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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. Where does Walter want Eric to go with him on the evening of Eric's birthday?

2. What starts the Act Two, Scene Three fight between Eric and Toby?

3. Whom does Young Man 1 become in Act One, Scene Two?

4. How does Adam characterize Elan in Act One, Scene Two?

5. Which two characters are already married in Act One?

Short Essay Questions

1. Which character does Young Man 10 become in Act One, and how does this make sense with his lines in the Prologue?

2. When the play returns to Eric in Act Three, Scene Two, what are the various reasons that Eric is feeling bereft and alone?

3. After Leo leaves Toby's apartment, what surprising information does Young Man 1 reveal, and how do Morgan and Toby react?

4. What is in the bag that Adam brings to Eric's apartment during the birthday party, and how does Toby explain the bag's contents?

5. How do their differing responses to the AIDS crisis illustrate something fundamentally different about Walter and Henry?

6. When Walter comes to the apartment for dinner, what similarity do he and Eric recognize in their relationships?

7. What is at the heart of Eric's nostalgia for the gay community's past?

8. How does the proposed beginning of Young Man 1's story echo the opening of one of Morgan's books?

9. Why does Young Man 1 turn to Morgan for help in the play's prologue?

10. What is the main point of the poem fragment "Hidden" that serves as the book's epigraph?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Do some more research into Howards End and Lopez's personal connection to this work. Now that you have finished The Inheritance, how would you characterize the relationship between the two texts? Where do you see echoes of Forster's novel, and how do details of Forster's life influence Lopez's play? Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about the purpose of basing a contemporary play on Forster's book and show how this impacts the reader's understanding of theme. Defend your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the play and from your research. Be sure to cite all sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

What does Toby want from his relationships with other people? How does this relate to his understanding of himself and to Eric's charges that Toby is a fraud? Throughout the play, does Toby learn or grow at all in his ability to sustain meaningful relationships? What general message about relationships is conveyed through Toby's choices and their consequences? Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about the significance of Toby's relationships in this play. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

Essay Topic 3

How effectively does Lopez use dramatic tension to keep the reader engaged? As you read the play, do you feel invested in knowing how obstacles will be overcome and whether the characters will achieve their goals? Do you eagerly push forward to find answers to questions that Lopez creates and see how characters will resolve their conflicts? How does the metatheatrical nature of the play interact with its dramatic tension? How do the commentary and actions of the Young Men and Morgan heighten or diffuse dramatic tension? Does the play's humor heighten or diffuse its dramatic tension? Choose a single act of the play, from either of the play's two parts, and write an essay that explicates and evaluates Lopez's use of dramatic tension in that act.

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