Midterm

Question 1

Why do Shakespeare’s comedies end in weddings?

Answer 1

It neutralizes subversive energies and reaffirms social order/heteronormative ideals.

Question 2

What did the canopy of playhouses symbolize?

Answer 2

The heavens

Question 3

What is the discovery space of the stage?

Answer 3

Areas on the “tiring house wall” between the two doors that is covered by a curtain. Actors enter and exit here.

Question 4

Where were the playhouses located?

Answer 4

In the liberties of London to avoid restrictions/censorship from religious scholars.

Question 5

What was Shakespeare’s public play house?

Answer 5

The Globe - 1599

Question 6

What is the “hut” in public playhouses?

Answer 6

An area atop where stage hands hide and create special effects

Question 7

How are private playhouses different from public playhouses?

Answer 7

In the city walls, small, expensive, higher-class audience, more satirical/political plays

Question 8

What is a pastorial drama?

Answer 8

It portrays an idealized version of country life

Question 9

What is a tetralogy?

Answer 9

A series of four history plays that Shakespeare groups together. Richard 2, Henry 4th 1 & 2, Henry 5

Question 10

Metatheatrical

Answer 10

Play thinks about itself as a play (Henry 5)

Question 11

How does the chorus function in Henry 5?

Answer 11

Emphasizes key ideas and themes, provides moral commentary, provides plot points, and foreshadows future events.

Question 12

What were the two major theater companies of the 1590s?

Answer 12

Lord Chamberlain’s Men (“The King’s Men”) at the Globe and Lord Admiral’s Men at the Rose

Question 13

What were the three tiers of playhouses?

Answer 13

Shareholders (played major parts, supplied scripts, jointly owned all aspects of company), Hired Men (less important roles, musical roles, gathers of offerings, assisted with props and costumes), and Apprentices (young boys who played women’s parts)

Question 14

What are the characteristics of a repertory Theater?

Answer 14

They have up to 40 plays they rotate through, they perform everyday except for major holidays, actors are type cast and often cast as two roles.

Question 15

“If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall.”

Answer 15

-Twelfth Night
-Orsino
-He is proclaiming his love with Olivia by comparing his love to the sea and music

Question 16

“O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price”

Answer 16

-Twelfth Night
-Orsino
-He is proclaiming his love with Olivia by comparing his love to the sea and music (he basically thinks he’s the shit)

Question 17

How are all of Shakespeare’s plays written?

Answer 17

In blank verse. 5 poetic feet per line with two syllables each and it stresses every second syllable)

Question 18

Which characters speak in blank verse?

Answer 18

Upper class or dramatic characters?

Question 19

Which characters speak in prose?

Answer 19

Lower class or comedic characters

Question 20

“Make me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house,
Write loyal cantons of contemnèd love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night,
Hallow your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out “Olivia!” O, you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth”

Answer 20

-Twelfth Night
-Viola/Cesario
-As she tells Olivia of Orsino’s love and Olivia rejects it, Viola claims that if she loved Olivia as much as Orsino claims to, she would do all of these grand gestures

Question 21

“There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much; they lack retention.”

Answer 21

-Twelfth Night
-Orsino
-He is claiming that women could never love as deeply as men and that is why Olivia is hesitant

Question 22

“Alas, their love may be called appetite,
No motion of the liver but the palate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;
But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much. Make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Olivia.”

Answer 22

-Twelfth Night
-Orsino
-He is claiming that women could never love as deeply as men and that is why Olivia is hesitant

Question 23

“She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed
Our shows are more than will; for still we prove
Much in our vows but little in our love.”

Answer 23

-Twelfth Night
-Viola
-She’s telling of women’s love. That though it not be so showy it as just as deep as men see themselves capable of loving, and that unrequited love can be powerful, but overwhelming

Question 24

“You have said, sir. To see this age! A sentence is
but a chev’ril glove to a good wit. How quickly the
wrong side may be turned outward!”

Answer 24

-Twelfth Night
-Feste
-He is explaining linguistic intent and how easily language can be manipulated

Question 25

“Why, sir, her name’s a word, and to dally with
that word might make my sister wanton. But,
indeed, words are very rascals since bonds disgraced
them.”

Answer 25

-Twelfth Night
-Feste
-He is explaining linguistic intent and how easily language can be manipulated

Question 26

“O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful
In the contempt and anger of his lip!
A murd’rous guilt shows not itself more soon
Than love that would seem hid. Love’s night is
noon.—”

Answer 26

-Twelfth Night
-Olivia
-Viola/Cesario has just told Olivia that he doesn’t return he love and she says this as to say that love cannot be hidden, it will always come to light

Question 27

“Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,
For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause;
But rather reason thus with reason fetter:
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.”

