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Mangesh & Jason
Weekend Quiz: A Man Walks into a Bard
by Mangesh & Jason - November 10, 2007 - 11:45 AM

shakes.jpg

While you probably aren’t littering your speech with words like “Methinks” or “doth,” plenty of Shakespeare phrases are still being used to this day. And they’re more common than you might think! Play the quiz, and try to match the common Shakespearean phrase to the play it came from. And if thou doeth well, feel free to posteth your score in the comments below.

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Comments (9)

  1. is it bad that i actually DO resort to the occasional “methinks” in everyday speech?
    …i’m kind of a shakespeare nut.(although marlowe, ford, webster, & co. get short shrift when it comes to discussing elizabethan and jacobean/carolinean theatre…)

    posted by kay on 11-10-2007 at 1:11 pm

  2. only 50%

    at least i did better than the current average of 39%, but sheesh!!!

    posted by mri on 11-10-2007 at 2:14 pm

  3. Great quiz! Love to see Bill Shakespeare on here. Brett Savage has covered two of my loves in his last two quizzes- The Bard and 1980’s cinema. I’m an enigma.

    posted by Manny on 11-10-2007 at 3:16 pm

  4. i did horrible (30%) but loved reading the explanations. good stuff!!

    posted by Taylor S. on 11-10-2007 at 3:17 pm

  5. I have been unable to do anything right today,except for this quiz! So, I don’t feel at all bad for bragging: I got a perfect score!! Suck it Trebeck!! Thank you Mental Floss for making my day a bit brighter.

    posted by Abby on 11-10-2007 at 6:12 pm

  6. I didn’t know any of the phrases, but I got 70% by just thinking of which play they would make the most sense in.

    posted by Miss Cellania on 11-10-2007 at 11:03 pm

  7. At the risk of sounding both presumptuous and self-promotional, I’m going to comment on my own quiz:

    Am I the only one that would kill to see Johnny Depp’s Hamlet? If Mel Gibson can do it (poorly) at 44, Johnny’s still got time.

    Two other actors I would have LOVED to have seen play Hamlet- Gene Wilder and Peter Sellers.

    Kay- It’s perfectly acceptable to throw a “methinks” around now and again…sometimes it just FEELS right, methinks.

    posted by Brett on 11-11-2007 at 9:42 am

  8. Retired English teacher : 100%

    For Quotes I didn’t remember verbatim, the plots and themes helped match the quote to the correct play.

    posted by Dennis M on 11-12-2007 at 5:03 am

  9. I missed three, all from Othello. Well, I guess it is time to pick up Othello again. I don’t mean to be a total nebbish (did, I use that phrase correctly?) but I must say, I wouldn’t consider most of these phrases to be a part of common parlance. How about: “I know which way the wind blows”; “hoisted by your own petard”; “methinks the lady doth protest too much”; “nothing comes from nothing”; “sound and fury”; “what’s done is done”; the “green eyed monster”; wear your “heart on your sleeve”. (By the way, I know that I have parapharsed the quotes, but you get the idea.) These phrase all came from those four plays.

    posted by Patrick on 11-12-2007 at 8:04 am

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