Identification of British Plays After 1925
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AP English Literature and Composition › Identification of British Plays After 1925
This play's title is taken from a line in Shelley's poem "To a Skylark."
Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward
Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill
Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams
The Royal Hunt of the Sun by Peter Shaffer
Love on the Dole by Ronald Gow
Explanation
The title ofNoel Coward's 1941 comic play, Blithe Spirit, is taken from a the first line of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark":
"Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
The play itself focuses on novelist Charles Condomine and medium Madame Arcati's failed attempt to conduct a seance.
Passage adapted from "To a Skylark" l.1-5 by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)
This play switches back and forth between the year 1809 and the present. Some of the main characters include Thomasina Coverly, Septimus Hodge, Hannah Jarvis, and Bernard Nightingale.
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Chips with Everything by Arnold Wesker
Narrow Road to the Deep North by Edward Bond
Ashes to Ashes by Harold Pinter
Translations by Brian Friel
Explanation
This is a brief overview of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, a play first performed in 1993.
What play centers on two hit-men, Ben and Gus, who are awaiting their next assignment in a windowless basement?
The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
The Balcony by Jean Genet
Underground Lovers by Jean Tardieu
No Exit by Jean-Paul-Sartre
Explanation
This overview describes the one-act play The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter.
The Common Man, Sir Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell are characters in which of the following plays?
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
The Way of the World by William Congreve
Explanation
The Common Man, Sir Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell are characters from the 1960 play A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt. The play follows the life of Sir Thomas More, the sixteenth-century Chancellor of England—a "man of conscience."
Anthonio Salieri, Constanze Weber, and Emperor Joseph II are characters from which of the following plays?
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Explanation
Anthonio Salieri, Constanze Weber, and Emperor Joseph II are characters in Peter Shaffer's 1979 play Amadeus, which creates a fictionalized plot centering on composers, Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The play is based on the 1830 play by Alexander Pushkin, Mozart and Salieri.
Which of the following is an absurdist, existentialist play that focuses on characters from a Shakespearian tragedy?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
The Zoo Story by Edward Albee
Explanation
This brief overview describes Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, first performed in 1966. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet who are presumably killed off-stage over the course of the play.