Shakespeare or the Bible? Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Shakespeare's plays are the source of numerous phrases that have found their way into common use in the English language. Here are the origins of the ten phrases found in this quiz:

The idiom "wild-goose chase" originally referred to a form of 16th-century horseracing in which riders followed a leader in a geese like formation, but it was popularized and slipped into our common lexicon because of Shakespeare's line in "Romeo and Juliet", when Romeo's friend Mercutio says, "Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five" (Act 2, Scene 4).

In "Julius Caesar", Casca, a Roman senator and one of the conspirators against Caesar, tells Cassius about a public event during which Cicero spoke, saying, "But, for mine own part, it was Greek to me" (Act 1, Scene 2). This expression "Greek to me" has since become a modern idiom for anything incomprehensible.

In Act 2, Scene 7 of "The Merchant of Venice", the Prince of Morocco, a suitor to Portia, must choose between a gold, silver, or lead casket to win her hand in marriage. He chooses the gold casket, but when he opens it, he finds a skull and a scroll with a message that begins "All that glisters is not gold," a phrase that is now commonly used to mean that appearances can be deceiving.

In "The Taming of the Shrew", Kate has such a fierce tongue that no man in Padua wants to marry her. Tranio suggests to Hortensio that he be the first to court her: "And if it be, sir, you are the man must stead us all and me amongst the rest; and if you break the ice and do this feat, achieve the elder, set the younger free for our access, whose hap shall be to have her will not so graceless be to be ingrate" (Act 1, Scene 2). Today, we most often use the phrase to mean doing or saying something to relieve tension and get a conversation going among people who don't know each other well.

In Othello, the villain Iago tells Roderigo that he will keep his true intentions and emotions hidden so as not to make himself vulnerable: "For when my outward action doth demonstrate / The native act and figure of my heart / In compliment extern, 'tis not long after / But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at" (Act 1, Scene 1). Shakespeare may have drawn the image from the tradition in which a jousting knight would ride up to a lady, be given her scarf, and then tie it around his arm, making public his feelings about her.

Polonius coins the phrase, "To thine own self be true" in Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3).

The "green-eyed monster", a metaphor for jealousy, rears its head in Shakespeare's Othello. Iago, who is feeding Othello's jealousy, duplicitously warns: "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on" (Act 3, Scene 3).

Macbeth, while trying to decide whether to kill King Duncan, struggles with the potential consequences of assassination, wishing "that but this blow / Might be the be-all and the end-all here" (Act 1, Scene 7).

The phrase "neither rhyme nor reason" comes from Act 2, Scene 2 of "The Comedy of Errors". Dromio of Syracuse, who has been sent by his master on an errand, encounters another man by the same name as his master, who knows nothing about the errand, thinks Dromio is being insolent, and beats him. Dromio, not understanding why he is being beaten, says, "Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, / When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?" The phrase has come to mean anything that is illogical or makes no sense.

Finally, Hamlet, in the play of the same name, coins the phrase "in my heart of hearts": "Give me that man / That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him / In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts" (Act 3, Scene 2).

The remaining phrases originated in the Bible, though some have evolved over time to use slightly different wording. For example, "bite the dust" originates, in concept, from the phrase "lick the dust" in the Psalms: "They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust" (Psalm 72:9, KJV).