Shakespeare's Sonnets Quizzes

1. How many sonnets are there in total?

• 126
• 153
• 154
• 156

2. Which of the following best sums up the lines of sonnet 1?

• My love for you is independent of the beauty that you possess.
• You are so obsessed with your own appearance that you are unable to see all the beauty that surrounds you.
• You owe it to the world to have a child so that future generations may appreciate your beauty after you have passed away.
• Time destroys all in its path.

3. In sonnet 18, which of the following does the poet NOT mention as a fault in the beauty of a summer's day?

• Sometimes the sun beats down too hard.
• The birds lament the coming of fall.
• Sometimes the sun is covered with clouds.
• The summer season ends too quickly.

4. Which of the following best describes a quatrain?

• a four-line, typically rhyming unit of verse
• a poem of fourteen lines, typically featuring rhyme, meter, and logical structure
• a two-line, typically rhyming unit of verse
• a type of metrical foot

5. In what year was Shakespeare born?

• 1564
• 1598
• 1609
• 1616

6. Which of the following appellations does the poet ascribe to the fair lord in sonnet 20?

• "my lovely boy"
• "master-mistress of my passion"
• "centre of my sinful earth"
• "sweet up-locked treasure"

7. In sonnet 30, which of the following best paraphrases the line "Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow"?

• Then I can cry with eyes that are not used to shedding tears
• Then I can cry over the injury of many faded memories
• Then I can submerge my head in water, my eyes not used to the pressure
• Then I can grieve over things anew as though I never did before

8. Which two sonnets focus on a mythical story involving Cupid?

• sonnets 20 and 52
• sonnets 129 and 130
• sonnets 153 and 154
• sonnets 126 and 127

9. Which of the following best sums up the lines of sonnet 52?

• Others' words may speak highly of you, but mine come from the heart.
• What have I done to lose your affection?
• Your beauty is all the more precious since it is so seldom delighted in.
• Nature gave you the face of a woman.

10. Which of the following lines from sonnet 60 best exemplifies the inevitability of time?

• "Nativity, once in the main of light"
• "And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand"
• "And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow"
• "Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd"