William Shakespeare MCQs [English Literature & Famous Authors]

Collection of important MCQs on William Shakespeare

There are total _______ number of plays did Shakespeare write in all ?

(A) 60

(B) 38

(C) 37

(D) 20

Question’s Answer: 37

---

____ called Shakespeare “an upstart crow beautified with our

feathers”?

(A) John Lyly

(B) Robert Greene

(C) Thomas Kyd

(D) George Peele

Question’s Answer: Robert Greene

---

Who is the writer of the malicious pamphlet entitled “A Groat’s Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance” against Shakespeare?

(A) Thomas Kyd

(B) Robert Greene

(C) George Peele

(D) John Lyly

Question’s Answer: Robert Greene

---

Who ridiculed Shakespeare by saying that he knew “small Latin and less Greek”?

(A) Marlowe

(B) Sidney

(C) Spenser

(D) Ben Jonson

Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson

---

Who said,”Shakespeare has only heroines, and no heroes”?

(A) Ruskin

(B) Dr. Johnson

(C) Matthew Arnold

(D) T. S. Eliot

Question’s Answer: Ruskin

---

Aldous Huxley took the hint for the title of his novel Brave New World from

Shakespeare’s:

(A) A Midsummer Night’s Dream

(B) Winter’s Tale

(C) Tempest

(D) Antony and Cleopatra

Question’s Answer: Tempest

---

Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon. Stratford was the name of the town where

he was born. What was Avon?

(A) A high plateau on which Stratford was situated

(B) A hillock on which Stratford was situated

(C) A river on the bank of which Stratford was situated

(D) A heath where Stratford was situated

Question’s Answer: A river on the bank of which Stratford was situated

---

Shakespeare’s King Lear was given a happy ending by one of the following playwrights. Identify the playwright:

(A) Nahun Tate

(B) Nathaniel Lee

(C) Thomas Otway

(D) George Farquhar

Question’s Answer: Nahun Tate

---

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale.” About whom are these lines spoken ?

(A) Desdemona

(B) Cordelia

(C) Cleopatra

(D) Miranda

Question’s Answer: Cleopatra

---

Imogen is the main character and heroine of which of the following?

(A) Winter’s Tale

(B) Pericles

(C) Cymbeline

(D) Tempest

Question’s Answer: Cymbeline

---

Who is the author of the critical work Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered?

(A) E.M. Forster

(B) WH Auden

(C) Samuel Butler

(D) Charles Lamb

Question’s Answer: Samuel Butler

---

“The greatest genius that perhaps human nature has yet produced, our myriad-minded

Shakespeare.” Who makes this observation?

(A) Hazlitt

(B) Coleridge

(C) Southey

(D) Byron

Question’s Answer: Coleridge

---

Which was the last play written by Shakespeare?

(A) Cymbeline

(B) The Winter’s Tale

(C) The Tempest

(D) Pericles

Question’s Answer: The Tempest

---

“Sweet are the uses of adversity.” This line is related to which play?

(A) The Merchant of Venice

(B) Romeo and Juliet

(C) Twelfth Night

(D) As You Like It

Question’s Answer: As You Like It

---

“Frailty, thy name is woman !” This line is part of which play?

(A) Othello

(B) Macbeth

(C) King Lear

(D) Hamlet

Question’s Answer: Hamlet

---

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” These lines are taken from Hamlet. Who is the speaker of these qoutations?

(A) Hamlet

(B) Laertes

(C) Horatio

(D) Polonius

Question’s Answer: Polonius

---

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.” These lines are taken from which of the following play?

(A) Hamlet

(B) Othello

(C) King Lear

(D) None of these

Question’s Answer: Hamlet

---

“Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never tastes of death but once.” These lines are taken from which of the following play?

(A) Macbeth

(B) Othello

(C) Antony and Cleopatra

(D) Julius Caesar

Question’s Answer: Julius Caesar

---

………. Life’s a tale,

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Singnifying nothing.”

These lines are taken from which of the following play?

(A) King Lear

(B) Hamlet

(C) Othello

(D) Macbeth

Question’s Answer: Macbeth

---

“This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war”

Who expresses these sentiments in Richard II?

(A) Richard II

(B) Bolingbroke

(C) John of Gaunt

(D) Queen of Richard II

Question’s Answer: John of Gaunt

---

Who is the messenger of the Fairies in The Tempest?

