A: Identifications (10 minutes each)

Please identify the author, text, and (where applicable), speaker (or listener), then write three or four sentences in which you point out what is most interesting and important about each passage. Pay attention to language and poetry, as well as ideas and personalities. For the Middle English begin with a prose translation.

1. Why hear you, my masters. Was it for me to kill the heir apparent? Should I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules, but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true prince.

2. I declare I’ll allow but one year for love, one year for indifference, and one year for hate; and then go hang yourself, for I profess myself the gay, the kind, and the inconstant.

3. Who peyntede the leoun, tel me, who?

By God, if wommen hadde writen stories,

As clerkes han withinne hir oratories oratories=chapels, studies

They wolde han writen of men more wikkednesse

Than all the mark of Adam may redresse. mark=sex

4. Come on, sir; here’s the place. Stand still. How fearful

And dizzy ‘tis to cast one’s eyes so low!

. . . Halfway down

Hangs one that gathers samphire--dreadful trade; samphire=aromatic herb

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

. . . The murmuring surge

That on th’ unnumb’red idle pebble chafes

Cannot be heard so high.

5. Though in this toun is noon apothecarie,

I shal myself to herbes techen yow,

That shul ben for youre hele and for youre prow, prow=benefit

And in oure yerd tho herbes shal I finde

The whiche han of hire propretee by kinde

To purgen yow binethe and eek above...

Pekke hem up right as they growe, and ete hem in.

6. If she must teem, teem=increase

Create her child of spleen, that it may live

And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,

Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child.

B: Essay (30 minutes)

Please choose ONE (1) of the following questions and write a short essay.

1. How are the sounds in passages 4, 5, and 6 essential to meaning?

2. Of the speakers in passages 1, 2, and 6, who is the greatest exaggerator? Why?

3. Discuss the concepts of nature in passages 1, 5, and 6. Which do you find most appealing? Why?

4. Discuss the presentation of gender relations in passages 2, 3, and 5. Which do you find most realistic? Why?

5. Of the speakers in passages 1, 2, and 4, who is the most successful manipulator? Why?

6. Of passages 1, 4, and 6, which one do you find most interesting in its presentation of the relationship between the older and the younger generation? Why?

7. In what sense might the speakers in passages 3 and 5 be considered influences on the speaker in passage 2?