# Shakespeare - Can you pass the test?



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

William Shakespeare is widely acknowledged as the greatest writer in the English language. So the only fitting way to truly honour his legacy is a truly English endeavour: a good old quiz.

How well do you know your William? Are you brainy about the Bard?

Take the quiz and find out.


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## Potiphera (Mar 24, 2011)

I got 14 out of 20 . 
Wasn't sure about the Klingon question though.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I got 15 out of 20 - phew! As an ex-English teacher, I always get a bit nervous about these sorts of quizzes. However, there were a lot of 'not-very-Shakespearean' questions like the satellites on which planet, and the Klingon translations - I got these wrong, but hey, why would a Shakespeare buff be expected to know them anyway?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

At least I didn't embarrass myself - 11/20  As Ingélou says - some 'not-very-Shakespearean' questions. Bit miffed to get the Klingon question wrong.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Only 9/20. Many of the questions had little to do with Shakespeare's actual plays anyway!


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Another Shakespearean quiz here: http://www.quiz.biz/quizz-170297.html

This one is easier - but contains one answer (to question 12) that is *actually wrong*! So I got that question 'wrong', but *not wrong*, if you follow me; and two more questions wrong, but not very important ones. I didn't know how many Shakespeare museums there were round Stratford, and I probably don't define 'great tragedies' in the same way as the questioner. (To my mind there are four - an option not offered!) 
So 80% - not too bad.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

73% - 11/15: 4 wrong, including *their* mistake. Nae sae bad!


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## Potiphera (Mar 24, 2011)

I got 87% - 13/15 for the quiz Ingélou posted. 

Although I put 5 houses in Stratford connected with Shakespeare's family, there are really 6. This annoys me really because they never mention Judith Shakespeare's house, which actually has a plaque on it. Her married name was, Quiney.Though the house is now a café upstairs and Crabtree & Evelyn shop downstairs.




They have question 12 . wrong. 
They say the correct answer is that Shakespeare lived in the 17th to the 18th century which is wrong. 
He lived from the 16th to the 17th century. That is the answer I put and they marked it wrong. 
He was born 1564 and died 1616.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I got a not surprisingly so-so 10/20, but I can recall only ever reading three plays and two of those were part of my English Lit. 'O'-Level syllabus back in the distant 1970s (Macbeth and Julius Caesar). I also remember a school trip to the theatre but I can't remember which play we saw (I was obviously riveted there...), and we also went to Shenstone College to see Polanski's gritty Macbeth on film, which I really enjoyed. 

Any other smatterings of knowledge I have of Shakespeare' work have probably been accrued through music more than anything else. Oh, and the horror film Theatre of Blood with the incomparable Vincent Price!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I wish my knowledge of the Bard were more complete...I only got 10/20 on that first quiz.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

11/20 on the first, 11/15 on the second (adjusting for the unforgivable Q12 error). I don't like either quiz. Anyone have a quiz about the actual plays themselves?


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

10 out of 20. That's because I didn't read the plays in the original Klingon.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Okay, 11 out of 20 -- but I'm an authorship apostate anyway, so what can you expect? 

But 15 for 15 on Number Two. Just goes to show, even a nut can get them all right sometimes.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

5 right out of 20. I know very little Shakespeare but for having read the Merchant of Venice in college for a course titled, *Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Europe*. Yes, it was all one course, and the only college history course I ever took.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

6/20 for Taggart, it asked if I was paying attention. :lol:

For Ingelou's quiz:

73% of correct answers in *81s* (11/15)


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## ProudSquire (Nov 30, 2011)

A mere 5 is all I could muster! The questions were very confusing, that's my excuse for doing so poorly. :{


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Now try one of these:

http://www.triviaplaza.com/literature-shakespeare-quizzes/


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

SimonNZ said:


> Now try one of these:
> 
> http://www.triviaplaza.com/literature-shakespeare-quizzes/


Brilliant link, thank you, Simon :tiphat: - it's bedtime for me; otherwise I'd be on to these like a shot.


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## Guest (May 1, 2015)

6 of 20 on the original quiz

80% of Ingelou's quiz.


