British Cultural Literacy Quiz 1-13

Joseph Conrad

A British author of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. He based many of his works, including Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, on his adventures as a sailor.

D. H. Lawrence

A British author of the twentieth century; two of his best-regarded works are Sons and Lovers and Women in Love. The author is known for his frank treatment of sex, and for the radical ideas on society and on the family that he voiced in his books. His novel Lady Chatterley's lover was banned as obscene in both Britain and the United States, then ban was appealed to the Supreme Court, which overruled it.

James Boswell

A Scottish author of the eighteenth century, best known for his Life Of Samuel Johnson. He has become a general term for a biographer: "James Joyce found his __________ __________ in Richard Ellmann."

Sir Walter Scott

A Scottish author of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries. He wrote immensely popular historical novels, such as Ivanhoe and Waverley, and poems , including "The Lady of the Lake."

Robert Burns

A Scottish poet of the eighteenth century, known for his poems in Scottish dialect, such as "To a Mouse," "A Red, Red Rose," and "Auld Lang Syne." Many lines from his poetry have become proverbial: "The best-laid schemes of mice and men/ Gang aft agley" (often go astray), "Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us!" (Oh, if the good spirit would only give us the power/ to see ourselves as others see us), "A man's a man for a a' (all) that."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

A book by Lewis Carroll. Alice, a young girl, enters Wonderland by following the White Rabbit down his hole, and has many strange adventures there. She meets the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, the grinning Cheshire Cat, and the Queen of Hearts, who shouts, "Off with her head!" when Alice makes a mistake at croquet. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS is a sequel to this.

Cheshire Cat

A cat with an enormous grin encountered by Alice in Alice's Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. The cat tends to disappear, leaving only its smile hanging in the air.

Brutus

A character in the play Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare; on the of assassins of Julius Caesar.

Robin Hood

A character of English legend, the subject of many ballads and stories since the fourteenth century. He lived with his band of Merry Men in Sherwood Forest, and stole from the rich to give to the poor.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A comedy by William Shakespeare about a group of lovers who spend the night in a forest, where they are the victims of a fairies' pranks and enchantments. One famous line from this comedy is "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

Twelfth Night

A comedy by William Shakespeare. The two central characters are a twin brother and sister; each thinks that the other has been lost at sea. The sister disguises herself as a boy and goes to serve the duke of the country, a bitter man, disappointed in love. After the brother reappears, he marries the woman whom the duke has been pursuing, and his sister marries the duke. This comedy begins with the line "If music be the food of love, play on."

Victorian

A descriptive term for the time when Victoria was queen of England, from 1837 to 1901. This period in England is known as a time of industrial progress, colonial expansion, and public fastidiousness in morals. This period in the United States had many of the same characteristics.

Sherlock Holmes

A fictional English detective, created by Sir Arthur Doyle. This character's extraordinary powers of memory, observation, and deduction enable him to solve mysteries and identify criminals in cases that leave all other detectives baffled. His companion is Dr. Watson, who records his exploits. Holmes is often mistakenly quoted as saying, "Elementary, my dear Watson." Figuratively, any shrewd detective can be called by his whole name , or simply his last name.

King Arthur

A legendary early king of Britain much celebrated in literature. The best-known works on him are the fifteenth-century book Le Morte d'Arthur, by Thomas Malory, and the nineteenth century series of poems Idylls of the King, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes

A line from a love poem by the seventeenth- century English poet Ben Jonson. He suggests that lovers find each other's glances so intoxicating that they have no need to drink wine

East Is East, And West Is West, And Never The Twain Shall Meet

A line from a poem by Rudyard Kipling. It continues, a few lines later: "But there is neither East nor West... When two strong men stand face to face."

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much

A line from the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare, spoken by Hamlet's mother. Hamlet's mother is watching a play, and a character in it swears never to remarry if her husband dies. The play is making Hamlet's mother uncomfortable, because she herself has remarried almost immediately after the murder of her first husband.

There's A Special Providence In The Fall Of A Sparrow

A line from the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, suggesting that a divine power takes a benevolent interest in human affairs. Hamlet, the speaker, is echoing word of Jesus, that one of the animals mentioned in this quote "shall not fall on the ground without your Father." Hamlet's speech continues: "If it be now; 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all."

Something Is Rotten In The State Of Denmark

A line from the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. An officer of the palace guard says this after the ghost of the dead king appears, walking over the palace walls. This phrase is used to describe corruption or a situation in which something is wrong.

Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow

A line from the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, spoken by the title character after he learns of his wife's death. The speech begins: _______________________________________Creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time....

Lay On Macduff

A line from the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare. Macbeth speaks these words as he attacks his enemy (the character mentioned in the quote) at the end of the play; Macbeth is killed in the fight.

The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strained

A line from the play The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare. Strained means "constrained," or "forced"; the speaker is telling Shylock that mercy must be freely given, and is inviting him to show mercy to the title character.

Was This The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships

A line from the sixteenth century play Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe; Faustus says this when the Devil Mephistopheles shows him Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in history. The "thousand ships" are warships, a reference to the Trojan War.

Great Expectations

A novel by Charles Dickens, Worldly ambitions lead a young boy, Pip, to abandon his true friends.

Frankenstein

A novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The title character, Dr. Victor ____________________ , makes a manlike monster from parts of cadavers and brings it to life by the power of an electrical charge. His monster is larger than most men and fantastically strong. Frequently the subject of horror films, the monster is usually pictured with an oversized square brow, metal bolts in his neck and forehead, and greenish skin. People often refer to the monster, rather than his creator, as this name.

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

A novel by Robert Louis Stevenson about the good Dr. Jekyll, whose well- intentioned experiments on himself periodically turn him into a cruel and sadistic Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde provide a classic example of split personality. In addition, the two characters often serve as symbols of the good and evil sides of a single personality.

Pound of Flesh

A phrase from the play The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare. The moneylender Shylock demands this from the "merchant of Venice," Antonio, under a provision in their contract. Shylock never gets this, however, because the character Portia discovers a point of law that overrides the contract between Shylock and Antonio: Shylock is forbidden to shed any blood in getting the flesh from Antonio's body. People who cruelly or unreasonably insist on their rights are said to be demanding their "_________ ___ _______."

Time's Winged Chariot

A phrase from the seventeenth century English poem "To His Coy Mistress," by Andrew Marvell. It appears in these lines: "But it my back I always hear, (this phrase) hurrying near."

Sweetness And Light

A phrase popularized by the nineteenth century English author Matthew Arnold; it had been used earlier by Jonathan Swift. According to Arnold, these are two things that a culture should strive for. One word represents moral righteousness, and while the other is intellectual power and truth. He states that someone "who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail."

More Things In Heaven And Earth, Horatio

A phrase used by the title character in the play Hamlet, By William Shakespeare. Hamlet suggest that human knowledge is limited: " (this phrase), Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Pygmalion

A play by George Bernard Shaw, about a professor, Henry Higgins, who trains a poor, uneducated girl, Eliza Doolittle, to act and speak like a lady. Shaw based his story on a tale from Greek mythology about a sculptor who carves the statue of a woman and falls in love with it. Higgins and Eliza develop a strong bond, and he is furious when she announces her intention to marry someone else. The musical comedy My Fair Lady is an adaptation of this play.

In Flanders Fields

A poem about World War I by the Canadian author John McCrae, describing the scene of some of the worst fighting of the war; the "speakers" of the poem are the dead. It begins: ___ __________ _______ the poppies below Between the crosses, row on row,That mark our place...

The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

A poem by Robert Browning, based on a folk tale from the Middle Ages in Germany. The town of Hamelin is infested with rats, and the citizens hire a piper in multicolored (pied) clothing to lure the rats out with his charming music. The rats follow the piper into the river and drown. When the townspeople refuse to pay the piper, he lures away the children of the town.

Gunga Din

A poem by Rudyard Kipling about the native water carrier for a British regiment in India. It ends:Though I've belted you an' flayed you,by the livin' Gawd that made you,You're a better man than I am, _________ _____!

The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

A poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge about an old sailor who is compelled to tell strangers about the supernatural adventures that befell him at sea after he killed an albatross, a friendly sea bird. A famous line is "Water, water,, everywhere,/ Nor any drop to drink."

The Wasteland

A poem by T. S. Eliot, published shortly after the end of World War I. Its subject is the fragmented and sterile nature of the modern world.

Invictus

A popular poem from the late nineteenth century by the English author William Ernest Henley. This word s is Latin for "unconquered." The speaker in the poem proclaims he strength in the face of adversity:My head is bloody, but unbowed...I am the master of my fate;I am the captain of my soul.

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

A proclamation by the pigs who control the government in the novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell. The sentence is a comment on the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim that absolute equality of their citizens, but give power and privileges to a small ELITE.

