English Literature Before 1800

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. 'So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by And the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns.' Beowulf The Battle of Maldon Ivanhoe Brut (by Layamon)

2. 'In a summer season when the sun was mild I clad myself in clothes as I'd become a sheep; In the habit of a hermit unholy of works, Walked wide in this world, watching for wonders.' A Midsummer Night's Dream (by William Shakespeare) The Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer) The Vision of Piers Plowman (by William Langland) The Pilgrim's Progress (By John Bunyan)

3. 'Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.' Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat (by Thomas Gray) To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (by Robert Herrick) To His Coy Mistress (by Andrew Marvell) The Good-Morrow (by John Donne)

4. 'What dire offense from amorous causes springs, What mighty contests ripe from trivial things, I sing - (...)' Amoretti (by Edmund Spenser) The Rape of the Lock (by Alexander Pope) The Vanity of Human Wishes (by Samual Johnson) The Deserted Village (by Oliver Goldsmith)

5. 'Sithen the sege and the assaut was sesed at Troye, The borgh brittened and brent to brondes and askes, The tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wroght Was tried for his tricherie, the trewest on erthe.' Brut (by Layamon) Beowulf Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Morte Darthur (by Sir Thomas Malory)

6. Witch 1: 'When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?' Witch 2: 'When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won.' Tamburlaine (by Christopher Marlowe) Macbeth (by William Shakespeare) The Duchess of Malfi (by John Webster) The Way of the World (by William Congreve)

7. 'O Thou, that sit'st upon a throne, With harp of high majestic tone, To praise the King of Kings;' A Song to David (by Christopher Smart) Michael (by William Wordsworth) Paradise Lost (by John Milton) E Tenebris (by Oscar Wilde)

8. 'Whan that April with hir showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veine in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour;' History of the Kings of Britain (by Geoffrey of Monmouth) The vision of Piers Plowman (by William Langland) Brut (by Layamon) The Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer)

9. 'I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this royal slave, to entertain my reader with the adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet's pleasure;' The Anatomy of Melancholy (by Robert Burton) Roxana (by Daniel Defoe) Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave (by Aphra Behn) Gulliver's Travels (by Jonathan Swift)

10. 'Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske, As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds, Am now enforst a far unfitter taske, For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine oaten reeds,' Hero and Leander (by Christopher Marlowe) The Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer) The Faerie Queene (by Edmund Spenser) Morte Darthur (by Sir Thomas Malory)

11. 'Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdend air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep.' The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (by William Blake) Prometheus Unbound (by Percy Byssche Shelley) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (by Samual Taylor Coleridge) Endymion: A Poetic Romance (by John Keats)

12. 'Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, (...)' The Rape of the Lock (by Alexander Pope) Paradise Lost (by John Milton) Brut (by Layamon) Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (by George Gordon, Lord Byron)

13. 'In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin Before polygamy was made a sin; When man on many multiplied his kind, Ere one to one was cursedly confined;' Paradise Lost (by John Milton) The Good-Morrow (by John Donne) The Rape of the Lock (by Alexander Pope) Absolom and Achitophel: A Poem (by John Dryden)

14. 'Another lay to you I'll tell, Of the adventure that befell A noble vassal whom they call In the Breton tongue Lanval.' Lanval (by Aemilia Lanyer) Lanval (by Marie de France) Lanval (by Margery Kempe) Lanval (by Queen Elizabeth)

15. The last question is slightly different. Can you tell me who wrote the play 'The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus'? Only the surname suffices. Answer: (7 letters)