Title Characters Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Three Musketeers

The other three choices are not by Dumas at all. The novel had two sequels ("Twenty Years After" and "The Vicomte de Bragelonne") and has been the basis for films starring just about every swashbuckler from Douglas Fairbanks to Oliver Reed (though, strangely, I can't trace a portrayal by Errol Flynn).

Answer: The Jew of Malta

The play is by Christopher Marlowe, and was performed about 1592 but not published until 1633. The prologue to the play is spoken by "Machiavel," and Barabas is something of a prototype for the "Machiavellian" villains of later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Barabas' praise of gold and jewels as "Infinite riches in a little room" is often quoted.

Answer: Antonio

Antonio is the merchant: Bassanio is his friend who wants to marry the wealthy Portia. Shylock is the moneylender from whom Antonio borrows three thousand ducats to help his friend, pledging a pound of his own flesh as security. Gobbo is Shylock's clownish servant.

Answer: The Vicar of Wakefield

Described by the author, Oliver Goldsmith, as "simple in affluence and majestic in adversity," Dr Primrose is a modern Job who endures the loss of his fortune, the seduction of his daughter, a spell in a debtors' prison and a vicious assault on his son; but of course all comes right in the end.

Some turning-points of the story are marked by some of Goldsmith's best-known poems, including "Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog" ("The dog it was that died") and "When lovely woman stoops to folly."

Answer: The Warden

The novel, in which the Warden of a charitable almshouse is criticized in the press for seemingly using the endowment for his own comfort rather than that of the inmates, was based on a real-life scandal involving the ancient Hospital of Saint Cross at Winchester.

Answer: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Originally printed privately in Florence in 1928, the novel was banned for three decades or more in much of the English-speaking world, not so much for its subject as for its "four-letter" vocabulary. In England, Penguin Books published an unexpurgated edition in 1960: they were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act and acquitted.

Answer: The Man Born to be King

Although Ms Sayers was a practising Christian and the daughter of a clergyman, the prospect of her plays caused consternation and outrage among many listeners. Jesus had not been portrayed in a drama since the medieval mystery plays, and Ms Sayers made him speak twentieth-century English rather than the hallowed phrases of the King James Bible.

As usual in such cases, the loudest criticism seems to have come from people who knew little or nothing of the work: once it was broadcast, most listeners seem to have enjoyed it.

Answer: Sir Thomas More

This is probably Bolt's most performed work. Other historical plays by him include "Vivat, Vivat Regina," concerning Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, and "State of Revolution," about the problems faced by the Bolsheviks after their seizure of power in Russia.

Answer: Lucky Jim

No, the question wasn't a catch, though all four choices are works by Amis. "Lucky Jim" was Amis's first novel, published in 1954, and immediately established him as a leading comic writer.

Answer: Christopher Marlowe

Marlowe was killed in Deptford in 1593, apparently in an argument over a tavern bill. Burgess's novel marked the quatercentenary of his death, which has given rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories over the centuries.