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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. Who whom does Bloom compare Beatrice and Benedick from "Much Ado About Nothing"?

2. How does the play resolve the tension between Oberon and Titania?

3. Where are Faulconbridge's speeches reflected?

4. What gets better as the king's fate gets worse in "Richard II"?

5. What does Bloom say is the purpose of Falstaff's philosophizing?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where does Bloom see resonances of "Julius Caesar" in other plays?

2. What play does Bloom say influenced Shakespeare's "Henry VI"?

3. What does Bloom say is the true subject of "Julius Caesar"?

4. What is it about Falstaff that Bloom likes so much?

5. What does Bloom say is the primary rival for Romeo and Juliet's affections?

6. How does Bloom characterize Richard III?

7. What is Marlowe's influence on "Titus Andronicus"?

8. How does Bloom characterize "Much Ado About Nothing"?

9. How does Bloom characterize Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus"?

10. What does Bloom say "Henry VI" did for Shakespeare?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe Bloom's critical perspective. What matters to him, and what parts of Shakespeare's plays, and the commentary on them, is uninteresting? How does he justify his focus?

Essay Topic 2

Bloom says that he values interior development, but what is it that he wants to see characters be aware of? Where does the actual world of lived experience figure in Bloom's analysis of Shakespeare's writing or of writing in general?

Essay Topic 3

Bloom credits Shakespeare with defining the interior development that we take as emblematic of modernity. Has anything happened, in art or in human culture, that has invented a different kind of human being, or invented different ways of being human since Shakespeare?

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