Canst Thou Ace This Quiz on William Shakespeare?

One of Shakespeare's most timeless plays is the tragic "King Lear." The play begins with the elderly Lear deciding how to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. He decides that he will base his decision on his daughters' declarations of love. Goneril and Regan effuse enthusiastically about their father, but Cordelia says she cannot express her love for him. While she means to say that her love for him is too great for words, Lear misunderstands her and banishes her from his kingdom.

In the plot of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” the character Viola pretends to be her twin brother, Sebastian, in order to work for Duke Orsino. However, the duke's love interest, Countess Olivia, falls in love with her, believing her to be Sebastian. Meanwhile, Viola is falling in love with the duke, who also believes her to be her brother. Naturally, when the real Sebastian arrives, chaos and confusion ensue.

Originally built in 1599, London’s Globe Theatre was a circular, three-story venue that could hold up to 3,000 people, and Shakespeare had little difficulty filling seats as his acclaim grew over the next decade. It was during a performance of his play “Henry VIII” on June 29, 1613, that a fire started — reportedly due to an accidental misfire of a stage cannon. The blaze quickly spread to the wood beams and thatched roof, and the structure burned down. (Remarkably, no deaths were reported.) The theater was taken out of commission again in the mid-17th century, but a modern reconstruction was erected near the original location in the 1990s.

The HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers” (produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks) follows the soldiers of Easy Company during World War II. Its distinctive title is a reference to a speech from “Henry V,” which Henry V used to rally his troops before an unlikely victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers / For he today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother.” The passage has been referenced often in the centuries since, a timeless call to fellowship against the odds.

Shakespeare’s shortest piece of theater, in terms of both the number of words and the number of lines, is "The Comedy of Errors," an early play (circa the 1590s) about the shenanigans that ensue from multiple cases of mistaken identity. Although it follows his typical five-act structure, "The Comedy of Errors" is Shakespeare's only play with fewer than 15,000 words and fewer than 2,000 lines. His longest play is "Hamlet," which contains upwards of 30,000 words and 4,000 lines.

Linguists credit Shakespeare with coining or popularizing dozens of English words and phrases, including "brave new world," "fancy free," "wild goose chase," and "salad days." The latter — which refers to the naivete of youth — originated in the play "Antony and Cleopatra." Cleopatra used the expression while speaking with one of her servants in Act I, Scene V: "My salad days, / When I was green in judgment: cold in blood, / To say as I said then!"

"All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players." So begins Jaques' monologue in Act II, Scene VII, of Shakespeare's comedy "As You Like It." The speech likens a person's life to a performance, and the phases of that life to different "acts." Jaques specifically mentions "seven ages," or roles: the infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the justice, the "lean and slippered pantaloon," and "second childishness," which refers to a period of decline at the end of a person's life. The speech has come to be known as "The Seven Ages of Man."

Although it may seem like a story from another world, William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" takes place primarily in the woods just outside Athens, Greece. The play actually opens in Athens proper, where Theseus, the duke, is getting ready to marry Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. The city is also where we meet Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena, the four young lovers whose romantic entanglements serve as a catalyst for much of the action throughout the play.

Leave it to Shakespeare to give two somewhat throwaway characters in "Hamlet" such memorable names. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet's former schoolmates, summoned by King Claudius to spy on his nephew under the pretense of friendship. Unfortunately for them, Hamlet sees right through their act and turns the tables on them, which eventually leads to the now-iconic announcement that "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead."

Many people have long puzzled over Shakespeare’s decision to leave his second-best bed to his beloved wife, Anne Hathaway, but scholars have reassured the public that the bequest was not the snub it first appears to be. The best bed was usually reserved for guests, whereas the second-best bed would have likely been the one that William and Anne actually shared.

“Hamlet” is Shakespeare’s longest play, with 4,024 lines and 20 scenes. Most Elizabethan plays contained around 3,000 lines, so “Hamlet” is a lot longer than the norm. The dramatic storyline clearly held the audience's attention, though; as well as being one of Shakespeare’s longest works, the tale of betrayal and revenge is also one of his most frequently performed plays.

The “First Folio” was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. It contains 36 (out of a likely 37) plays that Shakespeare wrote over his career. Without the publication, 18 of Shakespeare’s plays may have been lost forever, as they were never previously published. Today, only 235 copies of the “First Folio” have survived, and most are housed in prestigious libraries.

This phrase was immortalized by the play "Julius Caesar," in which it’s uttered by a soothsayer to warn Caesar that his life is in danger. The "Ides of March" refers to the 15th of March on the ancient Roman calendar, which included three “marker” days that were used as reference points for other unnamed days. These days were the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides. Largely thanks to Shakespeare, however, both the saying and the date — March 15, when Caesar was killed — now have a negative, shadowy connotation.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, founded in about 1594, was the leading Elizabethan acting troupe. Shakespeare wrote for the company for most of his career, and their most celebrated actor, Richard Burbage, took the lead roles for the first performances of “Othello,” “Hamlet,” and “Macbeth.” On the accession of James I in 1603, the troupe gained royal patronage and was renamed The King’s Men.

Among actors, “Macbeth” is referred to as “the Scottish play,” as it’s believed that saying the title out loud brings bad luck. The play is said to have been cursed from the start after witches took offense to real incantations being used in the drama. Even the very first performance was a disaster; the actor playing Lady Macbeth died suddenly and Shakespeare had to step into the role himself.

Bottom is one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedic characters. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Bottom is pranked by the mischievous Puck, temporarily giving him the head of a donkey. The fairy queen Titania, bewitched by a love potion, falls in love with the first thing she sees after awakening from an enchanted slumber. Unfortunately for her, the still-cursed Bottom becomes the subject of her ardor.

In the 1940s, director-choreographer Jerome Robbins came up with the idea of adapting Shakespeare’s play about doomed love and warring families with a twist, shifting the setting from ancient Verona to modern-day New York City. The Broadway show debuted in 1957, but it was the 1961 movie that really caught the zeitgeist, even winning 10 Academy Awards.

In 1599, Shakespeare and a consortium of fellow actors built an amphitheatre known as The Globe in Southwark, London. The Globe was where many of Shakespeare’s most famous plays were first performed. The original theater was demolished in 1644, but a reconstruction was completed in 1997. Today, people can watch Shakespeare's plays near where they were originally staged.

William Shakespeare was born April 23, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He was the oldest surviving child of John and Mary Shakespeare and had five younger siblings. William lived at home until he got married at 18, and later moved to London to make his name. Stratford has since become a tourist attraction, attracting curious visitors who want to explore the Bard’s birthplace.

Shakespeare is famous for his sonnets, poems that feature one stanza of 14 lines and are typically written in iambic pentameter. His sonnets follow a long tradition of English verse, but often explore darker themes such as lust, deceit, and infidelity. Besides publishing a quarto of 154 sonnets in 1609, the Bard also wrote a number of others into his plays.