By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

You get to know a lot of people in 459 years. And vice versa. It’s Shakespeare’s birthday today. And the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, evicted from their usual home in Hawrelak Park for a three-YEAR City of Edmonton reno (another story), announces their 34th annual summer season of two plays (Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet, as revealed in a January 4 12thnight post) this afternoon. It’s obviously the moment to test your knowledge of Freewill’s resident playwright, the heavy-hitter from Stratford. Try our little 12thnight.ca quiz. (Answers are at the bottom).

1.  Which of the following phrases was NOT created by Shakespeare? a. “let them eat cake” b. “sick at heart” c. “what the dickens” d. “the world is my oyster” e. “clothes make the man” f. “it was Greek to me” g. “from here to eternity”

2. Name the Shakespeare play that begins with … a. “O for a Muse of fire …”  b. “If music be the food of love, play on …” c. Who’s there? d. “Two households, both alike in dignity/ In fair Verona, where we lay our scene …” e. “Now is the winter of our discontent …”

3. Which of the following book/play titles is NOT taken from a Shakespeare play? a. The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie b. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner c. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley d. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. e. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

4. Which of the following Shakespeare plays has never been produced by Edmonton’s Freewill Shakespeare Festival? a. Titus Andronicus b. Two Gentlemen of Verona c. All’s Well That Ends Well d. The Merry Wives of Windsor

5. To avoid terrible luck, according to theatre lore, which Shakespeare play should never be named aloud within a theatre? a. All’s Well That Ends Well b. Coriolanus c. Pericles d. Macbeth

6. Shakespeare was playwright-in-residence, for most of his career, at which theatre company? a. The South Bank Players b. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men c. The Stratford Little Theatre c. The Theatre Royal

7. Shakespeare is associated, most famously, with the Globe Theatre in the London entertainment district south of the Thames. But what was the first London theatre where Shakespeare’s company put on plays? a. The Theatre b. The Rose c. Blackfriars Theatre d. The Wintergarden

8. The first Globe Theatre burned to the ground in 1613. What caused the blaze? a. Groundlings smoking b. A dropped torch in Act I of Hamlet  c. The Great Fire of London d. a stage cannon igniting the thatched roof during a performance of Henry VIII

9. In which Shakespeare play do the following events occur? a. A man’s eyes are gouged out b. a queen is served a meat pie into which her sons have been baked c. a forest moves d. two pairs of lovers get re-matched when magic juice from a flower gets sprinkled on their eyelids.

10. Which Shakespeare character said …  a. “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” b. “all the world’s a stage …” c. “what’s done is done …” d. “once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more …” e. “we are such stuff as dreams are made on …” f. “but soft! what light through yonder window breaks?”

11. On the theory that “the man from Stratford” — an actor from the sticks who didn’t go to university — couldn’t possibly have written the Shakespeare canon, scholars and miscellaneous cranks have put forward a variety of names as alternative candidates. Which of the following names isn’t one? a. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford b. Francis Bacon c. Ben Jonson d. Sir Walter Raleigh e. William Stanley, Earl of Derby f. Christopher Marlowe

12. How many stand-alone sonnets did Shakespeare write? a. 226 b. more than 1,000 c. two dozen d. 154

13. Which Shakespeare play contains the following plot devices? a. a bear b. three caskets (one gold, one silver, one lead), a pound of flesh, and 3,000 ducats c. two sets of twins with the same name d. a bracelet, a trunk, a tranquillizing potion, and a headless corpse e. yellow stockings, cross-gartered

14. Which of the following Shakespeare plays involves a woman disguising herself as a man? a. Cymbeline b. Twelfth Night c. As You Like It d. The Merchant of Venice e. Two Gentlemen of Verona

15. Shakespeare’s dad was … a. a lute-maker b. a thatch-roofer c. an entertainment lawyer d. a glover 

16. In Shakespeare’s will he famously left which of the following to his wife Anne Hathaway?  a. a ruff from the premiere production of Twelfth Night at court b. his second-best bed c. his favourite quill pen set d. the script for a now-lost play called Cardenio e. his broadsword with the fancy hilt inscribed by Queen Elizabeth I

17. Which Shakespeare play has the most lines? a. King Lear b. The Comedy of Errors c. Hamlet  d. The Taming of the Shrew

And here are the answers: 1. a, g. 2. a. Henry V, b. Twelfth Night, c. Hamlet, d. Romeo and Juliet, e. Richard III. 3. d, e. 4. c. 5. d. 6. b. 7. a. 8. d. 9. a. King Lear, b. Titus Andronicus, c. Macbeth, d. A Midsummer Night’ Dream. 10. a. Hamlet, b. Jaques, c. Lady Macbeth, d. Henry V, e. Prospero, f. Romeo. 11. c., 12. d. 13. a. The Winter’s Tale, b. The Merchant of Venice, c. The Comedy of Errors, d. Cymbeline,  e. Twelfth Night. 14. all of them. 15. d. 16. b. 17. c.