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Essay of Dramatic Poesy by John Dryden

Questions&Answers are copyrighted to springline, Under the Copyright Act

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1) Dryden’s influence on later writers was immense; Alexander Pope greatly admired and often imitated him, and Who considered him to have ‘refined the language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English poetry?

A:) Shakespeare

B:) Samuel Johnson

C:) T.S. Eliot

D:) Ben Jonson

springline- Correct option: B:) Samuel Johnson


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2) Incredibly prolific, Dryden made innovative advances in translation and aesthetic philosophy, and was the first poet to employ the neo-classical heroic couplet and _______?

A:) quatrain

B:) Blank Verse

C:) Free Verse

D:) Rhymed Verse

springline- Correct option: A:) quatrain


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3) In addition to poetry, Dryden wrote many essays, prefaces, satires, translations, biographies (introducing the word to the English language), and plays. ‘An Essay of Dramatic Poesy’ was probably written in 1666 during the closure of the London theaters due to ______?

A:) Famine

B:) Civil War

C:) World War I

D:) plague

springline- Correct option: D:) plague


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4) Essay of Dramatic Poesie is a work by John Dryden, England's first Poet Laureate, in which Dryden attempts to justify drama as a legitimate form of ‘poetry’ comparable to the epic, as well as defend English drama against that of the ancients and the____?

A:) England

B:) French

C:) Italy

D:) Rome

springline- Correct option: B:) French


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5) The Essay was probably written during the plague year of 1666, and first published in 1668. In presenting his argument, Dryden takes up the subject that Philip Sidney had set forth in his Defence of Poesie in _______?

A:) 1579

B:) 1580

C:) 1581

D:) 1582

springline- Correct option: B:) 1580


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6) The treatise is a dialogue between four speakers: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander. The four speakers are Sir Robert Howard [Crites], Lord Buckhurst or Charles Sackville [Eugenius], Sir Charles Sedley [Lisedeius], and Dryden himself neander means ______?

A:) free man

B:) bold man

C:) new man

D:) new bird

springline- Correct option: C:) new man


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7) The four men debate a series of three topics: (1) the relative merit of classical drama (upheld by Crites) vs. modern drama (championed by Eugenius); (2) whether French drama, as Lisideius maintains, is better than English drama supported by Neander, who famously calls Whom as ’the greatest soul, ancient or modern?

A:)T.S. Eliot

B:) Samuel Johnson

C:) Ben Jonson

D:) Shakespeare

springline- Correct option: D:) Shakespeare


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8) whether plays in rhyme are an improvement upon blank verse drama—a proposition that Neander, despite having defended the Elizabethans, now advances against the skeptical Crites (who also switches from his original position and defends the blank verse tradition of Elizabethan drama). Invoking the so-called unities from Aristotle's Poetics as interpreted by_____?

A:) Italian

B:) Roman

C:) French

D:) Scotlandian

springline- Correct option: A:) Italian


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9) Lisideius shows that the French plots carefully preserve Aristotle's unities of action, place, and time; Neander replies that English dramatists such as Whom also kept the unities when they wanted to, but that they preferred to develop character and motive ?

A:) Shakespeare

B:) Ben Jonson

C:) Johnson

D:) Spenser

springline- Correct option: B:) Ben Jonson


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10) Even Neander's final argument with Crites over whether rhyme is suitable in drama depends on Aristotle's Poetics: Neander says that Aristotle demands a verbally artful (‘lively’) imitation of nature, while Crites thinks that dramatic imitation ceases to be ‘just’ when it departs from ordinary speech—i.e. prose or _________?

A:) Quatrain

B:) Free verse

C:) blank verse

D:) Rhymed verse

springline- Correct option: C:) blank verse


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11) Taking then a Barge which a servant of Lisideus had provided for them, they made haste to shoot the Bridge, and left behind them that great fall of waters which hindred them from hearing what they desired after which, having disiingag'd themselves from many Vessels which rode at Anchor in the Thames, and almost blockt up the passage towards ______?

A:) Greenwich

B:) Bristol

C:) Canterbury

D:) Norwich

springline- Correct option: A:) Greenwich


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12) While imitation of classical writers was common practice in Dryden’s time, he steers the group’s conversation towards dramatic poetry, a relatively new genre which had in some ways broken with classical traditions and was thus in need of its own apologia. The group arrives at a definition of _______?

A:) Poetry

B:) drama

C:) Essay

D:) Rhyme

springline- Correct option: B:) drama


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13) The group discusses playwrights such as Ben Jonson, Molière, and Shakespeare with great insight, and has a final debate over the suitability of rhyme to drama. Crites objects to the use of rhyme because he believes it detracts from the verisimilitude of the scene, and cites Aristotle; Neander suggests a _____?

A:) Eye Rhyme

B:) Natural rhyme

C:) perfect rhyme

D:) Pararhyme

springline- Correct option: B:) Natural rhyme


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14) Neander speaks in favour of the Moderns and respects the Ancients; he is however critical of the rigid rules of dramas and favours rhyme. Neander who is a spokesperson of Dryden, argues that ‘tragic-comedy’ (Dryden’s phrase for what we now call ‘tragi-comedy’) is the best form for a play; because it is closer to life in which emotions are heightened by mirth and_____?

A:) hopeful

B:) tragedy

C:) sadness

D:) desolation

springline- Correct option: C:) sadness


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15) Lisideius argues that French drama is superior to English drama, basing this opinion of the French writer's close adherence to the classical separation of comedy and tragedy. For Lisideius ‘no theater in the world has anything so absurd as the English tragicomedy; in two hours and a half, we run through all the fits of_____?