Fear Not Till Birnam Wood Do Come To Dunsinane

A prophecy made by witches to Macbeth in the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare. Later in the play, Macbeth's enemies advance on the hill of Dunsinane, his stronghold, camouflaged by tree branches they have cut from the Forest of Birnam. Macbeth sees Birnam Wood moving as prophesied, and realizes that he will soon die.

Gulliver's Travels

A satire by Jonathan Swift. Lemuel Gulliver, an Englishman, travels to exotic lands, including Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and the land of the Houyhnhnms. Probably the most famous image from this book is of the tiny Lilliputians having tied down the sleeping giant which is actually the main character himself.

Uriah Heep

A scheming blackmailer in David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. Heep continually insists that he is a "very 'umble person."

Out Damned Spot

A sentence from the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, spoken by Lady Macbeth, the wife of the title character. Her husband has killed the king of Scotland at her urging but her guilt over the murder gradually drives her insane. When she speaks this line she is sleepwalking, and she imagines that a spot of the king's blood stains her hand.

The Horror! The Horror!

A sentence spoken by the dying adventurer Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.

The Way Madness Lies

A statement made by the title character in the play King Lear, by William Shakespeare. Lear has started to speak about the treachery of his two elder daughters, but then realizes that dwelling on the injury could drive him mad.

Brutus Is An Honorable Man

A statement made several times in a speech by Mark Antony in the play Julius Caesar. The speech is Antony's funeral oration over Caesar, whom the man mentioned in the quote has helped kill. This quote is ironic, since Antony is attempting to succeeds in turning the Roman people against the man mentioned in the quote and the other assassins.

Winnie-The-Pooh

A stuffed toy bear who appears in several books for children by A. A. Milne; the characters in book about his character are mainly stuffed animals who have come to life. The character has many adventures with the little boy Christopher Robin, his owner.

Bard of Avon

A title given to William Shakespeare, who was born and buried in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. A bard is a poet.

Romeo and Juliet

A tragedy by William Shakespeare about two "star-crossed lovers" whose passionate love for each other ends in death because of the senseless feud between their families. The line "____________ , _____________! Wherefore art thou ___________ ?" is well known. Figuratively, a "___________" is an amorous young man.

Julius Caesar

A tragedy by William Shakespeare, dealing with the assassination of this man and its aftermath. Some famous lines from the play are "Et Tu, Brute?" "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears," "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look," and "the Noblest Roman of Them All."

Macbeth

A tragedy by William Shakespeare, in which this Scottish nobleman, misled by the prophecy of three witches and goaded on by his wife, murders the king and usurps the throne.

Beware the Ides of March

A warning Julius Caesar receives from a fortune teller in the play Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare. Later in the play he is assassinated on the this day

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

An English author of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, best known for creating the character Sherlock Holmes. His works include "A Study in Scarlet," "The Sign of the Four," and "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

Charles Dickens

An English author of the nineteenth century. His works include A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and numerous other novels. He created many memorable characters, including, Bob Cratchit, Fagin, Uriah Heep, Jacob Marley, Samuel Pickwick, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Tiny Tim. This author was a man of keen social conscience and he used his books to portray the suffering of the working class at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

T. S. Eliot

An English author of the twentieth century, born and raised in the United States. He wrote poems, plays, and essays, and urged the use of ordinary language in poetry. He was much concerned with the general emptiness of modern life and with the revitalization of religion. Among his best- known works are the poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land," and the play Murder in the Cathedral.

William Shakespeare

An English playwright and poet of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, generally considered the greatest of writers in English. His plays include Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, and Twelfth Night. This poet and playwright also wrote over 150 sonnets. Many familiar sayings and quotations come from his works. He was born in Stratford-on-Avon. He spent most of his career in London as an actor, playwright, and manager of the Globe Theater. His success enabled him to retire to Stratford, where he died.

John Donne

An English poet and clergyman of the seventeenth century. He is famous for his intricate metaphors, as in a poem in which he compares two lovers to the two legs of a drawing compass. He also wrote learned and eloquent sermons and meditations. The expressions "Death, be not proud," "No man is an island," and "For whom the bells tolls" come from his works.

Geoffrey Chaucer

An English poet of the fourteenth century, called the father of English poetry: he was the first great poet to write in the English language. His best- known work is The Canterbury Tales.

Robert Browning

An English poet of the nineteenth century whose many poems include, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" and "My Last Duchess".

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

An English poet of the nineteenth century, and the wife of Robert Browning. The main character is best known for Sonnets from the Portuguese. The most famous of these sonnets begins, "How I love thee? Let me count the ways."