(A) Ariel

(B) Juno

(C) Caliban

(D) Iris

Question’s Answer: Ariel

---

“We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”  Who is the speaker of these qoutations?

(A) Brutus

(B) Prospero

(C) Hamlet

(D) Polonius

Question’s Answer: Prospero

---

“He was not of an age, but for all times; Nature herself was proud of his designs !”

Who is the author of Preface to Shakespeare?

(A) Dr. Johnson

(B) Matthew Arnold

(C) Hazlitt

(D) Coleridge

Question’s Answer: Dr. Johnson

---

Who is the writer of  the critical book Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays?

(A) Addison

(B) Coleridge

(C) Arnold

(D) Hazlitt

Question’s Answer: Hazlitt

---

________ is the play in which the hero dies at the end of the Fourth Act, but the play

continues to the Fifth Act:

(A) Antony and Cleopatra

(B) Richard the Second

(C) Coriolanus

(D) King John

Question’s Answer: Antony and Cleopatra

---

________ is the play in which the hero and the heroine die together:

(A) Romeo and Juliet

(B) Othello

(C) Cleopatra

(D) Macbeth

Question’s Answer: Romeo and Juliet

---

Which is not a Roman play?

(A) Antony and Cleopatra

(B) Timon of Athens

(C) Titus Andronicus

(D) Coriolanus

Question’s Answer: Timon of Athens

---

Who praises Shakespeare in these words?

(A) Ben Jonson

(B) Spenser

(C) Ben Jonson

(D) Dr. Johnson

Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson

---

“He was the man, who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest

and the most comprehensive soul.”

Whose observation is this?

(A) Ben Jonson’s

(B) Robert Browning’s

(C) Coleridge’s

(D) Dryden’s

Question’s Answer: Dryden’s

---

“Shakespeare is the grandest thing we have yet done…… Indian Empire will go, at any

rate, some day, but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts for ever with us. We cannot

give up our Shakespeare.”

Who has that opinion?

(A) Ben Jonson

(B) Dryden

(C) Carlyle

(D) Carlyle

Question’s Answer: Carlyle

---

In which year were Shakespeare’s Sonnets published?

(A) 1616

(B) 1598

(C) 1609

(D) 1600

Question’s Answer: 1609

---

“Others abide our question Thou art free. We ask and ask-thou smilest and art still,

Out-topping knowledge.” These lines are written in praise of Shakespeare.

Who is the writer of  them?

(A) Hazlitt

(B) Coleridge

(C) Matthew Arnold

(D) Tennyson

Question’s Answer: Matthew Arnold

---

“Soul of the age!

The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!

My Shakespeare, rise.”

Who praises Shakespeare in these words?

(A) Dryden

(B) Spenser

(C) Ben Jonson

(D) Dr. Johnson

Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson

---

What is Rape of Lucrece?

(A) A sonnet

(B) A narrative poem

(C) An early comedy

(D) A narrative poem

Question’s Answer: A narrative poem

---

In which play does Hermione appear as the heroine ?

(A) Timon of Athens

(B) The Winter’s Tale

(C) Cymbeline

(D) Pericles

Question’s Answer: The Winter’s Tale

---

For what is the phrase ‘The Mousetrap’ used by Shakespeare in Hamlet?

(A) The Play within the Play in Hantlet

(B) The ghost of Hamlet’s father

(C) The Play within the Play in Hantlet

(D) Hamlet’s Conscience

Question’s Answer: The Play within the Play in Hantlet

---

Dryden’s play All For Love is based on one of Shakespeare’s plays.

(A) Antony and Cleopatra

(B) Romeo and Juliet

(C) Tempest

(D) The Merchant of Venice

Question’s Answer: Antony and Cleopatra

---

The phrase “What’s in a name ?” is a part of which of the following?

(A) Othello

(B) Hamlet

(C) Julius Caesar

(D) Romeo and Juliet

Question’s Answer: Romeo and Juliet

---

How many sonnets did Shakespeare write in all ?

(A) 40

(B) 170

(C) 155

(D) 154

Question’s Answer: 154

---

What is Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonais?

(A) A Narrative poem

(B) A Tragedy

(C) A Comedy

(D) A Romance

Question’s Answer: A Narrative poem

---

To ____ ,  Shakespeare dedicate his first Narrative poem Venus and Adonais ?

(A) Earl of Southampton

(B) James I

(C) Queen Elizabeth

(D) Ben Jonson

Question’s Answer: Earl of Southampton

---

According to _____, “The quality of mercy is not strained,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

(A) Portia’s

(B) Cordelia’s

(C) Miranda’s

(D) Desdemona’s

Question’s Answer: Portia’s

---

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact”

quoted from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Who is the speaker of these qoutations?

These lines are

(A) Theseus

(B) Hippolyta

(C) Philostrate

(D) Bottom

Question’s Answer: Theseus

William Shakespeare basic info

 

William Shakespeare books name

Famous English Authors MCQs

1. William Wordsworth MCQs
2. William Shakespeare MCQs
3. Robert Browning MCQs
4. W B Yeats MCQs
5. Edmund Spenser MCQs
6. Chaucer MCQs
7. John Milton MCQs
8. S T Coleridge MCQs
9. Lord Byron MCQs
10. PB Shelley MCQs
11. John Dryden MCQs
12. John Keats MCQs
13. Charles Dicken MCQs
14. Alfred Lord Tennyson MCQs
15. Charles Lamb MCQs
16. D.H Lawrence MCQs
17. Thomas Hardy MCQs
18. Matthew Arnold MCQs
19. John Galsworthy MCQs
20. George Bernard Shaw MCQs
21. T.S Eliot MCQs
22. Ben Jonson MCQs
23. Francis Bacon MCQs
24. Alexander Pope MCQs
25. Oliver Goldsmith MCQs
26. Joseph Addison MCQs
27. Dr Samuel Johnson MCQs
28. Henry Fielding MCQs
29. Sir Walter Scott MCQs
30. Jane Austen MCQs
31. Dr. Samuel Johnson MCQs
32. English Comedy MCQs (Oliver Goldsmith)
33. Alexander Pope MCQs (Neo-Classical Age of English Poetry)
34. Daniel Defoe MCQs
35. Dr. Jonathan Swift MCQs
36. Richard Steele MCQs
37. English Drama MCQs
38. Elizabethan Drama MCQs [14th to 17th century]
39. Elizabethan Prose MCQs

More English Literature MCQs

1. English Poetry MCQs
2. History of English Literature MCQs
3. Sentimental Novels MCQs
4. Sentimental Poetry MCQs
5. Legends Of English Literature MCQs
6. English Literature Quiz
7. English Literature Important Multiple Choice Questions Answers
8. Sons And Lovers by D H Lawrence MCQs 
9. The Waste Land, A Poem by T. S. Eliot MCQs
10. Drama Origin MCQs
11. History of the Renaissance Period MCQs 
12. English Pros MCQs
13. Non-Dramtic Poets Of The Elizabethan Age MCQs
14. The Cavalier Poets of 17th-century MCQs
15. Metaphysical Poets of 17th century MCQs
16. Renaissance Period of 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries MCQs
17. Puritan Poet MCQs
18. Restoration Comedy by William Congreve & Wycherley MCQs
19. Satire MCQs – Renaissance Period by John Dryden
20. English Essayists MCQs
21. Romantic Period of Romantic Poets MCQs
22. English language MCQs
23. English Humour MCQs [American Literature]
24. Early Writers of American Literature MCQs
25. History of American Literature MCQs
26. American Prose MCQs [English Realism ]
27. American English Critics
28. New Englanders Authors MCQs
29. MCQs on American Literature After Independence
30. American Playwrights MCQs
31. New American Poetry MCQs
32. British English Critics MCQs
33. Ancient English literature MCQs
34. Important English Literature MCQs for Public Service Commission
35. English Literature Repeated Important MCQs
36. CSS English Literature MCQs
37. History of Early Period MCQs 
38. The Anglo-Saxon period MCQs
39. The Age of Chaucer in the Early Period MCQs
40. The Anglo-Norman Period of French Writers MCQs 
41. Metrical Romances MCQ (Anglo-Saxon Period)
42. Revival of Learning MCQs (1400-1550)
43. Applied Linguistics MCQs
44. Language Change MCQs

10,000+ English MCQs Homepage

1000+ English Comprehension & Composition MCQs