The Literary Polymath Trivia Quiz

Answer: Casablanca

From the great 1942 movie, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman (Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan were considered for the parts of Rick and Ilsa, according to the legends which have grown around the film).

Casablanca is on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, which was a French protectorate during WWII. Hence the appearance of Claude Rains as the pragmatic, somewhat corrupt, fence-sitting gendarme Capt Renault, possibly a metaphor for the puppet Vichy French government itself. But he comes good in the end, and chucks his bottle of Vichy water in the bin.

And yes, I know that Ilsa didn't really say "Play it again, Sam". But she should have!

So how did a film question get into a literary quiz?

Well in 1997, Stephen Humphrey Bogart (yep, Bogey's son) came up with his novel "The Remake - As Time Goes By", in which R J Brookes, the private-eye son of two famous Holywood parents, gets annoyed when the sleaziest producer in Holywood plans to do a sleazy sequel to one of America's best-loved movies "As Time Goes By" in which his parents starred. Sound familiar? Studio people start to get bumped off, and guess who gets the blame?

And, because life always imitates art, in 1998, a writer called Michael Walsh came up with "As Time Goes By", the continuing adventures of Rick, Renault, Lazlo and Ilsa. I expect Mr Walsh keeps looking over his shoulder for R J Brookes...

Answer: London, UK

An easy one for us Brits, since all are, or were, London churches. This is from a child's nursery rhyme, origins unknown. Most British children learn it. Some of it's fairly dark; for example, the bells at Old Bailey (formerly Newgate Prison) were rung on mornings when an execution took place.

For everything you ever wanted to know about "Oranges and Lemons" (and quite a lot you'll wish you didn't!), here's the story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A696125

Answer: Venice

Antonio is the merchant in Shakespeare's "A Merchant Of Venice". The speech fragment above is made by Shylock when Antonio appeals to him for a loan.

Antonio's pal Bassanio wants some money to impress this wealthy heiress, so he tries to tap Antonio for a few grand. Antonio has sunk all his money in a speculative shipping venture; since Bassanio needs the money quickly, Antonio's only possibility is to borrow it from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. In this speech, Shylock reminds Antonio about all the racist and physical abuse he has had to tolerate from Antonio, so why should he lend him money?

In the event, Shylock lent him the cash. Antonio defaulted on his payments, hired a smartass lawyer and escaped his penalty clause on a legal technicality, then bankrupted Shylock and forced him to become a Christian in order to survive. Then his ships came home safely, making him even richer.

Bassanio married the stunningly-beautiful, obscenely-rich defence lawyer, who turned out to be the wealthy heiress he fancied in the first place. There ain't no justice.

Answer: Israel

The Sea of Galilee (also known as Lake Galilee or Lake Tiberias) has been, de facto, entirely within Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967, although Syria still claims the northeastern shore, arguing that it is part of the Golan Heights.

The verse in the question comes from Lord Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib", which itself was based on Isaiah 37.33-38 (King James Version):

"Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this citie, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a banke against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he returne, and shall not come into this citie, saith the Lord. For I will defend this citie to saue it, for mine owne sake, and for my seruant Dauids sake. Then the Angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the campe of the Assyrians a hundred and fourescore and fiue thousand: and when they arose earely in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went, and returned, and dwelt at Nineueh."

There you go, then. Don't mess with David.

Answer: Ireland

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1865. The verse above comes from one of his better-known poems, "He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven".

It continues:

"I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

Top tip for all you young men out there - pick your moment, gently take her hand, look deep in her eyes and whisper this to her in a soft Irish brogue. She'll melt. Works every time. Unless, like me, you actually have a Scottish accent, in which case she'll hoot with laughter. No, don't ask. The memory's too painful...

Answer: Lake Superior

Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario being the others, and is also the largest freshwater lake in the world, in terms of surface area. The Great Bear Lake is in the Canadian Northwest Territories, bestriding the Arctic Circle. According to legend, Lake Superior never gives up its dead, unlike the ocean. Something to do with the extreme cold, I believe - corpses just sink and stay sunk.