Answer 27

-Twelfth Night
-Olivia
-Viola/Cesario has just told Olivia that he doesn’t return he love and she says this as to say that unrequited love is valuable and good

Question 28

“This is the air; that is the glorious sun.
This pearl she gave me, I do feel ’t and see ’t….
That this may be some error, but no madness,
Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes
And wrangle with my reason that persuades me
To any other trust but that I am mad—”

Answer 28

-Twelfth Night
-Sebastian
-He is mighty confused at why Olivia just proclaimed her love and what is happening so he grounds himself in reality to remind himself that he hasn’t gone crazy

Question 29

“…For the rain it raineth every day.”

Answer 29

-Twelfth Night
-Feste
-Song at the end of the play about growth and perseverance

Question 30

How does Touchstone function in As You Like It?

Answer 30

He is an index of human behavior and helps other characters confront who they are

Question 31

“Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?”

Answer 31

-As You Like It
-Duke Senior
-He is embracing the forest as better than the court in warmth and community

Question 32

“The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
“This is no flattery. These are counselors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.”
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,”

Answer 32

-As You Like It
-Duke Senior
-He is embracing the forest as better than the court because even the icy wind brings growth, but the court does not

Question 33

“Thus we may see,” quoth he, “how the world wags.
’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more ’twill be eleven.
And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.”

Answer 33

-As You Like It
-Jaques quoting Touchstone
-Touchstone is expanding on the inevitable destruction of time

Question 34

“His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. “

Answer 34

-As You Like It
-Jaques
-He tells Duke Senior that life moves at an even pace with dread in each stage until death basically

Question 35

“By no means, sir. Time
travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell
you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal,
who time gallops withal, and who he stands still
withal.”

Answer 35

-As you Like It
-Rosalind as Ganymede
-Orlando claims that time serves no purpose in the forest, but Rosalina opposes that and Jaques’ speech, by claiming that time moves differently for different people and at different life stages

Question 36

“Of a certain knight that swore by his
honor they were good pancakes, and swore by his
honor the mustard was naught. Now, I’ll stand to it,
the pancakes were naught and the mustard was
good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.”

Answer 36

-As You Like It
-Touchstone
-Honestly who the fuck knows what he is talking about

Question 37

“Love is merely a madness,
and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a
whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are
not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I
profess curing it by counsel.”

Answer 37

-As You Like It
-Rosalind as Ganymede
-She is going to counsel Orlando in how to love her

Question 38

“No, faith, die by attorney.
The poor world is almost six thousand years old,
and in all this time there was not any man died in
his own person, videlicet, in a love cause”

Answer 38

-As You Like It
-Rosalind
-She thinks Orlando is exaggerating his love (especially with his awful poems) because love has never killed anyone

Question 39

“The breath no sooner left his father’s body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem’d to die too; yea, at that very moment
Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise,
To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made”

Answer 39

-Henry V
-Arch Bishop of Canterbury
-Henry was a wild youth but so quickly became a King when the time came

Question 40

“The strawberry grows underneath the nettle
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness”

Answer 40

-Henry V
-Bishop of Ely
-He’s explaining that Henry used his wildness and the companions of his youth to disguise his cleverness so that he wasn’t deemed a threat

Question 41

“When we have march’d our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb’d
With chaces”

Answer 41

-Henry V
-Henry
-He’s saying that Dauphin’s gift insulted him, but the prince will rue the day he did hen Henry’s army kills more frenchmen than they can imagine

Question 42

“But this lies all within the will of God,
To whom I do appeal; and in whose name
Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on,
To venge me as I may and to put forth
My rightful hand in a well
-hallow’d cause.
So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin
His jest will savour but of shallow wit,
When thousands weep more than did laugh at it”

Answer 42

-Henry V
-Henry
-He’s saying that Dauphin’s gift insulted him, but the prince will rue the day he did hen Henry’s army kills more frenchmen than they can imagine

Question 43

“Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?
Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?
Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet…
To mark the full
-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man.”

Answer 43

-Henry V
-Henry
-Henry is punishing Grey, Scoop, and Cambridge for betraying him. He expresses his shock, anger, and hurt, and insinuates that going against him is like going against God’s divine will

Question 44

“Therefore, I say ‘tis meet we all go forth
To view the sick and feeble parts of France:
And let us do it with no show of fear;
No, with no more than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance:
For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d,
Her sceptre so fantastically borne
By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
That fear attends her not”

Answer 44

-Henry V
-Dauphin
-He is telling his father that they should prepare for war, but not actually be scared at all because King Henry is a joke

Question 45

“Think we King Harry strong;
And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.
The kindred of him hath been flesh’d upon us;
And he is bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths:
Witness our too much memorable shame”

Answer 45

-Henry V
-King of France
-Henry is formidable and comes from a strong bloodline so they should prepare against England with some fear

Question 46

“The patterns that by God and by French fathers
Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
Of that victorious stock; and let us fear
The native mightiness and fate of him.”

