Restoration to Modern Drama MCQs 2026

A Doll's House by Ibsen focuses on

1. A Nora Helmer's awakening and departure from marriage ✓
2. B Willy Loman's car crash ✓
3. C Davies's caretaker job ✓
4. D Vladimir's hat routine ✓

Torvald Helmer in A Doll's House calls Nora

1. A pet names such as skylark and squirrel ✓
2. B Loman and Happy ✓
3. C Didi and Gogo ✓
4. D Pickering and Higgins ✓

Nora's secret in A Doll's House involves

1. A a phonetics wager ✓
2. B a forged loan to save Torvald's health ✓
3. C selling rubber samples ✓
4. D waiting for Godot ✓

Krogstad in A Doll's House is

1. A Willy's brother Ben ✓
2. B Aston's builder mate ✓
3. C the blackmailing clerk who once loved Kristine Linde ✓
4. D Congreve's fop Witwoud ✓

Hedda Gabler by Ibsen ends with Hedda

1. A sailing to America with Helmer ✓
2. B marrying Higgins ✓
3. C shooting herself after burning Lovborg's manuscript ✓
4. D becoming a caretaker ✓

The Wild Duck by Ibsen explores

1. A Restoration marriage rakes ✓
2. B the destructive idealism of Gregers Werle ✓
3. C absurdist road waiting ✓
4. D sales commission charts ✓

Ghosts by Ibsen controversially treats

1. A Cockney vowel drills only ✓
2. B hereditary syphilis, euthanasia and religious hypocrisy ✓
3. C caretaker shed plans only ✓
4. D Godot's carrot ✓

Peer Gynt by Ibsen was written in

1. A Restoration heroic couplets only ✓
2. B blank verse like Milton only ✓
3. C verse and draws on Norwegian folktale ✓
4. D prose sales dialogue only ✓

The "well-made play" technique Ibsen adapts includes

1. A dance interludes only ✓
2. B no causality at all ✓
3. C exclusive use of soliloquy ✓
4. D careful exposition, secrets and a decisive final door-slam or revelation ✓

Shaw's preface to Pygmalion attacks

1. A Nora's tarantella ✓
2. B Loman's rubber hose ✓
3. C Pozzo's whip only ✓
4. D the English spelling system and class prejudice tied to accent ✓

In The Way of the World, the proviso scene satirizes

1. A marriage contracts and female autonomy ✓
2. B American sales routes ✓
3. C absurdist exile ✓
4. D Arctic shipwrecks ✓

Congreve's Mirabell is contrasted with the fop

1. A Happy Loman ✓
2. B Lucky ✓
3. C Torvald Helmer ✓
4. D Sir Wilfull Witwoud ✓

Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot originally in

1. A Old Norse ✓
2. B Latin hexameter ✓
3. C French (En attendant Godot) ✓
4. D Middle English rhyme royal ✓

Miller's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" argues that

1. A only kings may be tragic heroes ✓
2. B comedy excludes social critique ✓
3. C absurdism replaces all tragedy ✓
4. D modern tragedy can center on an ordinary person like Willy Loman ✓

The Requiem scene in Death of a Salesman shows

1. A Nora dancing tarantella ✓
2. B Eliza returning to flowers ✓
3. C Hedda playing piano ✓
4. D Linda unable to understand why Willy chose death ✓

William Congreve's The Way of the World is a classic example of

1. A Restoration comedy of manners ✓
2. B Elizabethan revenge tragedy ✓
3. C Jacobean masque ✓
4. D Victorian melodrama ✓

The central couple in The Way of the World are

1. A Hamlet and Ophelia ✓
2. B Romeo and Juliet ✓
3. C Willy and Linda Loman ✓
4. D Mirabell and Millamant ✓

Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World is chiefly

1. A a sea captain in Ibsen ✓
2. B Beckett's tramp Vladimir ✓
3. C Shaw's phonetics professor ✓
4. D a wealthy widow whom Mirabell must deceive to secure Millamant ✓

Restoration comedy of manners typically features

1. A blank verse epic battles only ✓
2. B Greek chorus lamentation ✓
3. C witty repartee, marriage plots and satire of upper-class behaviour ✓
4. D naturalistic kitchen-sink realism only ✓

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion derives its title from

1. A a Greek sea nymph only ✓
2. B the myth of a sculptor who falls in love with his creation ✓
3. C a Roman emperor's banquet ✓
4. D a Norse saga of Thor ✓

Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion is a specialist in

1. A marine biology ✓
2. B phonetics ✓
3. C medieval history ✓
4. D abstract painting ✓

Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion begins as a

1. A Norwegian housewife ✓
2. B American salesman's wife ✓
3. C Parisian courtesan ✓
4. D Cockney flower seller in London ✓

Colonel Pickering in Pygmalion is

1. A Eliza's father's creditor only ✓
2. B a gentleman phonetician who bets against Higgins ✓
3. C a Dublin theatre manager ✓
4. D Godot's messenger boy ✓

Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion is notable for

1. A his comic moralizing about middle-class morality and "undeserving" charity ✓
2. B leading the French Revolution ✓
3. C sailing to the moon ✓
4. D murdering his brother ✓

The original staged ending of Pygmalion differs from the film My Fair Lady because Shaw insists

1. A Eliza marries Freddy Eynsford-Hill, not Higgins ✓
2. B Higgins joins the clergy ✓
3. C Eliza returns to selling flowers silently ✓
4. D Pickering marries Higgins ✓

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is classified as

1. A Restoration comedy ✓
2. B Elizabethan history play ✓
3. C Victorian problem play only ✓
4. D Theatre of the Absurd ✓

Waiting for Godot is set

1. A on a country road with a single tree ✓
2. B in a Norwegian doll's house ✓
3. C on Willy Loman's Brooklyn stage ✓
4. D in a London drawing room only ✓

Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot are often called

1. A Mirabell and Millamant ✓
2. B Brick and Maggie ✓
3. C Didi and Gogo ✓
4. D Biff and Happy ✓

The character Godot in Beckett's play

1. A delivers a long final soliloquy ✓
2. B never appears on stage ✓
3. C marries Pozzo ✓
4. D reveals he is Vladimir's father ✓

Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting for Godot arrive with

1. A a rope linking master and servant ✓
2. B a sales sample case ✓
3. C a phonograph and wager ✓
4. D a doll's house deed ✓

Lucky's "thinking" speech in Waiting for Godot is

1. A a sonnet in perfect rhyme ✓
2. B a silent mime only ✓
3. C a torrent of fragmented academic jargon ✓
4. D a prayer in Latin only ✓

Harold Pinter's The Caretaker is an example of

1. A Restoration heroic drama ✓
2. B the comedy of menace ✓
3. C Greek satyr play ✓
4. D musical comedy ✓

The Caretaker is set mainly in

1. A a Norwegian fjord town ✓
2. B a cluttered room in a West London house ✓
3. C a Dublin abbey ✓
4. D an American highway ✓

Davies in The Caretaker is

1. A a phonetics professor ✓
2. B a sea captain's wife ✓
3. C a Greek herald ✓
4. D an itinerant tramp taken in by Aston ✓

Aston in The Caretaker is characterized by

1. A winning a duchess wager ✓
2. B waiting for Godot ✓
3. C a damaged mind and a project to build a shed ✓
4. D selling rubber hose ✓

Mick in The Caretaker is Aston's

1. A brother who alternately threatens and offers Davies the caretaker post ✓
2. B father in Ibsen ✓
3. C salesman son Biff ✓
4. D French translator ✓

Pinter's dialogue is famous for

1. A rhymed heroic couplets only ✓
2. B pauses and silences that carry dramatic weight ✓
3. C choric odes every act ✓
4. D prose without any subtext ✓

Eugene O'Neill is associated with

1. A Restoration wit only ✓
2. B absurdist minimalism only ✓
3. C Victorian verse drama only ✓
4. D American tragic realism and autobiographical depth ✓

Long Day's Journey Into Night by O'Neill depicts

1. A the Loman family's sales route ✓
2. B Mirabell's marriage plot ✓
3. C the Tyrone family's addiction, illness and mutual blame ✓
4. D Higgins's phonetics lab only ✓

The Iceman Cometh by O'Neill centers on

1. A a London caretaker trio ✓
2. B drinkers in Harry Hope's saloon and their pipe dreams ✓
3. C Godot's country road ✓
4. D a doll's house foreclosure ✓

Mourning Becomes Electra by O'Neill transposes

1. A Aeschylus's Oresteia to post-Civil War New England ✓
2. B Hamlet to Manhattan salesmen ✓
3. C Pygmalion to Dublin ✓
4. D The Way of the World to Paris ✓

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman dramatizes

1. A the collapse of Willy Loman's American Dream ✓
2. B a Restoration marriage contract ✓
3. C a phonetic wager in Covent Garden ✓
4. D Beckett's roadside tree ✓

Willy Loman works for

1. A Lady Wishfort's estate ✓
2. B Harry Hope's saloon ✓
3. C the Wagner Company as a travelling salesman ✓
4. D the Helmer bank ✓

Linda Loman's refrain to Willy includes

1. A "Godot will come tomorrow" ✓
2. B "the child is father to the man" ✓
3. C "attention must be paid" ✓
4. D "beauty is truth" ✓

Biff Loman's crisis in Death of a Salesman stems from

1. A waiting for an absent Godot ✓
2. B disillusionment with his father's false success ethic ✓
3. C building Aston's shed ✓
4. D learning Cockney phonetics ✓

Happy Loman in the play is

1. A Mirabell's valet ✓
2. B Willy's younger son who chases shallow success and women ✓
3. C Lucky's master ✓
4. D Nora's doctor ✓

Charley in Death of a Salesman is

1. A Willy's pragmatic neighbor who offers him a job ✓
2. B Eliza's suitor Freddy ✓
3. C Pozzo's servant ✓
4. D Krogstad's creditor ✓

Ben Loman appears to Willy as

1. A a spectral embodiment of ruthless success ✓
2. B a phonetics judge ✓
3. C Lady Wishfort's lawyer ✓
4. D Dr Rank ✓

The flute motif in Death of a Salesman evokes

1. A Beckett's bowler hats ✓
2. B Pinter's silence ✓
3. C Willy's father the inventor and a lost pastoral America ✓
4. D Ibsen's tarantella ✓

Henrik Ibsen is often called the father of

1. A Restoration comedy ✓
2. B Elizabethan sonnet sequences ✓
3. C Victorian triple-decker novels only ✓
4. D modern realistic drama ✓