1. “Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods: Puck and his train of midgets are busy in town and country.” Wrote who?

   1. O Henry

   2. Arthur Conan Doyle

   3. Rudyard Kipling

   4. Oscar Wilde

2. "Yet still the unresting castles thresh / In fullgrown thickness every May" - lines from which poet's paean to spring greenery, "The Trees"?

   1. WB Yeats

   2. WH Auden

   3. Phillip Larkin

   4. Edna St Vincent Millay

3. Which American author’s short story May Day uses the riots of 1 May 1919 as its backdrop?

   1. Edith Wharton

   2. F Scott Fitzgerald

   3. Jonathan Franzen

   4. Philip Roth

4. “Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire / Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!” Which poet is carolling a “Song on May Morning”?

   1. Edmund Spenser

   2. William Shakespeare

   3. John Milton

   4. John Keats

5. “A gilded Maypole had been set up in the river gardens on a square of turf which was enclosed by the famous Provencal rose bushes, already tipped with coral buds. Each afternoon of May week, there was dancing around the great shaft, while the multi-coloured ribbons wove up and down against a drift of pear blossoms.” Which of the following games is NOT played on May Day in Anya Seton’s historical novel, Katherine?

   1. Hide-and-Seek

   2. Hoodman Blind

   3. Grandmother’s Footsteps

   4. Hot Cockles

6. “I cannot tell you how it was, / But this I know: it came to pass / Upon a bright and sunny day / When May was young; ah, pleasant May!” Wrote who?

   1. Emily Dickinson

   2. Christina Rossetti

   3. Sylvia Plath

   4. Elizabeth Bishop

7. Who took the title The Darling Buds of May for a series of novels about the Larkin family, later televised, from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18?

   1. HE Bates

   2. PG Wodehouse

   3. John Buchan

   4. Joanna Trollope

8. Which author was born 200 years ago on 7 May?

   1. Charles Kingsley

   2. Charles Dickens

   3. Edward Lear

   4. Robert Browning

9. “She was lyk the brighte morwe of May, / Fulfild of alle beautee and plesaunce”. The ancient Januarie falls for the beautiful May in Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale. But who does she lust after?

   1. Mark

   2. The Pardoner

   3. Geoffrey

   4. Damian

10. Which poet wrote a “May Magnificat”, in which they ponder why “May is Mary’s month”?

    1. Gerard Manley Hopkins

    2. George Herbert

    3. John Donne

    4. Philip Sidney

11. Who, in Shakespeare’s words, is “as full of spirit as the month of May, and as gorgeous as the sun in Midsummer”?

    1. Juliet

    2. Viola

    3. Caliban

    4. Soldiers

Solutions

1:A, 2:C, 3:B, 4:C, 5:C, 6:B, 7:A, 8:D, 9:D, 10:A, 11:D

Scores

1. 2 and above.

   Distinctly chilly. Come back and take our wintery quiz in December, and see if you do any better

2. 5 and above.

   Not bad - but you could do with warming up a little. Take a trip to the park with your Kindle when the sun comes out

3. 8 and above.

   Very strong effort; touch of the spring fever, clearly

4. 11 and above.

   Full marks! Off you go, with a justifiable spring in your step