Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. This 1935 verse drama (and 1952 movie) by T. S. Eliot follows archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket accepting martyrdom as he is killed by four knights on the order of Henry II. This is "Murder in the ___________".
2. An alternate name for this 1601 Shakespeare work is "What You Will". Characters in this comedy are Viola, Sebastian, Orsino, Olivia, and the steward Malvolio. Trite comic relief is provided by Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
3. This was the first and most successful play by Alexandre Dumas fils. It was made into 6 different movies, including a 1936 film with Greta Garbo, and recounts Parisian courtesan Marguerite Gautier and her unyielding, yet fruitless desire for her lover, Armand Duval.
4. This Eugene O'Neill two-part drama circa 1928 tells the story of Nina Leeds as she experiences personal tragedy and sexual frustration with the three main men in her life: her vain father, her loveless husband, and her eventually dead lover.
5. This tragedy by J. M. Synge tells about Christy Mahon, a man who becomes a young hero when he claims to have killed his father, only to have his father return. The play ends with the villagers turning on the young hero. This is "The Playboy of the _________ _________".
6. This Henrik Ibsen work is about architect Halvard Solness as he cheats on his invalid wife, Aline, with a younger woman whom he knew earlier in his life named Hilde Wanger. The play's final act has Halvard climbing the tallest structure he has designed to show his love for Hilde, but he falls off and dies on his way up.
7. This 1939 work was the most famous for playwright Bertolt Brecht. Along with her mute daughter and two sons, the heroine in this play follows the army and sees all her children taken away from her one by one, only for the heroine to keep following the army, despite her lost loved ones.
8. This play by Irish-born playwright Samuel Beckett was written in French and then translated into English by Beckett himself. The story is about two men, Vladimir and Estragon, who recount their troubles in life on a road, with absolutely no action going on around them.
9. This 1900 work by Swedish playwright August Strindberg follows a literal "battle of the sexes" between Edgar and his wife, Alice, which begins with the two moving to a remote island off the coast of Sweden and Alice flirting with her cousin, Kurt. The play ends with Alice getting her wish that Edgar would die, only to have Alice think she loved Edgar all along.
10. This Shakespeare tragedy was written in 1606 (later published in 1623) and tells the story of a villain-hero who feels his own guilt in life and is convinced into murdering King Duncan by his wife.
Source: Author
GWU_Boy
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MotherGoose before going online.
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