Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. This Dublin-born playwright was one of the greatest wits of the 19th-20th centuries. As with many famous authors, he was the (often unwilling) recipient of numerous manuscripts from aspiring authors. To one unlucky (and untalented) aspirant, he returned the submitted manuscript with the blunt critique "The covers of your book are too far apart."
2. Another notable Dublin-born wag was quite devastating on the subject of unattractive females. In one of his books, he describes a certain lady aristocrat as having "the remains of a once truly spectacular ugliness". To a real life lady who asked him "Am I not the ugliest woman in England?" (expecting, no doubt, an indignant protest) he 'gallantly' replied "In the world, madam, in the world!"
3. This Italian composer is best known for his comic operas; fittingly, since he was himself a noted wit and raconteur. Upon the death of his good friend and colleague, the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, he was visited by the late composer's nephew. The nephew, an aspiring composer himself, brought with him a funeral march he had written for his uncle which he insisted upon playing for the reluctant maestro. After suffering through the piece, the composer grunted "Not too bad, but wouldn't it have been much better if you had died and your uncle had written the funeral march?"
4. Though undeniably a great (if long-winded) composer, this German operatic master seems to have been an all-around dirty dog and, in particular, a venomous anti-Semite. A protege of the aforementioned Meyerbeer, a Jew, he repaid the older composer's early support of him by holding him up to contempt in a scurrilous essay entitled "Jewishness in music" ("Das Judentum in der Musik") . He gave the music of the much admired Felix Mendelssohn the silent treatment; when conducting the late composer's works, he wore white velvet gloves which he peeled off afterwards and dropped on the floor to be swept up by the dustman. He was still more contemptous of the French Jewish composer, Jacques Offenbach, of whose effervescent music he declared "He aimed for a mongrel, fickle, bigoted"(!)"frivolous, shameless hodgepodge, but owing to the leathery texture of his musical mind, it never quite came off."
5. This legendary Spanish painter is perhaps best known for his disturbing and often terrifying paintings which captured the angst of his country during the Napoleonic wars. However, he had previously been the artist of choice to the Spanish royal family, headed by Charles IV. The royals absolutely adored his depiction of them, though it is difficult to see why since he depicted them as ugly, charmless, vulgar, graceless, and unintelligent. Perhaps it was because he skillfully rendered every glint and glimmer of their overstated wardrobe (or maybe they were nearsighted from all the inbreeding). Asked (privately) his opinion of the royals, he opined "They looked like the butcher's family, who lived over the butcher's shop, after they won the big lottery."
6. An insult need not be verbal, as was shown by this Renaissance giant who was hired by two popes to paint a series of murals for the Vatican. Working on a "Last Judgement", he was repeatedly and doggedly hectored by a papal nuncio concerning the proliferation of "profane" nude figures in the fresco. One day, the nuncio arrived in the chapel and was astounded to find himself among the writhing nudes- in hell, no less! He was portrayed as King Minos; to his own buck teeth and pointed nose, the artist had added ass's ears. He was also nude, covered only by a large serpent coiled around his body who was gnawing at his privates. Who was the artist in question?
7. The novels of James Fenimore Cooper, notably "The Deerslayer", "The Pathfinder", and "The Last of the Mohicans" were much admired in their day and are still popular today. However one legendary American Southern author held them up to ridicule in an uproarious essay entitled "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses". Among other things, he charges Cooper with violating eighteen of the nineteen rules governing literary art in the realm of romantic fiction, among them (Rule no. 3): "They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the 'Deerslayer' tale."
8. This American painter was almost as famous for his bon mots as his friend, playwright and author Oscar Wilde. Once, after he delivered a particularly inspired zinger, Wilde exclaimed "I wish I had said that!" Nodding his head sagely, the artist replied "You will, Oscar, you will!"
9. This German-born composer was one of the leading lights of the American musical theater in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1943, he collabarated with poet Ogden Nash and writer S. J. Perleman on a musical about a statue of Venus which miraculously comes to life and falls for an American barber. They wanted the legendary Marlene Dietrich to play the role of Venus and, for a while, she seriously considered the role. Ultimately, though, she rather abruptly declined, which prompted the (German) composer to write angrily to his wife "She is a stupid cow, like all the Germans."
10. This 20th Century American female author was legendary for her stinging witticisms, many of them aimed at her arch-enemy Claire Booth Luce, a fellow writer. On one occasion, the two women nearly collided in a doorway. Luce 'politely' stepped aside with the phrase "Age before beauty!"; to which the other replied "Pearls before swine!" before marching through the door.
Source: Author
jouen58
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
DakotaNorth before going online.
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