1 Two households, both alike in dignity,
  In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
  From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
  Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
5 From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
  A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
  Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
  Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
9 The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
  And the continuance of their parents' rage,
  Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
  Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
13 The which if you with patient ears attend,
     What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

(1595)

In line 14, what is "our toil" referring to?

Adapted from Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, III.i.1126-1185 (1623)

Enter Judges, Senators and Tribunes, with MARTIUS and QUINTUS, bound, passing on to the place of execution; TITUS going before, pleading

Titus Andronicus: Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay! 
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent 
In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept; 
For all my blood in Rome's great quarrel shed; 
For all the frosty nights that I have watch'd;
And for these bitter tears, which now you see 
Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks; 
Be pitiful to my condemned sons, 
Whose souls are not corrupted as 'tis thought. 
For two and twenty sons I never wept, 
Because they died in honor's lofty bed. 
[Lieth down; the Judges, &c., pass by him, and Exeunt] 
For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write 
My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears: 
Let my tears stanch the earth's dry appetite; 
My sons' sweet blood will make it shame and blush. 
O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain, 
That shall distill from these two ancient urns, 
Than youthful April shall with all his showers: 
In summer's drought I'll drop upon thee still; 
In winter with warm tears I'll melt the snow 
And keep eternal spring-time on thy face, 
So thou refuse to drink my dear sons' blood. 
[Enter LUCIUS, with his sword drawn] 
O reverend tribunes! O gentle, aged men! 
Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death; 
And let me say, that never wept before, 
My tears are now prevailing orators.

Lucius: O noble father, you lament in vain: 
The tribunes hear you not; no man is by;
And you recount your sorrows to a stone.

Titus Andronicus: Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead. 
Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you,—

Lucius: My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.

Titus Andronicus: Why, tis no matter, man; if they did hear,

They would not mark me, or if they did mark, 

They would not pity me, yet plead I must; 

And bootless unto them [—] 

Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones; 

Who, though they cannot answer my distress, 

Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes, 

For that they will not intercept my tale: 

When I do weep, they humbly at my feet 

Receive my tears and seem to weep with me; 

And, were they but attired in grave weeds,

Rome could afford no tribune like to these. 

A stone is soft as wax,—tribunes more hard than stones; 

A stone is silent, and offendeth not, 

And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.
[Rises]
But wherefore stand'st thou with thy weapon drawn?

Lucius: To rescue my two brothers from their death: 
For which attempt the judges have pronounced 
My everlasting doom of banishment.

Titus Andronicus: O happy man! they have befriended thee.
Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive 
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers? 
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey 
But me and mine: how happy art thou, then, 
From these devourers to be banished!

In context, the bolded and underlined word "pitiful" is closest in meaning to which of the following?

Adapted from Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, III.i.1126-1185 (1623)

Enter Judges, Senators and Tribunes, with MARTIUS and QUINTUS, bound, passing on to the place of execution; TITUS going before, pleading

Titus Andronicus: Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay! 
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent 
In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept; 
For all my blood in Rome's great quarrel shed; 
For all the frosty nights that I have watch'd;
And for these bitter tears, which now you see 
Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks; 
Be pitiful to my condemned sons, 
Whose souls are not corrupted as 'tis thought. 
For two and twenty sons I never wept, 
Because they died in honor's lofty bed. 
[Lieth down; the Judges, &c., pass by him, and Exeunt] 
For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write 
My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears: 
Let my tears stanch the earth's dry appetite; 
My sons' sweet blood will make it shame and blush. 
O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain, 
That shall distill from these two ancient urns, 
Than youthful April shall with all his showers: 
In summer's drought I'll drop upon thee still; 
In winter with warm tears I'll melt the snow 
And keep eternal spring-time on thy face, 
So thou refuse to drink my dear sons' blood. 
[Enter LUCIUS, with his sword drawn] 
O reverend tribunes! O gentle, aged men! 
Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death; 
And let me say, that never wept before, 
My tears are now prevailing orators.

Lucius: O noble father, you lament in vain: 
The tribunes hear you not; no man is by;
And you recount your sorrows to a stone.

Titus Andronicus: Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead. 
Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you,—

Lucius: My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.

Titus Andronicus: Why, tis no matter, man; if they did hear,

They would not mark me, or if they did mark, 

They would not pity me, yet plead I must; 

And bootless unto them [—] 

Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones; 

Who, though they cannot answer my distress, 

Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes, 

For that they will not intercept my tale: 

When I do weep, they humbly at my feet 

Receive my tears and seem to weep with me; 

And, were they but attired in grave weeds,

Rome could afford no tribune like to these. 

A stone is soft as wax,—tribunes more hard than stones; 

A stone is silent, and offendeth not, 

And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.
[Rises]
But wherefore stand'st thou with thy weapon drawn?

Lucius: To rescue my two brothers from their death: 
For which attempt the judges have pronounced 
My everlasting doom of banishment.