Answer 46

-Henry V
-King of France
-Henry is formidable and comes from a strong bloodline so they should prepare against England with some fear

Question 47

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage”

Answer 47

-Henry V
-Henry
-He is galvanizing his troops before Harfleur

Question 48

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage”

Answer 48

-Henry V
-King Henry (disguised)
-He tells William Bates that it is not the King’s fault if men die, and if soldiers die, then to remember that they aren’t blameless saints. AND that it is all God’s divine will. (BS points if you ask me)

Question 49

” if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of
their damnation than he was before guilty of those
impieties for the which they are now visited. Every
subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s
soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in
the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every
mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death
is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was
blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained”

Answer 49

-Henry V
-King Henry (disguised)
-He tells William Bates that it is not the King’s fault if men die, and if soldiers die, then to remember that they aren’t blameless saints. AND that it is all God’s divine will. (BS points if you ask me)

Question 50

“If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.”

Answer 50

-Henry V
-King Henry
-Convincing his troops to stay and fight the final battle by telling them that it’s really for them, not him. (Reverse psychology basically and illusion of choice)

Question 51

“And say ‘To
-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.”

Answer 51

-Henry V
-King Henry
-Convincing his troops to stay and fight because if they stay and fight, they will be remembered, valued, never forgotten. Semented in hisory

Question 52

“No; it is not possible you should love the enemy of
France, Kate: but, in loving me, you should love
the friend of France; for I love France so well that
I will not part with a village of it; I will have it
all mine: and, Kate, when France is mine and I am
yours, then yours is France and you are mine”

Answer 52

-Henry V
-King Henry
-He’s convincing Kate that he loves her because of his pride and ego. He wants to feel as though he’s earned her love the virtuous way

Question 53

“I have begun to plant thee, and will labour
To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo,
That hast no less deserved, nor must be known
No less to have done so, let me enfold thee
And hold thee to my heart.”

Answer 53

-Macbeth
-King Duncan
-Ducan is associated with images of light, fertility, and nature. He succeeds in a time of peace while Macbeth strives in chaos and violence.

Question 54

“That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers”

Answer 54

-Macbeth
-Lady Macbeth
-She sees masculinity as associated with ambition and hopes her femininity doesn’t get in the way of her vengeful plans.

Question 55

“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win”

Answer 55

-Macbeth
-Lady Macbeth
-She learned of the prophecy, but doesn’ think Macbeth is ambitious and ruthless enough

Question 56

“At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’”

Answer 56

-Macbeth
-Lady Macbeth
- Lady Macbeth kinda calls him a coward, he should be “more than a man.” Macbeth thinks manliness is honor, and Lady Macbeth tells him it is ambitiousness and ruthlessness/violence

Question 57

“A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going”

“Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.”

Answer 57

-Macbeth
-Macbeth
-He is hallucinating and holds off on saying murder because he is in denial about what he is going to do to Duncan

Question 58

“But I have none: the king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,1950
I have no relish of them, but abound
In the division of each several crime,
Acting it many ways”

Answer 58

-Macbeth
-Malcom
-Malcom is testing whether McDuff can be trusted to care about Scotland by underselling himself. He needs to discern (like hiss father Duncan was unable to) whether McDuff is a valuable ally against Macbeth

Question 59

Explain the theme of disease throughout Macbeth.

Answer 59

There is simultaneous physical, psychological, and political disease. Doctors are often called to heal people of their illnesses, like Lady Macbeth, but they cannot be helped because they are psychological illnesses cause by their guilt.

Question 60

How are clothes used in Macbeth as symbolism?

Answer 60

Macbeth’s clothes are often described as ill-fitting to accentuate how he is unfit for the royal roles he finds himself in, both in terms of legitimacy and morality.

Question 61

“When I behold—Seyton, I say!—This push
Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. Seyton!”

Answer 61

-Macbeth
-Macbeth
-He can sense his end coming and is meditating on death and old age. HE feels as though his corruption has robbed him of the comforts most people hold onto during old age

Question 62

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more”

Answer 62

-Macbeth
-Macbeth
-Lady Macbeth has just died and Macbeth is describes how it he is being dragged along with time until he dies. He’s meditating on solitude, loneliness, morality, and things coming to an end, which can happen so suddenly because life is fragile like a burning candle.

Question 63

What are some of the themes of Twelfth Night?

Answer 63

Going from confusion to order, ignorance to understanding, and conflict to reconciliation

Question 64

What is the main comparison/dichotomy in As You Like It?

Answer 64

The juxtaposition of the court with its falsehoods and deception and the forest with its warth and community

Question 65

What spectrum exists between the loves of Silvius & Phoebe, Rosalind and Orlando, and Touchstone and Maria?

Answer 65

Silvius and Phoebe have a very idealized love, Touchstone and Maria exhibit a very pragmatic love, and Rosalind and Orlando hope to fall in the happy medium.