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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How long does God tell Noah to make the Ark? ("The Flodod")

2. Where does Scene I ("Cain and Abel") open?

3. In what year did the burning of the Free Reference Library at Birmingham occur?

4. Who does Abraham state that he loved Isaac as much as? ("Abraham and Isaac")

5. How old are the children that Herod orders murdered by his soldiers? ("Herod the Great")

Short Essay Questions

1. On what is the "Second Shepherds' Pageant" based?

2. Why is the story of Mak included in this pageant?

3. How is the character of Noah's wife, as depicted in the pageants, different from the orthodox theological idea of her?

4. In what poetic form was "The Creation" written?

5. When Joseph enters Mary's home, what does he question her about?

6. What "justifies" Lucifer's fall from Heaven?

7. According to the introduction, what is the importance of "The Fall of Lucifer"?

8. What error did Cawley correct in his Preface to the second edition of the text?

9. What did the Introduction state was the "unity of biblical history"?

10. According to the Preface, why did A.C. Cawley choose the collection of plays that he did as a representative collection of medieval biblical pageants?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Many lessons were taught in the morality plays of the text. Which of the morality plays has the strongest message? What was the message? Why was it the most important in the text? How was the lesson taught?

Essay Topic 2

Choose one of the "Medieval Miracle Plays" and compare and contrast the message that it contains to a similar message in Everyman. What are both texts trying to say? How do both texts deliver the message? Given that both texts obviously convey the same message, or it would not have been chosen for this essay, how do the texts differ? How are they similar?

Essay Topic 3

Pride seems to be a large part of where issues arise between characters in many of the text's pageants. Choose one of the conflicts, based upon issues regarding pride, and discuss why pride was the circumventing issue.

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