ENGLISH 2310                                                                     SECOND MIDTERM EXAM

GRADY                                                                                  FALL 2009

 

PART I.  Identify FOUR (and only four) of the following terms in a sentence or two, noting their relevance to this semesters’ reading.


 


the Theatre                               machiavel

Nahum Tate                             sprezzatura

blank verse


blazon                                      First Folio

 

 


PART II.  Identify FOUR of the following passages.  Supply the name of the text from which it is drawn, the author's name, the speaker, and a brief (1-2 sentence) description of the context of the passage and its significance. (40%)

 

1

If she must teem,

Create her child of spleen, that it may live

And be a thwart, disnatured torment to her!

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;

Turn all her mother's pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child!

 

2

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.

"Vayne man," sayd she, "that dost in vaine assay,

A mortall thing so to immortalize,

For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,

And eek my name bee wyped out lykewize."

"Not so,"quod I,"let baser things devize

To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens wryte your glorious name.

Where whenas death shall all     the world subdew,

Our love shall live, and later life renew."

 

3

            Return with her?

Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took

Our youngest born, I could as well be brought

To knee his throne, and, squire-like, pension beg

To keep base life afoot. Return with her?

Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter

To this detested groom.

 

4 

The philosopher showeth you the way, he informeth you of the particularities, as well as of the tediousness of the way, as of the pleasant lodging you shall have when your journey is ended, as of the many by-turnings that may divert you from your way. But this is to man but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive studious painfulness…

 

5

These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us.  Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects.  Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father.  This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there's son against father.  The king falls from the bias of nature; there's father against child.  We have seen the best of our time.

 

6

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

 

7

Hadst though been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,

So many fathom down precipitating,

Thou'dst shivered like an egg; but thou dost breathe;

Hast heavy substance; bleed'st not; speak'st; art sound.

Ten masts at each make not the altitude

Which thou hast perpendicularly fell. 

Thy life's a miracle. Speak yet again.


 

 

PART III. Respond to one of the following questions with a well-organized essay. (40%)

 

1.  Contrast the view of human nature expressed by Shakespeare in King Lear with that implied in Sidney's Defense of Poesy.

 

2. Write an essay about the theme of disguise and deception in King Lear, with a strong and clear thesis and liberal use of examples.

            Some questions to consider (but not to answer sequentially): who deceives, and why? who disguises themselves, and why? What's the difference between deception used for good purposes, and deception used for ill? Or is there a difference? (Is the play worried that there might not be one? How can we tell?) Are there circumstances where deception or disguise is to be preferred to honesty and truth? What about self-deception?