GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #4 : Contexts Of American Plays
During what decade was A Punch for Judy first performed?
1860s
1900s
1940s
1880s
1920s
1920s
This play premiered in 1920, when Broadway shows were just beginning to develop into a recognizable form.
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of American Plays Before 1925
What other famous American play did the author of A Punch for Judy write?
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Les Blancs
The Philadelphia Story
The Iceman Cometh
All My Sons
The Philadelphia Story
Philip Barry is best known for his plays Holiday (1928) and The Philadelphia Story (1939), both of which later became films starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) is by Tennessee Williams, All My Sons (1947) is by Arthur Miller, The Iceman Cometh (1946) is by Eugene O’Neill, and Les Blancs (1970) is by Lorraine Hansberry.
Example Question #2 : Contexts Of American Plays Before 1925
The play title A Punch for Judy alludes to what earlier genre of plays?
Greek satyr plays
British puppet shows
medieval morality plays
medieval miracle plays
French farces
British puppet shows
A Punch for Judy (1920) is named after the violent, comedic Punch and Judy plays, which became popular in England in the 1600s and were derived from earlier Italian comedic forms. These plays continued to be popular in Britain through Victorian times and into the 20th century, particularly in seaside holiday towns.
Example Question #4 : Contexts Of American Plays Before 1925
Act One, Scene One
A section of country highway. The road runs diagonally from the left, forward, to the right, rear, and can be seen in the distance winding toward the horizon like a pale ribbon between the low, rolling hills with their freshly plowed fields clearly divided from each other, checkerboard fashion, by the lines of stone walls and rough snake fences.
… At the rise of the curtain, ROBERT MAYO is discovered sitting on the fence. He is a tall, slender young man of twenty-three. There is a touch of the poet about him expressed in his high forehead and wide, dark eyes. His features are delicate and refined, leaning to weakness in the mouth and chin. He is dressed in gray corduroy trousers pushed into high-laced boots, and a blue flannel shirt with a bright colored tie. He is reading a book by the fading sunset light. He shuts this, keeping a finger in to mark the place, and turns his head toward the horizon, gazing out over the fields and hills. His lips move as if he were reciting something to himself.
His brother ANDREW comes along the road from the right, returning from his work in the fields. He is twenty-seven years old, an opposite type to ROBERT: husky, sun-bronzed, hand some in a large-featured, manly fashion a son of the soil, intelligent in a shrewd way, but with nothing of the intellectual about him. He wears overalls, leather boots, a gray flannel shirt open at the neck, and a soft, mud-stained hat pushed back on his head. He stops to talk to ROBERT, leaning on the hoe he carries.
Which of the following is not a character in this play?
Captain Dick Scott
Vanya
Ruth Atkins
Kate Mayo
James Mayo
Vanya
James Mayo, Kate Mayo, Captain Dick Scott, and Ruth Atkins are all central characters in Beyond the Horizon. Even if you weren’t familiar with the cast of this play, you could have recognized that Vanya is the protagonist of Anton Chekhov’s 1897 play Uncle Vanya.
Passage adapted from Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon, I.i (1920; 1921 ed.)
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of American Plays After 1925
Who wrote A Streetcar Named Desire?
Arthur Miller
Tennessee Williams
Eugene O’Neill
Tony Kushner
Edward Albee
Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire is one of Tennessee Williams’ most famous plays.
Example Question #2 : Contexts Of American Plays After 1925
During what decade was A Streetcar Named Desire first performed?
1970s
1960s
1980s
1950s
1940s
1940s
The play was first performed in 1947 on Broadway, and it received the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of American Plays After 1925
The author of A Streetcar Named Desire also wrote which of the following plays?
Angels in America
Death of a Salesman
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
The Glass Menagerie
A Raisin in the Sun
The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams, the author of A Streetcar Named Desire, published The Glass Menagerie in 1945.
Example Question #3 : Contexts Of American Plays After 1925
Which of the following is not a character from A Streetcar Named Desire?
Stanley Kowalski
Prior Walter
Stella Kowalski
Blanche DuBois
Harold Mitchell
Prior Walter
Prior Walter is a character from the play Angels in America, not from A Streetcar Named Desire.
Example Question #11 : Contexts Of American Plays
Who wrote the play Angels in America?
Eugene O’Neill
Tony Kushner
Suzan-Lori Parks
Arthur Miller
Lynn Nottage
Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner is the author of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, which was more recently adapted into an HBO miniseries. The play is divided into two parts (which can be performed together or separately): Millennium Approaches and Perestroika.
Example Question #12 : Contexts Of American Plays
In what decade was Angels in America first performed?
1950s
1970s
1980s
1990s
1960s
1990s
The play premiered in 1991 and won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. If you didn’t know this, though, you could still infer that the play was performed in 1990s, as a central subject is the AIDS crisis that was just becoming widespread in America in the mid- to late-1980s.
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
