'Tis the Season ... Trivia Quiz

Answer: William Shakespeare

It's the opening line of Shakespeare's hatchet job on Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet kings. As a confirmed Ricardian and also a lover of Shakespeare, I solace myself with the thought that William wrote the play during the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, the granddaughter of Henry VII who founded the Tudor dynasty after defeating Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Since the Tudors were notoriously defensive about their tenuous claim to the throne, Shakespeare wisely (if erroneously) based the character of Richard and the events depicted in the play on the propaganda spread by the Tudors and their supporters.

Henry had no more right to the throne of England than you or I, but his ambitious mother, Margaret Beaufort (who was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, one of the sons of Edward III) was a Lancastrian who hated the House of York and used her considerable influence to bring about the end of the Yorkist rule.

The tale is a tangled one, so you'll have to look it up for yourself, but the fact remains that if Henry had not seized the crown on that fateful day in 1485, England might never have experienced the intellectual, artistic, and political flowering of the Elizabethan period.

Answer: John Keats

John Keats was 24 when he wrote a series of brilliant odes, including 'To Autumn'. He was born in 1795 in London and died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821. Despite his relatively short life, he left a large legacy of superb poetry, rich in imagery and exquisite language. Wordsworth, Shelley and Southey were contemporaries of Keats.

Answer: Johnny Mercer

'Les feuilles mortes' was written in 1945 and introduced by Yves Montand in the film 'Les Portes de la Nuit'. Johnny Mercer wrote the English translation in 1949 and the song quickly gained popularity. It has become a pop/jazz standard. The haunting melody is written in a minor key, with relatively few chord changes, which underscores the sense of loss and sadness of the lyrics. You're probably most familiar with Roger Williams' piano rendition of 'Autumn Leaves'. My favourite version is sung by The Four Freshman, although Nat King Cole's 1955 recording is also worthwhile.

Answer: William Shakespeare

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare is one of the best-known poems in the English language. The sonnets were written over a period of years, but the only collection published in Shakespeare's lifetime appeared in 1609, with a dedication to "Mr. W.H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets." No one has ever been able to discover just who 'Mr. W.H.' might be, although there has been much speculation.

The 1609 collection was published by Thomas Thorpe, and it contains all the sonnets except Numbers 138 and 144, which had been published in 1599 in a miscellany of poems called 'The Passionate Pilgrim'. Richard Lovelace was a 17th century Royalist who wrote the poem containing that famous line "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh, both contemporaries of Shakespeare, also wrote poetry.

Answer: George Gershwin

The music for 'Summertime' was written by George Gershwin for his 1933 opera 'Porgy and Bess', with lyrics by Du Bose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. The opera is based on a play by Du Bose Heyward and his wife Dorothy, which, in turn, was based on Heyward's novel 'Porgy'.

Answer: Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The line comes from 'Locksley Hall' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1842. Tennyson, better known for his narrative poems 'The Idylls of the King' and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria, who raised Tennyson to the peerage when she created him the 1st Baron Tennyson in 1884. Tennyson was born in 1809 and died in 1892.

At the time of his death he was Britain's Poet Laureate, having succeeded to that position in 1850 at the death of Wordsworth, the previous Poet Laureate.

Answer: The Boys of Summer

One usually associates the Boys of Summer with baseball, but Dylan's poem is about the passage of time, not America's game. Dylan Thomas, who was born in Swansea, Wales, in 1914, died after collapsing with a brain aneurysm (probably brought on by excessive drinking) in New York in 1953.

He is buried in his beloved Wales. Thomas is recognized as one of the great writers of the twentieth century and his mastery of imagery and mood is obvious in all his works.

Answer: Robert Browning

The line is from the poem 'Pippa Passes' by Robert Browning (1812-1889). Browning was one of Britain's leading poets, first published in 1833. In 1846, he married another poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The couple eloped, because Elizabeth's father did not approve of their relationship, and they settled in Italy.

They had one child, a son named Pen. On Elizabeth's death in 1861, Browning returned to England, where his fame and fortune grew. He did not return to Italy until 1878, but made frequent trips thereafter, and died in Italy in 1889, at the home of his son.

Answer: A.E. Housman

The line is from A.E. Housman's 'Loveliest of Trees, The Cherry Now', which was published in 1895 along with 62 other poems, in 'The Shropshire Lad'. The collection proved enormously popular with the British public, and many of the poems have been set to music. Housman (1859-1936) was educated at Oxford, and later taught Latin and Greek at London University and at Cambridge.

He continued to write poetry throughout his teaching career.

Answer: Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was the sister of artist and author Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the leaders of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Throughout her life she was plagued with bouts of depression, and eventually succumbed to cancer in 1894. Although she had been writing poetry from an early age, her first published work was 'Goblin Market and Other Poems' (1862). 'Goblin Market' tended to shock staid Victorians with its undertones of eroticism, questioning of gender inequality, and its theme of vicarious suffering, temptation, sin, and redemption.

After the death in 1861 of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti was held to be Britain's leading female poet. She was a devout Anglo-Catholic, and much of her work is devotional in nature.

She also wrote for children. Her works lapsed in popularity after her death, but gained a resurgence in the 1970s when she was 'discovered' by the feminist movement.