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HamLIT: Four Modern Incarnations of Shakespeare’s Danish Tragedy

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Which side are you on? Team Montague or Team Capulet? Take this quiz to find out!

Fair Verona? A bitter, bloody feud has bubbled up to corrupt the charming atmosphere of this vibrant city of Italy. The struggle for power between unrelenting sides has driven the stakes ever higher until the very existence of one house is abhorrent to the other.

  • Your family is tired of feeling cooped up in the same 320 walls all the time and wants a vacation. You get to decide; spend three months in either:

A. Mountainous Monaco

B. Coastal Crete

  • Your library is the envy of any scholar, but of all the skillfully bound and illuminated volumes, your favorite book is:

A. “Mystery at Moorsea Manor”

B. “Clue in the Crossword Cipher”

  • Your collection of artistic masterpieces inspires awe in every visitor. When admiring such pieces, your favorite comment to utter is:

A. “Magnificent”

B. “Captivating”

  • The tedious work of riding in carriages and walking from room to room has everybody distracted. They prefer to be diverted! What do you plan to do for fun?

A. Massive Masquerade

B. Card-game Capers

  • You encounter a member of your enemy’s house in the streets. The choicest insult you choose to hurl at them is:

A. Mewling Miscreant

B. Cretinous Cur

  • Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

[CITIZENS]: “Clubs, bills, and partisans! strike! beat them down!
Down with the Capulets! down with the Montagues
!“

A. Disagree                                 B. Disagree

[NURSE]: “O woe! O woful, woful, woful day!
Most lamentable day, most woful day,
That ever, ever, I did yet behold!
O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!
Never was seen so black a day as this:
O woful day, O woful day!”

A. Agree                                        B. Agree

  • Your family is incredibly noble. They can trace their lineage back to only the noblest of nobles. But desperate times call for a breach with tradition: You decide to change your coat of arms to distinguish yourselves from your rival family. Do you go with:

A. Mercury, masoned sable, with a magpie membered.

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B. Crimson, chevron sable between confronting coneys.

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For your results, and to get the PRINTABLE of this quiz, click Continue reading

Banned Books Week, September 22−28

Banned Books Week is the national book community’s annual celebration of the freedom to read and battle censorship. The National Council of Teachers of English provides resources for teachers facing challenges to works used in their classrooms. They’ve also compiled a list of titles that have been challenged between 2004 and 2013. We’ve highlighted just a few of those that are popular classroom reads:

Fig. 1. This graph shows the number of book ch...

Fig. 1. This graph shows the number of book challenges from 2000-2005 and the most popular reasons for the challenges. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)