John Milton

An English poet of the seventeenth century. His greatest work is the Epic Paradise Lost, which he dictated after he went blind. With Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, this poet is considered one of the greatest poets

Jonathan Swift

An Irish author of the eighteenth century, known for his skill at satire. Two of his best-known works are Gulliver's Travels and "A Modest Proposal".

George Bernard Shaw

An Irish author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; he spent most of his career in England. A playwright, critic, and social reformer, he was known for his outspokenness and barbed humor. His many plays include Pygmalion, Androcles and the Lion, Man and Superman, and Saint Joan.

James Joyce

An Irish author of the twentieth century, known for his novels, especially Finnegan's Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses, and for his short stories, especially the collection Dubliners. Ulysses, a novel revolutionary in its form, is almost entirely concerned with the actions and thoughts of three characters on a single day.

Oscar Wilde

An Irish-born author of the late nineteenth century, who spent most of his career in England. He was famous for his flamboyant wit and style of dress. His best-known works include the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the play The Importance of Being Earnest, and the poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (jail). He urged Art for Art's Sake. He was convicted of homosexual activity and spent about two years in prison. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is based on his experiences there.

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

An enduringly popular poem from the middle eighteenth century by the English poet Thomas Gray. It contains the lines "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air," "The paths of glory lead but to the grave," and "Far from the Madding Crowd's ignoble strife/ Their sober wishes never learned to stray."

Paradise Lost

An epic by John Milton. Its subject is the Fall of Man; it also tells the stories of the rebellion and punishment of Satan and the creation of Adam and Eve. Milton declares that his aim in the poem is "to justify the ways of God to men."

Beowulf

An epic in Old English, estimated as dating from as early as as the eighteenth century; the earliest long work of literature in English. The critical events are the slaying of the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother by the hero and his battle with a dragon, in which he is mortally wounded.

On Liberty

An essay by John Stuart Mill in defense of the liberal idea of political freedom. Mill takes a firm position that the state may interfere with the freedom of individuals only to protect other individuals; the person's "own good" is not a sufficient reason.

A Modest Proposal

An essay by Jonathan Swift, often called a masterpiece of Irony. "__ _________ _____________for Preventing the Children of the Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to Their Public." Swift emphasizes the terrible poverty of the eighteenth-century Ireland by ironically proposing that Irish parents earn money by selling their children as food.

Off With Her Head Off With His Head

Exclamations made frequently by the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

Age Cannot Wither Her, Nor Custom Stale Her Infinite Variety

Line from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra where friend of Marc Antony says that Cleopatra is overwhelmingly attractive to men not so much for her beauty but rather her fascinating unpredictability and change of moods

Double Double Toil And Trouble

Lines chanted by three witches in the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, as they mix a potion.

Home Is The Sailor, Home From Sea And The Hunter Home From The Hill

Lines from a poem, "Requiem," by Robert Louis Stevenson, composed for engraving on a tombstone.

How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth It Is To Have A Thankless Child

Lines from the play King Lear, by William Shakespeare, spoken by King Lear after he has been betrayed by his two daughters.

As Flies To Wanton Boys Are We To The Gods; They Kill Us For Their Sport

Lines from the play King Lear, by William Shakespeare, spoken by the end of Gloucester, a friend of King Lear. They express a bitter sense of the meaningless and brutality of life

Alas Poor Yorick

Lines said by Hamlet in Shakespeare's play of same name in which Hamlet meditates in graveyard holding skull of the character mentioned in this quote , a jester he had known and once liked.

Middle English

The English language from about 1150 to about 1500. During this time, following the Norman Conquest of England, the native language of England- Old English- borrowed great numbers of words from the Norman French of the conquerors. This English eventually developed into Modern English.

Old English

The English language from the fifth century until about 1150. In the fifth century, the Angles and Saxons of Germany settled in Britain and establishes their language in the southern part of the island- the region that was called "Angle-land," or "England." After 1150, the Norman French language introduced after the Norman Conquest influenced this language, and Middle English developed. this language resembles the language spoken in Germany in the same period, and is almost impossible for a present-day user of English to read without training. Beowulf is written in this language.

George Orwell

The Nom De Plume of Eric Blair, an English author of the twentieth century, best known for Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a powerful depiction of totalitarianism; hence, the adjective Orwellian has been to government actions that suppress freedom or distort truth.

All The World's A Stage

The beginning of a speech in the play As You Like It, by William Shakespeare. It is also called "The Seven Ages of Man," since it treats that many periods in a man's life: his years as an infant, schoolboy, lover. soldier, judge, foolish old man, and finally "second childishness and more oblivion." The speech begins, "________________________ , And all the men and women merely players..."