The extract above comes, of course, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem about Native Americans, "The Song of Hiawatha"

"Hiawatha" was favourably received when it was first published in 1855. However, Professor Thomas Conrad Porter, an American expert on obscure Finnish poetry, pointed out that it resembled - very closely - the Finnish traditional epic "Kalevala", a compilation of some 50 lesser runes which had been collected by a Finnish scholar and poet named Elias Lönnro. At which point the whole outhouse hit the windmill. So, was Longfellow's poem (which has been described as "America's only epic poem") a blatant rip-off? I'll leave it up to you to decide the whys and wherefores, which are done to death in this article:

http://www.kaiku.com/kalevalainhiawatha.html

As a kid, I used to love the bit where Hiawatha wrestled every evening with the fair-haired green-clad guy, Mondamin, eventually killing him. After being stripped of his garments and buried for a week or so, Mondamin sprouted and came back as corn. (It all sounds a bit suspect now, mind you!)

Still, no worries. If it transpires that the provenance of America's first great epic is a bit suspect, perhaps she can claim the world's first homoerotic snuff poem...

Answer: Iowa

A fairly straight-forward question for people in the US, but quite testing otherwise.

Natty Bumppo (unlikely name for a hero!) is probably better known to most of us as "Hawkeye", the scout from Cooper's most widely-known novel "The Last of the Mohicans". He was also variously known as the Deerslayer, the Pathfinder, or Leatherstocking.

The State of Iowa is also known as "The Hawkeye State", possibly as a tribute to Cooper's hero or, perhaps less likely, after a Native American chief, Black Hawk.

There have been two films based on Cooper's novel, the first in 1936 and the latest in 1992. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye, the 1992 film was stunning - the cinematography and scenery were breathtaking and the sound-track outstanding; while in Wes Studi's character, Magua, it had one of the best "bad guys" ever. It didn't receive the acclaim that it perhaps should have, possibly due to perceived political correctness at the time. If you missed it first time round, go and rent the DVD, by all means; it's still a great film, but it really needs a big screen and sound system to do it justice.

As for the other options, the Delaware tribe were portrayed as friends of Hawkeye in the original novel. The film was largely shot in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina, and Cooper himself came from Burlington, New Jersey.

Answer: Denmark

From Shakespeare's "Hamlet, a Prince of Denmark" to give it its subtitle as well.

In his famous "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy, Prince Hamlet is contemplating suicide. The fragment so badly Frangled by http://ets.freetranslation.com/ should actually read:

"To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."

As we can see, he's having second thoughts already...

"Frangled" is a portmanteau word, according to Lewis Carroll's definition: it contains several meanings within one word - in this case; "Fragment", "Francais", "Anglais", "Frank" and "mangled". I made that up, all by myself. Good, eh?

On the other hand, the double-translation idea isn't at all original. I blagged it from someone else. Jeez, the amount you're paying me for this stuff, and you expect Descartes?

Answer: Off the coast of Panama

From the poem "Drake's Drum" by Henry Newbolt.

After a final unsuccessful venture in the West Indies, Drake died (possibly of dysentery) aboard his ship the "Defiance" and was buried off Puerto Bello, Panama.

Traditionally a dead sailor was sewn up in canvas by the ship's sailmaker, with the final stitch going through the corpse's nose (supposedly to prevent premature burial - if that didn't wake them up, nothing would!). The round shot mentioned in the verse above were the cannon-balls sewn in with the corpse to ensure it didn't float to the surface. Newbolt's taken a bit of poetic licence here - Drake was actually buried in a lead coffin, which was rumoured to have been discovered by some divers a few years ago.

The poem (you're supposed to declaim it in a piratey English West-Country accent) goes on:

"Take my drum to England, hang it by the shore
Strike it when your powder's running low.
If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port o' Heaven,
And drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago."

Drake's drum was taken back to England and is now preserved in Buckland Abbey :

http://sirfrancisdrakehistory.net/drakes_drum/

Legend has it that when Britain is in danger of invasion, Drake's Drum sounds the alarm. It was supposedly heard at least 3 times during the twentieth century: once at the outbreak of WWI; once at the end of WWI, when the German High Seas Fleet were interned at Scapa Flow anchorage in the Shetland Islands; and once early in WW2, during the British retreat from Dunkirk.

There was no sign of old Sir Francis, though, as far as I know - perhaps it was just Spaniards he didn't like...

Answer: Madrid

Ernest Hemingway took a quotation from this piece for the title of his novel "For Whom The Bell Tolls", written in 1940 and inspired by his experiences as a journalist in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The war began in 1936 and lasted until March, 1939, when Monarchist forces took Madrid.

Many argue that this was Hemingway's masterpiece, and possibly one of the best war novels of all time. It has a sad ending, but at least Jordan, the hero, got to exercise his earth-moving equipment first!

Thanks for playing - I hope you've had as much fun playing as I did in compiling it.