, Netflix made a true crime docuseries about it which Grisham appears on.

Answer: Grisham

"The Pelican Brief" was Grisham's third book, hot on the heels of "The Firm", and again put into film production straight away; in fact, the film was released the same year as "The Firm" movie, 1993.

Darby Shaw, a student lawyer, writes a brief in which she theorises how and why an assassination was done. It turns out she is right, and now the establishment will kill again to keep her mouth shut. She was played in the film by Julia Roberts.

Grisham writes about a book per year. He starts in January, finishes in July. His wife edits for him as he goes. This pattern was also used by Dick Francis, English thriller writer. After Francis died, it came out that his wife was more of a co-author and had written much more of the books than they had ever admitted to.

"The goal is a thousand words a day. My goal for every legal thriller is a hundred thousand words. Each year on January 1, I'll start a new one, with a goal of finishing by July 1. I'm almost always on time...

...When you write about lawyers and law firms and trials and courts and juries and judges and appeals, there's no shortage of material. I've yet to sit down in thirty-five years with nothing to say." - John Grisham, Esquire magazine 2022