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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Iachino want from Imogen?
(a) To seduce her or see her killed.
(b) To convince her to betray her husband's political power.
(c) To marry her.
(d) To make her queen.

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

3. Whose greatness does "Henry VIII" prophecy?
(a) Queen Elizabeth I.
(b) Queen Victoria.
(c) Joan of Arc.
(d) Anne Boleyn.

4. Whose skepticism does Bloom describe behind Hamlet's philosophizing?
(a) Plato's.
(b) Diogenes'.
(c) Socrates'.
(d) Montaigne's.

5. What does Bloom say constitutes the darkness of "Cymbeline"?
(a) Iachino is not killed off, but he can continue his evil ways.
(b) Cymbeline is still jealous, even after he repents sentencing his wife to death for betrayal.
(c) Posthumous is ineffective against Iachino's manipulations.
(d) There is a suggestion that Imogen might be unfaithful at heart.

6. Whose marriage does Bloom say is happiest in all of Shakespeare's plays?
(a) Beatrice and Benedick.
(b) The Macbeths'.
(c) Romeo and Juliet's love-death.
(d) Ferdinand and Miranda.

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

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

9. Who whom does Fluellen compare Henry V?
(a) Caesar.
(b) Falstaff.
(c) Henry IV.
(d) Alexander the Great.

10. How does Bloom characterize Anthony's death?
(a) As a form of self-indulgence.
(b) As a tragedy.
(c) As unnecessary.
(d) As a historic event.

11. What does Nietzsche say Hamlet's problem was?
(a) Thinking too well.
(b) Madness.
(c) Emasculation.
(d) Fear.

12. For whom did Cressida betray Troilus?
(a) Achilles.
(b) Ulysses.
(c) Diomedes.
(d) Thersites.

13. How does Bloom say Ben Jonson saw Thersites?
(a) As a Christian.
(b) As a predecessor to Falstaff.
(c) As a nihilist.
(d) As a coward.

14. Why was Caliban suffering, according to critic Browning?
(a) Because he is incapable of attaining the beautiful things he imagines.
(b) Because he will never win Ariel for himself.
(c) Because his nature is still too bestial.
(d) Because Prospero will not adopt him.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Bloom say "Henry V" has been used in England?

2. What does Theseus give away in "Two Noble Kinsmen"?

3. What does Ben Jonson say "Winter's Tale" unites with the dark fears of Leontes?

4. What does Iago triumph over, in Bloom's interpretation?

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

(see the answer keys)

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