King James Bible

The best-known English translation of the Bible, commissioned by King James I of England, and published in the early seventeenth century. It had no rival among the Protestant faiths until the late nineteenth century; it is still widely used. Most biblical quotations in English literature come from this book. To many, the phrasing of this book is the model of how biblical verses should sound.

The Book Of Common Prayer

The book used in worship by the Anglican Communion. Its early versions, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were widely admired for the dignity and beauty of their language. This book has had a strong effect on literature in English through such expressions as "Let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace," and "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done."

To Justify The Ways Of God To Men

The declared aim of the poet John Milton in his poem Paradise Lost. Milton tries to explain why God allowed the Fall of Man.

If Music Be The Food Of Love, Play On

The first line of the play, Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare. The speaker is asking for music because he is frustrated in courtship; he wants an overabundance of love so that he may lose his appetite of it.

I Wander Lonely As A Cloud

The first line of the poem "Daffodils," by William Wordsworth. It begins: (this line) That floats on high, o'er vales and hills. When all at once I saw a crowd A host, of golden daffodils.

A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever

The first line of the poem "Endymion," by John Keats.

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

The first line of the poem "The Tiger," from Songs of Experience, by William Blake. The first stanza reads: ________ _______ ____________ __________ In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

The first line of the poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," from the middle of the seventeenth century, by the English poet Robert Herrick. He is advising people to take advantage of life while they are young:___________ _____ __________________ _________ ____ ______,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.

Had We But World Enough, And Time; This Coyness, Lady were No Crime

The first lines of "To His Coy Mistress," a poem from the seventeenth century by the English poet Andrew Marvell. The poet tells a woman whom he loves that if they had endless time and space at their disposal, then he could accept her unwillingness to go to bed with him. Life is short, however, opportunities must be seized. Other lines from the poem are: "But at my back, I always hear/ TIME'S WINGED CHARIOT hurrying near," and "The grave's a fine and private place,/ But none, I think, do there embrace."

Samuel Pickwick

The main character of The ______________ Papers, a novel by Charles Dickens. The main character founds a club whose members use common words in extremely quirky ways. Someone who wishes to retract or qualify a statement says that he or she was using the words "in the ______________ian sense." In the book, "_______________ian Sense" refers to an interpretation of an offensive remark that makes if palatable.

Shylock

The merciless moneylender in The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare. He demands a pound of flesh from the title character of the play after the merchant defaults on his debt. He is a Jew; there has long been controversy over whether Shakespeare's portrayal of this character contributes to prejudice against Jews. He is a cruel miser, and eventually is heavily fined and disgraced, but he maintains his dignity. At one point in the play, he makes a famous, eloquent assertion that his desire for revenge is the same desire that a Christian would feel in his place. "I am a Jew", says (this character). "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?"

Come Live With Me And Be My Love

The opening line of " The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," a poem by Christopher Marlowe.

Captain Hook

The private- villain in the play Peter Pan. One of his hands has been devoured by a crocodile and replaced with a hook. He is eaten whole by the crocodile near the end of the play.

Globe Theater

The theater in London where many of the great plays of William Shakespeare were first performed. Shakespeare himself acted at the globe. It burned and was rebuilt shortly before Shakespeare's death, and was finally pulled down in the middle of the seventeenth century.

Dracula

The title character was created in a novel from the late nineteenth century by the English author Bram Stoker. He, a vampire, is from Transylvania, a region of eastern Europe now in Romania. He takes his name from a blood- thirsty nobleman of the Middle Ages. To lay the vampire his spirit to rest, one must drive a wooden stake through his heart. He was played in films by the Hungarian- born actor Bela Lugosi, whose elegant, exotic accent has become permanently associated with the character.

Iago

The treacherous villain in the play Othello, by William Shakespeare. As adviser to Othello, a general of Venice, this character lies to his master and eventually drives him to murder his wife.

Mr. Hyde

The vicious side of the personality of Dr. Jekyll in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and ________________, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Two lines from a poem by the twentieth- century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, addressed to his dying father.

A Man's Reach Should Exceed His Grasp

Words from a poem by Robert Browning, suggesting that, to achieve anything worthwhile, a person should attempt even those things that may turn out to be impossible.

Romeo, Romeo Wherefore Art Thou Romeo?

Words from the play Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare. (Wherefore means "why".) Juliet is lamenting Romeo's name, alluding to the feud between their two families.