View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Coda: The Shakespeare Difference, A Word at the End: Foregrounding.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Bloom say Ben Jonson saw Thersites?
(a) As a coward.
(b) As a predecessor to Falstaff.
(c) As a Christian.
(d) As a nihilist.

2. What does Bloom say is the relationship between "The Merchant of Venice" and "The Jew of Malta"?
(a) A transference.
(b) An inversion.
(c) A turning away.
(d) A reaction formation.

3. What philosophical perspective does Bloom say he prefers, for looking at Shakespeare's plays?
(a) Lockean empiricism.
(b) Hegelian idealism.
(c) Transcendental lyricism.
(d) Nietzschean skepticism.

4. Who claims that Shakespeare invented the human personality?
(a) Hamlet.
(b) Harold Bloom.
(c) Samuel Johnson.
(d) T. S. Eliot.

5. How does Bloom characterize Shylock?
(a) As a buffoon.
(b) As a comic villain.
(c) As a diminutive Barabas.
(d) As evil incarnate.

Short Answer Questions

1. Bloom describes a Nietzschean tendency toward what, in "Twelfth Night"?

2. What makes "Winter's Tale" jarring, in Bloom's interpretation?

3. What does Bloom say writers began to write after Shakespeare?

4. What aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy does Iago embody, according to Bloom?

5. Who is Berowne pitted against in "Love's Labor's Lost"?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 193 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample