Are your 9th graders just getting the gist of what's being said or are they learning to understand Shakespeare's language? This passage identification and vocabulary test for 9th graders encourages "close encounters" with the text.

As You Like It

Test on Act I-Act II, Scene II

(originally created for a 9^th grade English class)

Part I: Short Answers. Identify six of the following allusions or characters (30 points).

The good housewife Fortune

Helen

The tradition of the first born

Diana

The penalty of Adam

Adam (character in the play)

The golden world

Aliena

The Prodigal Son

Charles

Part II: Vocabulary. Define the underlined word as it is used in context (10 points).

1. “[Charles] is here at the door and importunes access to you.”
2. “a secret and villainous contriver against me his natural brother”
3. “that I should come to such penury”
4. “swears you do more usurp”
5. “full of wise saws”

Part III: Passage Identifications. Answer completely the questions following five out of the six passages below (60 points).

1. Peradventure this is not Fortune’s work neither, but Nature’s, who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this natural for our whetstone, for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.

Celia speaks these lines in Act I to __________ and __________. Explain the different meanings of nature/natural in the passage. How is the dullness of a fool the whetstone (a stone used to whet, or sharpen, a knife) of wits?

*****

1. Treason is not inherited, my lord;

Or if we did derive it from our friends,

What’s that to me? My father was no traitor. Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much To think my poverty is treacherous.

Who says this? To whom? Under what circumstances? What important theme of the play is touched on here?

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1. And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything:

I would not change it.

Who says this? To whom? At what point in the play? What kind of education is described in this passage?

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1. By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

Who says this? To whom? Under what circumstances? What general observation is the speaker making about the passage of time? Extra credit: Identify one of the “divers persons” with whom Time either ambles, trots, gallops, or stands still.

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1. Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not at the court but you kiss your hands. That courtesy would be uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds.

Who says this? To whom? Under what circumstances? How does the speaker’s sentiment relate to the title of the play?

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1. Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured in that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.

Who says this? To whom? What is the principal image in this passage? Name one other image associated with love elsewhere in the play.