A:) Arrogant

B:) Blunt

C:) schools

D:) Bedlam

springline- Correct option: D:) Bedlam


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16) Tragicomedy increases the effectiveness of both tragic and comic elements by 'way of contrast. Who asserts that ‘we have invented, increased, -and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the stage . . . tragicomedy?

A:) Neander

B:) Eugenius

C:) Lisideius

D:) Crites

springline- Correct option: A:) Neander


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17) Ultimately, Neander prefers Shakespeare for his greater scope, his greater faithfulness to life, as compared to Jonson's relatively small scope and Freneh/Classical tendency to deal in ‘the beauties of a statue, but not of a_____?

A:) Poet

B:) Man

C:) master

D:) legend

springline- Correct option: B:) Man


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18) Neander extends his criticism of French drama - into his reasoning for his preference for Shakespeare over Ben Jonson. Shakespeare ‘had the largest and most comprehensive soul,’ while Who was ‘the most learned and judicious writer which any theater ever had?

A:) John Milton

B:) John Dryden

C:) Jonson

D:) Johnson

springline- Correct option: C:) Jonson


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19) Crites objects to rhyme in plays: ’since no man without premeditation speaks in rhyme, neither ought he to do it on the stage.’ He cites Aristotle as saying that it is, ’best to write tragedy in that kind of verse . . . which is nearest prose’ as a justification for banishing rhyme, from drama in favor of blank verse ______?

A:) unrhymed iambic pentameter

B:) rhymed iambic pentameter

C:) stressed iambic pentameter

D:) unstressed iambic pentameter

springline- Correct option: A:) unrhymed iambic pentameter


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20) Neander respond to the objections against rhyme by admitting that ’verse so tedious’ is inappropriate to drama (and to anything else). Which rhymed verse is, however, just as appropriate to dramatic as to non-dramatic poetry?

A:) Eye

B:) Natural

C:) Internal

D:) Perfect

springline- Correct option: B:) Natural


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21) The main point of Dryden's essay seems to be a valuation of becoming the striving, nature-imitating, large scope of tragicomedy and Shakespeare over being the static perfection of the ideal-imitating Classical or French or __?

A:) Jonsonian drama

B:) Shakespearen drama

C:) Johnson’s Prose

D:) Philosophy

springline- Correct option: A:) Jonsonian drama


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22) Dryden prescriptive in nature, defines dramatic art as an imitation with the aim to delight and to teach, and is considered a just and lively image of human nature representing its passions and humors for the delight and instruction of mankind. Dryden emphasizes the idea of ____?

A:) Courtly

B:) decorum

C:) art

D:) Love

springline- Correct option: C:) art


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23) John Dryden 19 August 1631 – 12 May 1700) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was appointed England's first Poet Laureate in 1668. Having been re-founded by Elizabeth I, Westminster during this period embraced a very different religious and political spirit encouraging royalism and high______?

A:) Anglicanism

B:) Intelligence

C:) enlightment

D:) seriousness

springline- Correct option: A:) Anglicanism


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24) John Dryden is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romanticist writer, Who called him ‘Glorious John ?

A:) Mathew Arnold

B:) Sir Walter Scott

C:) Andrew Marvell

D:) John Donne

springline- Correct option: B:) Sir Walter Scott


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25) The Westminster curriculum included weekly translation assignments which developed Dryden's capacity for assimilation. This was also to be exhibited in his later works. His years at Westminster were not uneventful, and his first published poem, an elegy with a strong royalist feel on the death of his schoolmate Henry, Lord Hastings from smallpox, alludes to the execution of King Charles I, which took place on ______?

A:) 30 January 1649

B:) 1 March 1649

C:) 25 April 1649

D:) 26 May 1649

springline- Correct option: A:) 30 January 1649


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27) Returning to London during the Protectorate, Dryden obtained work with Oliver Cromwell's Secretary of State, John Thurloe. This appointment may have been the result of influence exercised on his behalf by his cousin the Lord Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering. At Cromwell's funeral on 23 November 1658 Dryden processed with the Puritan poets John Milton and ____?

A:) Mathew Arnold

B:) Andrew Marvell

C:) John Dryden

D:) Johnson

springline- Correct option: B:) Andrew Marvell


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28) On 1 December 1663 Dryden married the royalist sister of Sir Robert Howard—Lady Elizabeth. In November 1662 Dryden was proposed for membership in the Royal Society, and he was elected an early fellow. However, Dryden was inactive in Society affairs and When was expelled for non-payment of his dues?

A:) 1664

B:) 1665

C:) 1666

D:) 1667

springline- Correct option: C:) 1666


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29) During the 1660s and 1670s, theatrical writing was his main source of income. He led the way in Restoration comedy, his best-known work being Marriage à la Mode (1673), as well as heroic tragedy and regular tragedy, in which his greatest success was All for Love in ____?

A:) 1677

B:) 1678

C:) 1679

D:) 1680

springline- Correct option: B:) 1678


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30) Dryden created the proscription against preposition stranding in 1672 when he objected to Whose, phrase, ‘the bodies that those souls were frighted from,’ though he did not provide the rationale for his preference?

A:) Ben Jonson

B:) Dr. Johnson

C:) Spenser

D:) Shakespeare

springline- Correct option: A:) Ben Jonson