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## Guest (May 1, 2015)

I was reading some stuff about Shakespeare not really existing and a lot of it seems based on the lack of references to his works in his personal correspondence but that doesn't really mean anything. I've read a lot of Bach's letters and while he does talk about his music, it's not very in depth. He seems much more willing to write about getting paid. I have replicas of Poe's letters and they don't mention much about his writing at all. Most of them are letters begging for money. People who met Scott Joplin said his conversations centered around music so much that they thought him obsessed and yet his personal correspondence is almost non-existent what we do have of his letters are rather brief and usually centered around some kind of business transaction. You basically can't go by personal correspondence. I'd hate to be judged by my emails.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Actually, there's a lot of evidence that he existed - his marriage witnesses, his will, references by other writers such as Ben Jonson & Greene, & of course the plays. *Somebody* wrote them, and had to *exist* in order to do so. 
If it wasn't Shakespeare, then all I can say is that *Pseudo-Shakespeare* was a genius!


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## Guest (May 1, 2015)

There would have been questions about who he was in his lifetime and there were none that I am aware of.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I remember reading a story about a 19th century American lady who was so convinced that Shakespeare was a fraud that she actually went to England in order to dig up his grave at midnight as she thought that the real secret to his identity and the truth about the works was buried with him. However, the churchwarden, who gave her permission to see the tomb during daylight, was suspicious about her intentions and kept a vigil, lurking in the shadows when she came back with a shovel at nightfall. After reading the chilling warning inscribed on the stone she then spotted a figure and not knowing who it was at first she jumped out of her skin. It was the verger who gently told her to show respect. After that her resolve broke and she slunk off home. I think she ended up going mad.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

At the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries, there was the idea that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays and incorporated cryptic clues in the sonnets and so on about who he was, and possibly about the Mystery of Ages. No less a person than E. Nesbit, the children's writer, became completely addicted to trying to decrypt these clues, using strange numerology, ancient languages etc. It seems ludicrous now ... but there again, we do have *The Da Vinci Code*.


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

I've noticed in my wanderings that largely the people interested in the "authorship question" are those who care little - or not at all, or are almost completely unfamiliar - with the plays themselves.

The Da Vinci Code is a good comparison.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

9/10 on the Shakespeare Facts quiz on SimonNZ's link. I think I'll quit when I'm ahead.


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

I brought down the average score in all _three_ quizzes I tried (I did Simon's EASY quiz) so it's safe to say my education was incomplete.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

12/20 for Taggart's (hardly Shakespeare, quite a lot of those questions!)

12/15, 80%, for Ingélou's in 126 seconds.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I've finally started Simon's tests.
Easy Quiz - 9 out of 10 (okay, I don't know Timon of Athens very well!)
Hard Quiz - 8 out of 10 (galling - I could have got 10 out of 10 if I'd followed my gut instinct!)
Couples - 10 out of 10 (You can see where my interest lies!)

And more to look forward to.
Simon, you're a brick! :tiphat:


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Simon, you're a brick! :tiphat:


This _is_ a compliment, isn't it?


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Yep - it's Edwardian slang, slightly upper class. Another to add to your collection!


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## music muse (May 2, 2015)

I scored 14 out of 20 in the first quiz. I didn't know every answer even though I study English. But you don't learn every single piece about Shakespeare or other topics. But it was still nice to see that I still know something


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Could Shakespeare pass this test, were he alive today?


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Nah - he was useless at Klingon!


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Ingélou said:


> I've finally started Simon's tests.
> Easy Quiz - 9 out of 10 (okay, I don't know Timon of Athens very well!)
> Hard Quiz - 8 out of 10 (galling - I could have got 10 out of 10 if I'd followed my gut instinct!)
> Couples - 10 out of 10 (You can see where my interest lies!)
> ...


A compliment of the highest order. Thank you very much.

(also: many of those quizzes offer a different mix of questions if you take the same ones again)


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

For the first quiz, I scored 13/20 (should I admit that I was correct for both the Klingon and satellite questions?)
For the second one, 80% in 104 seconds.


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