View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Act 3, Scene 12.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is happening when Lincoln enters Rutledge Tavern to deliver mail?
(a) The Clancy Groves boys have the judge trapped behind the bar.
(b) The Clancy Groves boys are buying a round of whiskey for everyone.
(c) Ben Mattling is having a heart attack.
(d) A local bully is angling for a fight with Ninian Edwards.

2. In a poem given to Lincoln by his teacher in the first scene, life is compared to what?
(a) A river, a meadow, the wide horizon.
(b) A fairy tale, a legend, a lie.
(c) A nightmare, a hallucination, a ghost.
(d) A dream, a vision, a phantom.

3. What are the Bowling Greens reading when Josh Speed arrives at their home in Act 1, Scene 3?
(a) The Bourne Chronicles.
(b) The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
(c) The New York Review of Books.
(d) The Federalist Papers.

4. What are the two professions open to people who fail at everything else, according to Lincoln's teacher?
(a) Journalism and law.
(b) School teaching and politics.
(c) Politics and prospecting.
(d) School teaching and store keeping.

5. According to Nancy Green in Act 1, Scene 3, why can't Lincoln face life without a woman by his side?
(a) Because he goes into trances when under stress and needs someone to help him snap out of it.
(b) Because he listens to strange voices that speak to him in church and they command him to do bad things.
(c) Because he hears the whispers of the dead women in his life, including his mother, and he can't understand what the whispers mean.
(d) Because he hears voices in the night and they give him contradictory directions.

Short Answer Questions

1. After 18 years of marriage to Lincoln, what is it that Mary Todd is bitter about?

2. Who are the main characters in the first scene of the play?

3. What does Lincoln see on the boat from Quincy to Alton that shocks him?

4. What do Josh Speed and Bowling Green think might be the result, if slavery spreads further across the South?

5. In the debate, Lincoln accuses Douglas of pandering to both sides of the slavery issue. What does he mean?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 513 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample