GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Identification of Plays

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English

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All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources

1 Diagnostic Test 158 Practice Tests Question of the Day Flashcards Learn by Concept

Example Questions

Example Question #11 : Identification Of British Plays To 1660

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulph'rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world,
Crack Nature's moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!

The above lines are taken from which Shakespearean play?

Possible Answers:

Hamlet

A Winter’s Tale

Titus Andronicus

Othello

King Lear

Correct answer:

King Lear

Explanation:

This well-known monologue is from King Lear (1606), one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies. Over the course of the drama, the eponymous king grows steadily more insane after casting out his most loving daughter, Cordelia, based on the advice of his other two children. The play is especially renowned for its nuanced depiction of human suffering, madness, and familial bonds.

Example Question #12 : Identification Of British Plays To 1660

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing. No, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain?

From which Shakespeare play is this monologue taken?

Possible Answers:

Macbeth

A Midsummer Night's Dream

King Lear

Hamlet

Romeo and Juliet

Correct answer:

Hamlet

Explanation:

Although not as famous as the “To be or not to be” monologue, this excerpt is one of Hamlet’s better known soliloquies from the eponymous play. In it, he agonizes about the correct course of action to avenge his dead father, the former king of Denmark.

Adapted from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare II.ii.1632-1646 (1603)

Example Question #1 : Identification Of British Plays After 1925

This play's title is taken from a line in Shelley's poem "To a Skylark."

Possible Answers:

Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill 

Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams 

Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward

Love on the Dole by Ronald Gow 

The Royal Hunt of the Sun by Peter Shaffer 

Correct answer:

Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward

Explanation:

The title of Noel Coward's 1941 comic play, Blithe Spirit, is taken from a the first line of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark":

"Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
                Bird thou never wert,
         That from Heaven, or near it,
                Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
 
The play itself focuses on novelist Charles Condomine and medium Madame Arcati's failed attempt to conduct a seance.
 
Passage adapted from "To a Skylark" l.1-5 by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)

Example Question #2 : Identification Of British Plays After 1925

What play centers on two hit-men, Ben and Gus, who are awaiting their next assignment in a windowless basement?

Possible Answers:

Endgame by Samuel Beckett

The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter

Underground Lovers by Jean Tardieu

No Exit by Jean-Paul-Sartre

The Balcony by Jean Genet

Correct answer:

The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter

Explanation:

This overview describes the one-act play The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter.

Example Question #3 : Identification Of British Plays After 1925

This play switches back and forth between the year 1809 and the present. Some of the main characters include Thomasina Coverly, Septimus Hodge, Hannah Jarvis, and Bernard Nightingale.

Possible Answers:

Chips with Everything by Arnold Wesker

Narrow Road to the Deep North by Edward Bond

Translations by Brian Friel

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter

Correct answer:

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Explanation:

This is a brief overview of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, a play first performed in 1993.

Example Question #4 : Identification Of British Plays After 1925

The Common Man, Sir Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell are characters in which of the following plays?

Possible Answers:

A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

The Way of the World by William Congreve

Correct answer:

A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

Explanation:

The Common Man, Sir Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell are characters from the 1960 play A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt. The play follows the life of Sir Thomas More, the sixteenth-century Chancellor of England—a "man of conscience."

Example Question #5 : Identification Of British Plays After 1925

Anthonio Salieri, Constanze Weber, and Emperor Joseph II are characters from which of the following plays?

Possible Answers:

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward

Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

Correct answer:

Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

Explanation:

Anthonio Salieri, Constanze Weber, and Emperor Joseph II are characters in Peter Shaffer's 1979 play Amadeus, which creates a fictionalized plot centering on composers, Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The play is based on the 1830 play by Alexander Pushkin, Mozart and Salieri.

Example Question #6 : Identification Of British Plays After 1925

Which of the following is an absurdist, existentialist play that focuses on characters from a Shakespearian tragedy?

Possible Answers:

The Homecoming by Harold Pinter

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

The Zoo Story by Edward Albee

 

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket

A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

Correct answer:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Explanation:

This brief overview describes Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, first performed in 1966. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet who are presumably killed off-stage over the course of the play.

Example Question #1 : Identification Of American Plays Before 1925

Several American plays have been considered “firsts”—the first American play, the first professionally produced American play, the first American play written by an African-American, or even the first play by a “professional” American playwright. Which of the following works cannot claim ANY of these distinctions?

Possible Answers:

The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey

Androboros by Robert Hunter

Andre by Robert Dunlap

The Drama of King Shotaway unknown

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley

Correct answer:

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley

Explanation:

Although Phillis Wheatley was indeed the first published African-American writer and woman, she did not write plays. As the title of her publication indicates, she wrote poetry.

Example Question #2 : Identification Of American Plays Before 1925

This early American political writer and satirist wrote several highly critical and controversial plays about Revolutionary-era politics: The Adulateur, The Defeat, and The Group. Who is the playwright in question?

Possible Answers:

Anne Bradstreet

Mercy Otis Warren

John Smith

Sojourner Truth

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Correct answer:

Mercy Otis Warren

Explanation:

This writer is Mercy Otis Warren, who eschewed cultural norms and wrote about war, politics, and ethical matters—all subjects at the time thought to be in the realm of men. Other plays by Warren include The Ladies of Castille and The Sack of Rome, which concern ideals of liberty and morality in the early United States.

All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources

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