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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does critic Marc Shell say Shakespeare is criticizing in Angelo's strict enforcement of law in 'Measure for Measure'?
(a) The Puritans' ineffective morality campaigns.
(b) Hypocrisy in the government's morality campaigns.
(c) The royal family's peccadilloes.
(d) The notion of law and order at all.

2. What does Bloom say brings Anthony back to Cleopatra?
(a) Lust for power.
(b) Dependency on Cleopatra.
(c) Hostility to Caesar.
(d) Sexual lust.

3. What does Bloom say "The Merry Wives of Windsor" might have been designed to do?
(a) Make a lot of money for the theatre company.
(b) Resolve personal quandaries of Shakespeare's.
(c) Urge the government to make reforms.
(d) Propitiate the queen with light humor.

4. How does Helena conceive Bertram's child?
(a) By tricking him.
(b) She marries him.
(c) She is raped by him.
(d) She seduces him.

5. How does Bloom characterize the love affair between Antony and Cleopatra?
(a) As a nihilistic act.
(b) As a literary philosophy.
(c) As the summit of hopeless romanticism.
(d) As a political act.

6. How does the porter describe the effects of alcohol?
(a) It confuses family lines in improvident matches.
(b) It reveals people's true characters.
(c) It blinds people to their own death, and perpetuates their genetic lines.
(d) It makes people equal, but removes the ability to have sex.

7. How does Thersites avoid being killed?
(a) By cowardliness.
(b) By undignified begging.
(c) By cunning.
(d) By intrigue.

8. What does Bloom say the reader needs to know about "Henry V"?
(a) The limits of the pageantry.
(b) Henry V's true motives.
(c) The seething undercurrents beneath Henry V's pageantry.
(d) The end of the story, where Henry V is betrayed.

9. Why does Janet Adelman say that Cordelia had to be murdered in "King Lear"?
(a) To prevent love from being triumphant.
(b) To counter the demise of Regan and Goneril.
(c) To protect the masculinity of the play.
(d) To preserve the play's philosophy consistently.

10. How does Bloom characterize the Falstaff of "The Merry Wives of Windsor"?
(a) A false Falstaff.
(b) The genuine Falstaff.
(c) A bastardization of Henry IV.
(d) A precursor to later villains.

11. What does Bloom say in response to Hamlet's claim that he was a prisoner in Denmark?
(a) That he is a free personality.
(b) That imprisonment is a human condition.
(c) That he is not in fact imprisoned, except in the metaphor of imprisonment.
(d) That he is only partly correct.

12. What does Theseus give away in "Two Noble Kinsmen"?
(a) His daughter.
(b) His throne.
(c) His lands.
(d) His wife.

13. What aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy does Iago embody, according to Bloom?
(a) The playfulness.
(b) The evil.
(c) The literariness.
(d) The nihilism.

14. Why does Bloom say "Timon of Athens" was never performed?
(a) Shakespeare died before he finished it.
(b) Shakespeare's patron was offended by the play.
(c) Shakespeare used the play to denounce contemporary London.
(d) Shakespeare felt the play was too personal.

15. What was Shakespeare's contribution to "Two Noble Kinsmen"?
(a) He wrote the whole play.
(b) Act I and parts of Act III and V.
(c) Act III and Act V.
(d) Act I through Act IV.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Bloom, T. S. Eliot prefers "Coriolanus" to which other Shakespeare play?

2. What opera is based on "The Merry Wives of Windsor"?

3. What objection does Dr. Johnson make about "Cymbeline"?

4. Whose marriage does Bloom say is happiest in all of Shakespeare's plays?

5. What does Bloom say is the center of "The Tempest'?

(see the answer keys)

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