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Cymbeline Quizzes, Trivia and Puzzles
Cymbeline Quizzes, Trivia

Cymbeline Trivia

Cymbeline Trivia Quizzes

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Cymbeline, the King of Britain (as vassal to the Romans), lost his two sons twenty years ago, and now his daughter has secretly gotten herself involved with a courtier. What's a king to do? This play was listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, but is now usually considered a romance or a comedy.
2 Cymbeline quizzes and 40 Cymbeline trivia questions.
1.
  20 Cymbeline Questions    
Multiple Choice
 20 Qns
This is the first quiz on William Shakespeare's 'Cymbeline'. This first quiz should be fairly easy if you have read the play.
Average, 20 Qns, JohnFalst, Mar 30 06
Average
JohnFalst
440 plays
2.
  Cymbeline Quiz for Experts    
Multiple Choice
 20 Qns
This is a quiz about a beautiful, but sometimes neglected, Shakespeare play.
Average, 20 Qns, londoneye98, Oct 08 12
Average
londoneye98 gold member
241 plays
trivia question Quick Question
To which Welsh port does Posthumus sail on his way back from Italy to Cymbeline's court?

From Quiz "Cymbeline"





Cymbeline Trivia Questions
1. What is the generally-accepted date for the composition of William Shakespeare's "Cymbeline"?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: 1610-11

The well-known astrologer of the period, Simon Forman, records having attended a performance of the new play in 1611. Unfortunately for scholars, he gives no details, not even mentioning the name of the theatre in which the performance occurred (it was probably either the Globe or the new indoor Blackfriars Theatre).

2. What is Cymbeline's demeanor at the opening of the play?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Angry

The first line of the play is 'You do not meet a man but frowns.' The Queen says to Posthumus 'Marry yet The fire of rage is in him'. And Cymbeline's angry first entrance confirms what has been spoken before.

3. What sources did Shakespeare use for the plot of "Cymbeline"?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: both Boccaccio and Holinshed

He took some historical background from Holinshed's "Chronicles", and part of the plot from Boccaccio's "Decameron". Other parts of the plot were apparently taken from an anonymous play of 1589.

4. How was the play - surprisingly in view of its happy ending - listed upon its first publication, in the posthumous "First Folio" of Shakespeare's collected works in 1623?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: as a tragedy

Presumably the editors - Shakespeare's old friends Heminge and Condell - had either never seen "Cymbeline" performed, or had never stayed to the end. The play is a glorious mixture of comedy, history, tragedy and romance, with a blissfully happy ending. It could best be described, perhaps, as a dramatised fairy-tale.

5. At the time of the play's action, which Caesar is ruling the Roman Empire?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Octavius

The play is set in the uneasy period between the two Roman invasions of Britain, when the Celtic chiefs were supposed to be sending tribute money to Rome in order to keep the Caesars quiet.

6. Why was Posthumus Leonatus given his first name?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: His father died before his birth.

It was a Roman custom to name children born after the death of their natural born fathers 'Posthumus'. The first scene explains this.

7. Why is the hero of the play called Posthumus?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: for both of these reasons

"Posthumus" seems a slightly unlikely name for a hero, but his second name -"Leonatus" - makes him sound more heroic.

8. Who owns the Italian house which becomes the setting of the bet on Imogen?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Philario

Philario is the friend of Posthumus' father who allows Posthumus to stay with him. We are in his house in Act I Scene iv when the bet is made.

9. What is the heroine's name in "Cymbeline"?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Imogen

Imogen is one of Shakespeare's most admirable women characters - honest, loyal, brave, resilient, practical, adventurous, lyrical - and beautiful, too. She has attracted the attention of some of Britain's leading actresses over the centuries: perhaps the most celebrated Imogen of all was Ellen Terry in London in the 1890s, of whom it was memorably recalled by the playwright and critic Harley Granville-Barker that her voice "seemed to fill the Lyceum Theatre with dancing sunbeams".

10. What is in the vial that Cornelius the doctor gives to the Queen?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Sleeping Potion

Cornelius lets us know in an aside that although the Queen requests poison, the doctor does not trust her and puts in a strong sleeping potion which simulates death.

11. Why does Iachimo leave his Italian home to visit Britain?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: he wants to win a bet with Posthumus

Iachimo wants to prove to Posthumus, by fair means or foul, that his wife has been unfaithful to him.

