Classics Flashcards
The 17th-century French dramatist and actor Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, described by Voltaire as “the painter of France,” is better known by what stage name, adopted in about 1643?
Moliere
What 17th-century French playwright, known for his tragedies, including Andromaque and Phedre, also wrote one comedy, Les Plaideurs, a satire on the French legal system?
Jean Racine
What 11th-century Spanish soldier and national hero was the subject of a tragedy by Pierre Cornielle in 1637, which had huge popular success but sparked a literary controversy?
El Cid / Le Cid
In Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, a man and two women have died and are escorted into a drawing room where, unable to leave, they learn that (per the English translation) “hell is” what?
Other people
Mephistopheles is a character in this Charles Gounod work.
Faust
This 5-letter Greek tragedy from Euripides is not a good choice for Mother’s Day.
Medea
Often referred to by the shorthand “Moon,” what is the full title of Eugene O’Neill’s sequel to Long Day’s Journey into Night, telling the story of the final wandering, self-destructive days of James Tyrone?
A Moon for the Misbegotten
In classical Greek drama, the ensemble that comments collectively upon the play’s action, often offering the view from society’s perspective, is referred to by what term?
Chorus
Olga, Masha, and Irina Prozorova are the main characters in what classic play that premiered in 1901?
The Three Sisters
A musical: “How many can I kill…& still have one bullet left for me? Don’t you touch him! Te adoro, Anton”
West Side Story
What 1892 opera ends with Canio’s famous line “La commedia è finita”?
But doctor…Canio is one of the title clowns in Pagliacci!
In 1955, The Observer theatre critic Kenneth Tynan remarked, “It forced me to re-examine the rules which had hitherto governed the drama; and having done so, to pronounce them not elastic enough.” His review was for the English-language world premiere of what sparse tragicomedy, which baffles many theatregoers still to this day?
Waiting For Godot
Of Athenian dramatist Sophocles’s 123 plays, only seven remain intact, including three relating to Oedipus and his children: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and what third, named after and centered on Oedipus and Jocasta’s daughter?
Antigone
The legendary Cypriot king who carved a statue of a woman so beautiful that he fell in love with it (and eventually married her, after Aphrodite turned it into an actual woman) gives his name to what 1913 play?
Pygmalion
