Don't Quit Your Day Job Trivia Quiz

Answer: Teacher

Writing didn't pay well in Elizabethan England. There were no such things as royalties, and a man was lucky if he could get five pounds for a new play. But Shakespeare died a rich man by the standards of the day.

There are records showing that Shakespeare was an actor (though not a prominent one) with the King's Men, and that he owned a one-eighth share in the Globe Theatre. He appears to have been a trader in grain for many years, and in 1598 he was fined for illegally hoarding grain during a time of widespread famine. There is also evidence that he lent money at interest.

Although there are legends that he once worked as a school teacher, no evidence to support these claims has ever surfaced.

Answer: Engraver

When Blake was 14 years old, he was apprenticed to the prominent English engraver, James Basire. He served a seven year apprenticeship, and then began producing his own engravings and prints, often book illustrations. He later branched out into etching and painting.

He even invented a technique called relief etching, which he used to illustrate his famous poetical works. Poetry may have brought him fame, but it was his skill as an engraver that put food on his table.

Answer: Civil War general

Lew Wallace was trained as a lawyer, but always seems to have had an interest in writing. He wrote his first novel at the age of 16, although it was not published until many years later. After a brief stint of military service in the Mexican War, he returned to practicing law. When the Civil War broke out, Wallace became the colonel commanding the 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general on September 3, 1861, and eventually rose to the rank of major general.

After the war, Wallace went into politics, serving as governor of the New Mexico Territory and Minister to the Ottoman Empire.

Answer: Tax collector

Burns seems to have had little success as a farmer. With a wife and a large family to support, he began looking for more lucrative employment. At one point he considered becoming a bookkeeper on a slave plantation in Jamaica, but couldn't afford the fare to the West Indies.

In 1788 he became an exciseman, or gauger, in charge of collecting government taxes on various products, mainly alcohol. He continued in this career until his death. Burns does not seem to have held his profession in high esteem, as he wrote a poem called "The Deil's Awa Wi' the Exciseman."

Answer: Yes

After his father died when Melville was 12 years old, his childhood was somewhat turbulent. He first went to sea in 1839, a short voyage from New York to Liverpool. In January, 1841 when he was 21 years old, Melville signed on a whaling ship called the Acushnet. Melville does not seem to have been a very good sailor. First, he and a shipmate deserted the Acushnet when it stopped in the Marquesas Islands in July 1842 to take on fresh water.

After living with the natives for three weeks, he was picked up by an Australian whaler called the Lucy Ann, but joined in a mutiny and was briefly imprisoned in Tahiti.

He then signed on another whaling ship for a six month cruise which took him to Hawaii, where he joined the United States Navy and sailed back to Boston on the USS United States.

These adventures supplied him with material for many of his books.

Answer: Spy

Marlowe is believed to have been recruited for his career as a spy while still a student at Cambridge. A portrait believed to be of Marlowe shows him wearing an expensive tunic that he could not have afforded if he did not have another source of income besides his meager scholarship. In addition, in 1587, when the university refused to grant him his Master of Arts degree because of his frequent absences, the Privy Council wrote the Cambridge authorities stating that "anie one emploied as he had been in matters touching the benefitt of his Countrie," as Marlowe had been, deserved to be rewarded and ordered them to grant his degree. In 1592, he was engaged in espionage activities in the Netherlands.

Marlowe's plays may reflect his work as a spy. In "The Massacre At Paris" there is a character called "the English agent." In "Edward II" he wrote: "You must cast the scholar off, and learn to court it like a gentleman; 'Tis not a black cloak and a little band . . . can get you any favor with great men: You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute, And now and then stab, as occasion serves." Marlowe was supposedly killed in Deptford, England on May 30, 1593 but the circumstances of his death are so mysterious that many people believe that his death was actually just staged, and that he continued to live on in secret. Some even believe that he is the true author of the works attributed to Shakespeare.

Answer: Charles Dickens

At the age of 12, Charles Dickens was sent to work at Warren's Blacking Factory. He worked 60 hours a week for a wage of six shillings a week, or a little over a penny an hour. Although he worked there for only a few months, the squalid conditions and difficult, monotonous work made a permanent impression on him, and helped turn him into a crusader for improving the conditions of the poor.

While working at the blacking factory Dickens met a boy named Bob Fagin, and used his name for the villain in "Oliver Twist."

Answer: Policeman

Orwell had received poor marks at Eton, and had little hope of receiving a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge. His family could not afford to send him to university, so in 1922 he joined the Indian Imperial Police. He was stationed in Burma, and remained there for five years. He used his experience as the basis for his book "Burmese Days."

Answer: Wallace Stevens

One would look long and hard to find a less likely candidate to become a major poet than Wallace Stevens. Born into a wealthy family in Pennsylvania, he attended law school, and worked almost his entire adult life in the insurance industry, eventually becoming vice president of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. He is also unusual in that his best work was produced late in life. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, and died later that same year.

As an additional bit of trivia, his wife is said to have been the model for the portrait on the Mercury dime, which was minted from 1916 to 1945.

Answer: Dentist

Pearl Zane Grey was born on January 31, 1872 in Zanesville, Ohio. He dropped the name Pearl (who wouldn't?), preferring to be known by his middle name. His first ambition was to become a professional baseball player. He won a baseball scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated from dental school in 1896.

He had chosen dentistry as a profession with some reluctance; his father was a dentist. He continued to play semiprofessional baseball after graduation. His practice did not flourish, his batting average dropped, and with the help of an inheritance his wife received, he decided to become a writer instead.

His first book was not published until he was 31, and he continued to meet with a steady stream of rejection slips.

It was not until 1912, when he was 40 years old, that "Riders of the Purple Sage" became a runaway best seller and firmly established his reputation as a writer. Although he died in 1939, his publishers had enough manuscripts to continue issuing a new book each year through 1963.