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Ten Famous Sonnets Trivia Quiz

Here are ten famous examples of the world's best known and most loved poetic form, the sonnet.

A multiple-choice quiz by tjoebigham. Estimated time: 4 mins.

Author
tjoebigham

Time
4 mins

Type
Multiple Choice

Quiz #
41,922

Updated
Dec 03 21

# Qns
10

Difficulty
Average

Avg Score
6 / 10

Plays
2480

One at a Time - Single Page - Timed Game

Question 1 of 10

1. What world-renowned English playwright also wrote sonnets, including the one stating 'Love's not Time's fool'? Hint

Jonson

Marlowe

Fletcher

Shakespeare

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Question 2 of 10

2. What poet wrote the sonnet that supplied John Gunther with the title to his best known book 'Death Be Not Proud'? Hint

Herbert

Marvell

Donne

Lovelace

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Question 3 of 10

3. What poet's sonnet is best known for the last line, 'They also serve who only stand and wait'? Hint

Cowper

Milton

Waller

Gray

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Question 4 of 10

4. Who wrote a sonnet on Westminster Bridge (literally)? Hint

Wordsworth

Keats

Shelley

Coleridge

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Question 5 of 10

5. Who wrote a sonnet on the ruins of an ancient king's statue? Hint

Wordsworth

Shelley

Keats

Coleridge

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Question 6 of 10

6. What poet spoke of the wrong Spanish explorer in a sonnet? Hint

Keats

Wordsworth

Shelley

Coleridge

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Question 7 of 10

7. What poet asked in a sonnet, 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...'?

Answer: (Three Words( Wife of another poet))

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Question 8 of 10

8. What novelist also wrote a sonnet called 'Hap'? Hint

William Thackeray

Thomas Hardy

Charles Dickens

Jane Austen

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Question 9 of 10

9. What Jesuit priest once said in a sonnet 'The world is filled with the grandeur of God'?

Answer: (Three Words initials G M H)

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Question 10 of 10

10. Finally, a modern sonnet, about a white spider on a white cure-all about to eat a white moth. Name the poet. Hint

Benet

Sandburg

Frost

Millay

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. What world-renowned English playwright also wrote sonnets, including the one stating 'Love's not Time's fool'?

Answer: Shakespeare

Shakespeare's sonnets have become almost as well known as his plays.

2. What poet wrote the sonnet that supplied John Gunther with the title to his best known book 'Death Be Not Proud'?

Answer: Donne

'Death be not proud...' That first line to Donne's most familiar sonnet gave Gunther the title to his memoir of his son who died of a brain tumor.

3. What poet's sonnet is best known for the last line, 'They also serve who only stand and wait'?

Answer: Milton

Milton's best known work outside of 'Paradise Lost', 'When I consider how my light is spent' was written after the poet had lost his sight.

4. Who wrote a sonnet on Westminster Bridge (literally)?

Answer: Wordsworth

Wordsworth is best known for his poem 'The Daffodils'.

5. Who wrote a sonnet on the ruins of an ancient king's statue?

Answer: Shelley

'I am Ozymandias, king of kings,Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!' 'Ozymandias' remains the most famous warning against human vanity.

6. What poet spoke of the wrong Spanish explorer in a sonnet?

Answer: Keats

In 'On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer', Keats wrote 'Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes,He stared at the Pacific...' It was Balboa who 'stared at the Pacific', not Cortez! ('Stout' here means brave, not fat.)

7. What poet asked in a sonnet, 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...'?

Answer: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Robert Browning's wife, a poet in her own right, wrote this and other sonnets to him, collected as the famed 'Sonnets From The Portuguese' (Browning called her 'my little Portuguese' because of her olive skin). Their love story became the hit play 'The Barretts of Wimpole Street'.

8. What novelist also wrote a sonnet called 'Hap'?

Answer: Thomas Hardy

After such novels as 'Far From The Madding Crowd' and 'The Return of the Native', Hardy became a poet.

9. What Jesuit priest once said in a sonnet 'The world is filled with the grandeur of God'?

Answer: Gerard Manley Hopkins

In this and other poems, Hopkins used an often bewildering style that has only been appreciated in our time.

10. Finally, a modern sonnet, about a white spider on a white cure-all about to eat a white moth. Name the poet.

Answer: Frost

In 'Design' Frost, like Melville, uses the color white to ask if the universe is a mindless mechanism or if evil is part of the same design as good.

Source: Author tjoebigham

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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