12. Where is Imogen's mole?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: On her breast

Iachimo discovers this fact when he looks over the sleeping Imogen in Act II Scene ii.

13. How does Iachimo secrete himself into Imogen's bed-chamber?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: hiding in a trunk

When, with Imogen asleep in her bed, Iachimo slowly levers open the lid of the trunk and looks around him, it can be a stunning "coup de theatre". I saw the late Emrys James do it brilliantly at Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1970s.

14. What object does Iachimo steal from the sleeping Imogen in her bedchamber?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: A bracelet

The ring is what Imogen gives to Posthumus. The bracelet or 'manacle of love' as Posthumus calls it in Act One, is what he gave to Imogen and Iachimo steals.

15. What colour are Imogen's eyes?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: blue

"White and azure lac'd with Heaven's own tinct", rhapsodises Iachimo. A wee problem, perhaps, for aspiring Shakespearean actresses with brown eyes.

16. What is the cause of the war between Cymbeline and the Romans?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Cymbeline refuses to pay tribute.

In Act Three, we discover that Cymbeline along with the Queen and Cloten, refuse to pay the tribute that they have paid to Rome in years past.

17. What is the name of the General of the Roman Forces in this play?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Caius Lucius

It is Caius Lucius. Caius Martius is the Roman soldier who would become Coriolanus. Lucius Brutus was a tribune in Coriolanus. Finally, Marcus Cassibelan is the uncle of Cymbeline who began paying the tribute to Rome.

18. To whom does Cloten say of Imogen: "If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we'll try with tongue too: if none will do, let her remain"?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: his musicians

Cloten's crude sexual innuendo only emphasises what a hopeless suitor he is.

19. What does Posthumus command Pisanio to after after discovering 'Imogen's faithlessness'?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Kill her.

Posthumus instructs Pisanio to kill her.

20. How does the song begin which is sung below Imogen's window?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Hark! hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings

The original musical setting for this song, by Robert Johnson, has survived, and it is a delight. (The words were set to music again 200-odd years later by Franz Schubert. Lucky song.)

21. What is the name of the town that Posthumus tells Imogen to meet him?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Milford Haven

All of the action begins to center around Milford Haven by the end of Act III.

22. If I were to say the name 'Cadwal', who am I referring to?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Arviragus

Cadwal is the name Belarius gives the younger prince. Guiderius is given the name 'Polydor'.

23. To which Welsh port does Posthumus sail on his way back from Italy to Cymbeline's court?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Milford Haven

I read somewhere that Milford Haven claims to have the second deepest harbour in Europe, but if Shakespeare had heard about this bit of folklore, he decided not to use it.

24. What is the name Imogen uses when she disguises herself as a man?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Fidele

Fidele. The other names are as follows: Cesario---used by Viola in Twelfth Night. Ganymede---used by Rosalind in As You Like It. Sebastian---used by Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

25. Who are Polydore and Cadwal?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: the long-lost sons of Cymbeline

They think they are Belarius's sons, but they are really royal princes all the time (Guiderius and Arviragus are their real names).

26. Which character in the play disguises himself/herself as the youth "Fidele"?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Imogen

It reminds us once again of the versatility of those Shakespearean boy-actors who played the women's parts. A boy playing a girl playing a boy... Polydore and Cadwal, who have fallen in love with the "youth" who is really - unbeknownst to them all - their long-lost sister, cannot contain their grief when "he" is found apparently dead. The eighteenth-century poet William Collins, inspired by Shakespeare's play, wrote a lyrical dirge lamenting the supposed death of "Fidele", which captures the fairy-tale elegiac note quite well.

27. Which episode in "Cymbeline" has traditionally been thought by critics not to be Shakespeare's own work?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Posthumus's dream-vision in gaol

The dream-vision of his dead relations that Posthumus experiences in prison is written in a strange kind of doggerel completely unlike Shakespeare's usual late style. The authenticity of the other three options given above has never been questioned.

28. Which Roman deity makes a literal appearance in this play?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Jupiter

Jupiter. Juno and Ceres appear in The Tempest. Diana makes a literal appearance in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

29. Which Shakespearean commentator remarked of "Cymbeline" that he would not "waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation"?

From Quiz Cymbeline

Answer: Samuel Johnson

Various influential critics have been more positive than Johnson: Leavis, for example, believes that "Cymbeline" "contains a great variety of life and interest...out of the interplay of contrasting themes and modes we have an effect as...of an odd and distinctive music".

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