Contexts of World Plays After 1925

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AP English Literature and Composition › Contexts of World Plays After 1925

Questions 1 - 5
1

Who of the following is not a Caribbean playwright?

Wole Solinka

Aimé Césaire

Derek Walcott

Kamau Brathwaite

Earl Lovelace

Explanation

Wole Solinka is a dramatist, but he is from Nigeria, not the Caribbean. He is the first African recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his plays, which feature colonialism and African politics, include Death and the King’s Horsemen, Kongi’s Harvest, and A Dance of the Forests.

2

Which of the following playwrights did not write work belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd?

Tennessee Williams

Eugene Ionesco

Jean Genet

Samuel Beckett

Fernando Arrabal

Explanation

Only Tennessee Williams did not write absurdist plays emphasizing the meaninglessness of human existence. (The Theatre of the Absurd was a primarily European phenomenon, and Williams was American.)

3

What is the subject of the play A Doll’s House?

nineteenth-century marital norms

shifting political regimes in Norway

wartime attitudes toward pacifists in Germany

social conventions surrounding treatment of the disabled

the miniaturization of urban life

Explanation

Written by Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House concerns what the playwright considered to be the constricting aspects of marriage, motherhood, female domesticity, and public reputation versus private morality. The work is a tragedy and takes place in Ibsen’s native Norway in the late nineteenth century.

4

Who of the following is not an African dramatist?

Jean Rhys

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Ola Rotimi

Ama Ata Aidoo

Wole Soyinka

Explanation

While Jean Rhys is a renowned writer, she is Dominican and not African. Moreover, she was known for writing novels (including Wide Sargasso Sea and After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie) and not plays.

5

Which of these European playwrights was a staunch Marxist?

Bertolt Brecht

Friedrich Schiller

Eugene Ionesco

Jean Genet

Henrik Ibsen

Explanation

This dramatist is Brecht, and his lifelong Marxist leanings were often visible in his aesthetics. His works include plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children, The Threepenny Opera, and Man Equals Man. He and his wife also co-founded and operated the Berliner Ensemble, an important post-war German theater company.

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