The Fascinating Lives of Poets

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. His "Tales" never told the tale of his own strange journey. He was once captured by the French and later ransomed back to the English. Christopher Marlowe Geoffrey Chaucer William Langland Sir Thomas Mallory

2. He was something of a Don Juan, although he was born with a deformity. One of his many pilgrimages included a journey to Greece, where he funded and commanded soldiers who resisted the Turkish forces. He loved the Greek people, and his heart—quite literally--remained in Missonlonghi. Lord Byron Percy Bysshe Shelley Alexander Pope Ezra Pound

3. This hunchback taught himself Greek and began writing serious poetry at the age of twelve. In one of those poems, he referred to "this long Disease, my life." Alexander Pope Victor Hugo Lord Byron T.S. Eliot

4. Expelled from college for writing in support of atheism, this poet also had the distinction of driving his wife to drown herself. Ezra Pound Lord Byron Percy Bysshe Shelley Samuel Taylor Coleridge

5. This author of the poem "A Farewell to Tobacco" spent most of his life caring for his insane sister, who had stabbed their mother to death. Lord Byron Charles Lamb Ezra Pound Walt Whitman

6. He couldn’t pay the debts he’d incurred from wine, women, and opium. So he joined the army under the pseudonym of Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. Answer: (Last Name Only; consider the initials)

7. A man named William Wayte once sued to have this author of "Venus and Adonis" bound over to keep the peace, "for fear of death." Arthur Miller Christopher Marlowe William Shakespeare Ben Jonson

8. This author of "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" had a pretty passionate life of his own. He would have been arrested by the Queen’s Privy Council, had he not first been killed in a bar room brawl. William Shakespeare Ben Jonson Christopher Marlowe T.S. Eliot

9. Who would have thought an Anglican priest could once have lived such a romantic life? Nevertheless, this poet secretly married the 17 year old niece of Lady Egerton, an act which landed him in jail. George Herbert John Donne Gerard Manley Hopkins William Wordsworth

10. This poet would have been tried for treason against the United States, but he was found mentally unfit to stand trial. Robert Frost Ezra Pound T.S. Eliot Walt Whitman