Quiz: Ghose 29-49

Setting

• According to the reading, what is a quarto and what does it have to do with Much Ado?
• What information do the first folio and quarto leave out, and what does that tell us about "setting" in this play?
• What types of evidence from the period do we have for what productions looked like? Give one example.
• What did the typical Elizabethan know about 16th century Italy?
• What explains some of the Elizabethan fascination with Italy?
• What scholar saw Italy as a hotbed of vice, and why?
• What did you learn about the Italian culture of courtesy?
• For whom did Castiglione's famous work become a "how-to" manual, and how does that explain the appeal of Italian aristocratic plots for Shakespeare's audience?

Style and Grace

• How can we tell that Messina's residents "aspire to courtly life"?
• What is a "stock feature of comic plots," and how is it exemplified in this play?
• Who else in the play has "social pretensions"?
• What is "euphuism" and what were some of its "trademark characteristics"? Give an example.
• Describe the first "contest of modish speech" mentioned by Ghose.
• What does the text say about paradox?
• What does Castiglione tell us about sprezzatura? Who best illustrates this quality?

Wit I: Beatrice

• According to critics, what literary characters are the "jousting" Beatrice and Benedick, who were not in the original source for the play, based on?
• Explain a fencing metaphor that is mentioned.
• Describe the second "contest of wits" in the play.
• What did you learn about Beatrice's "horns" remark?
• What does the text tell us about the status of single, married, and widowed women?
• Was it common for women to marry younger men? why or why not?
• The book remarks that "hell is for the married." Give an example.
• Explain one of Beatrice's "metatheatrical allusions."

Wit II: Benedick

• The books says Benedick uses "euphuistic style" with a comical surprise. Explain.
• What do Benedick's "string of rhetorical questions" reveal about him?
• Describe a play that grapples with "the tension between male bonding" and commitment to women.
• Describe one of the following with an example: Stichomythia, hyperbole, or amplification.
• How does Claudio's attempt to join the word games with one of "one-upmanship with Benedick" fall flat? Why? What's wrong with it?
• Give an example of "repartee." How does the repartee of Beatrice and Benedick differ from that of Claudio and Hero?