Titus Andronicus: O happy man! they have befriended thee.
Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive 
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers? 
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey 
But me and mine: how happy art thou, then, 
From these devourers to be banished!

Which of the following most closely summarizes the content of the bolded and underlined excerpt?

Adapted from Act 1, Scene 1, ln. 78-119 of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (1604) in Vol. XIX, Part 2 of The Harvard Classics (1909-1914)

FAUSTUS: How am I glutted with conceit of this!

Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,

Resolve me of all ambiguities,

Perform what desperate enterprise I will?

I’ll have them fly to India for gold,

Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;

I’ll have them read me strange philosophy

And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;

I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,

And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;

I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,

Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;

I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,

And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,

And reign sole king of all the provinces;

Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war

Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge,

I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.

[Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS]

Come, German Valdes and Cornelius,

And make me blest with your sage conference.

Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,

Know that your words have won me at the last

To practice magic and concealed arts:

Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy

That will receive no object, for my head

But ruminates on necromantic skill.

Philosophy is odious and obscure,

Both law and physic are for petty wits;

Divinity is basest of the three,

Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile:

’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.

Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;

And I that have with concise syllogisms

Gravell’d the pastors of the German church,

And made the flowering pride of Wittenberg

Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits

On sweet Musaeigus, when he came to hell,

Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,

Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.

In context, the underlined and bolded phrase "glutted with conceit" most closely means what?

Adapted from Act 1, Scene 1, ln. 78-119 of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (1604) in Vol. XIX, Part 2 of The Harvard Classics (1909-1914)

FAUSTUS: How am I glutted with conceit of this!

Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,

Resolve me of all ambiguities,

Perform what desperate enterprise I will?

I’ll have them fly to India for gold,

Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;

I’ll have them read me strange philosophy

And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;

I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,

And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;

I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,

Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;

I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,

And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,

And reign sole king of all the provinces;

Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war

Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge,

I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.

[Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS]

Come, German Valdes and Cornelius,

And make me blest with your sage conference.

Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,

Know that your words have won me at the last

To practice magic and concealed arts:

Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy

That will receive no object, for my head

But ruminates on necromantic skill.

Philosophy is odious and obscure,

Both law and physic are for petty wits;

Divinity is basest of the three,

Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile:

’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.

Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt;

And I that have with concise syllogisms

Gravell’d the pastors of the German church,

And made the flowering pride of Wittenberg

Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits

On sweet Musaeigus, when he came to hell,

Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,

Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.

In the underlined and bolded section of the passage, Faustus makes which of the following arguments?

Adapted from Richard III by William Shakespeare, I.i.1-42

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

When he speaks of “dissembling nature,” underlined in the passage, the speaker is referring to __________.

PROSPERO:

1.     Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
2.     And ye that on the sands with printless foot
3.     Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
4.     When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
5.     By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
6.     Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
7.     Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
8.     To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
9.     Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
10.     The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
11.     And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
12.     Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
13.     Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
14.     With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
15.     Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
16.     The pine and cedar: graves at my command
17.     Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
18.     By my so potent art. But this rough magic
19.     I here abjure, and, when I have required
20.     Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
21.     To work mine end upon their senses that
22.     This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
23.     Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
24.     And deeper than did ever plummet sound
25.     I'll drown my book.

In the context of the passage, “ebbing Neptune” (line 3) most likely means _________________.

PROSPERO:

1.     Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
2.     And ye that on the sands with printless foot
3.     Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
4.     When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
5.     By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
6.     Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
7.     Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
8.     To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
9.     Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
10.     The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
11.     And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
12.     Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
13.     Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
14.     With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
15.     Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
16.     The pine and cedar: graves at my command
17.     Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
18.     By my so potent art. But this rough magic
19.     I here abjure, and, when I have required
20.     Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
21.     To work mine end upon their senses that
22.     This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
23.     Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
24.     And deeper than did ever plummet sound
25.     I'll drown my book.

In the context of the passage, the word “bolt” (line 14) means _________________.

PROSPERO:

1.     Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
2.     And ye that on the sands with printless foot
3.     Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
4.     When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
5.     By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
6.     Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
7.     Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
8.     To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
9.     Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
10.     The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
11.     And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
12.     Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
13.     Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
14.     With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
15.     Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
16.     The pine and cedar: graves at my command
17.     Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
18.     By my so potent art. But this rough magic
19.     I here abjure, and, when I have required
20.     Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
21.     To work mine end upon their senses that
22.     This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
23.     Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
24.     And deeper than did ever plummet sound
25.     I'll drown my book.

In line 18, the word “art” most nearly means __________________.

PROSPERO:

1.     Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
2.     And ye that on the sands with printless foot
3.     Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
4.     When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
5.     By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
6.     Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
7.     Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
8.     To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
9.     Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
10.     The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
11.     And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
12.     Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
13.     Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
14.     With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
15.     Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
16.     The pine and cedar: graves at my command
17.     Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
18.     By my so potent art. But this rough magic
19.     I here abjure, and, when I have required
20.     Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
21.     To work mine end upon their senses that
22.     This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
23.     Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
24.     And deeper than did ever plummet sound
25.     I'll drown my book.

“The azured vault” (line 26) most likely means ________________.