Author Identification
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still...
Shakespeare (from Macbeth)
This is another name for the witches who prophesy Macbeth will be king
The Three Weird Sisters
This pan-European event resulted in a split between Protestant and Catholic denominations of Christianity
The Protestant Reformation
This style of 14 line poem is always in Iambic Pentameter, but may have different rhyme schemes. One common rhyme scheme is the Shakespearian version: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
The Sonnet
The eighteenth-century marks the beginning of this: a political situation in which Britain became wealthy by exploiting overseas territories
The British Empire
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
Shakespeare (Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?")
Banquo
This queen slayed (Catholics, that is) and attended plays by William Shakespeare
Queen Elizabeth I
John Donne was considered one of these, a member of a poetic movement who created long metaphorical poems with religious themes mixed with sexuality and highly intricate conceits
The Metaphysical Poets
This playwright and spy for the English government also wrote Oroonoko, or, The Royal Slave: A True History
Aphra Behn
On what seraphic pinions shall we move,
And view the landscapes in the realms above?
There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow,
And there my muse with heav’nly transport glow:
Phillis Wheatley
This event precipitates Macbeth's famous "Out, brief candle" soliloquy; the final one in the play
Lady Macbeth's death (which we later learn to be from suicide)
Shakespeare wrote Macbeth for this witch-obsessed Scottish King of England
This English Renaissance sonneteer was beheaded at the age of 29 for allegedly conspiring against King Henry VIII
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Phillis Wheatley's poem to the artist Scipio Moorhead ends with an allusion to this famous blind poet from the previous century
John Milton
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Despair thy charm! This character was from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd!
Macduff
This political and religious conflict pitted Parliament (roundheads) against the Crown (cavaliers)
The English Civil Wars
The Jacobean poet Emilia Lanier devoted a portion of her Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum to this much-maligned Biblical figure
Eve (and also Pontius Pilate's wife)
This former English colony in South America (later controlled by the Dutch) is the setting of Oroonoko
Surinam
The fruit being fair persuaded him to fall:
No subtle Serpent's falsehood did betray him,
If he would eat it, who had power to stay him?
Aemilia Lanyer ("Apology for Eve," in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum)
Lady Macbeth says that she could not kill Duncan for this reason, which the play never revisits
"He [...] resembled / my father as he slept"
The poet John Milton had his writings banned for advocating in favor of this highly controversial theological position
No-fault divorce
These are the names traditionally assigned to the lovers addressed in Shakespeare's Sonnets (either one)
The Fair Youth OR The Dark Lady
This period at the end of the seventeenth-century is usually studied alongside the eighteenth-century because they are very similar to each other. This is sometimes called "The Long Eighteenth-Century"
The Restoration [of the monarchy]