The Lady of Shalott quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary genres best describe “The Lady of Shalott”?

   • Poetry, Dramatic Monologue & Elegy
   • Poetry, Sonnet Sequence & Love Lyric
   • Correct answer: Poetry, Narrative Poetry & Ballad
   • Poetry, Mock-Epic & Satire
   • Poetry, Free Verse & Prose Poem

   Narrative Poetry & Ballad is the best fit. The poem tells a complete story in order, from the Lady’s life at the loom to her death on the river. Its short rhymed lines, its old legend and its repeated refrain words, Camelot and Shalott, give it the sound of a ballad.

   Read the passage
2. 2

   Question 2. Where does the Lady of Shalott live?

   • In a high chamber of the royal palace at Camelot, above the great hall
   • Correct answer: In a gray-towered home on a small island in a river that flows down to Camelot
   • In a stone cottage on a hill above the barley fields, far from any river or road
   • In a quiet convent beside the road to Camelot, where the nuns keep her hidden away

   Part I places her on “The island of Shalott,” in a river “Flowing down to Camelot.” Her home is “Four gray walls, and four gray towers” looking over a space of flowers. The road to “many-tower'd Camelot” runs past, and people go up and down it, but almost no one has seen her.

   Read the passage
3. 3

   Question 3. What does the Lady know about the curse that is on her?

   • That a jealous queen of Camelot laid it on her to keep her far from the knights
   • That she will lose her voice and never sing again if she leaves the island
   • That it will lift on the day a loyal knight rides across the river to her tower
   • Correct answer: Only that it falls on her if she stops to look down to Camelot, not what it is

   She has heard a whisper say “A curse is on her if she stay / To look down to Camelot.” The next line is plain: “She knows not what the curse may be.” The poem never says who laid the curse or what it will do. So she weaves steadily. When she finally looks, she cries that the curse has come, and she dies before her boat reaches Camelot.

   Read the passage
4. 4

   Question 4. How does the Lady see the road, the river and the people passing by?

   • Correct answer: As reflections, the “Shadows of the world,” in a mirror that hangs before her
   • Through a narrow window cut in the tower wall, which looks out over the road
   • In visions that come to her in dreams as she sleeps beside her loom at night
   • Through the stories the reapers tell her when they bring the barley to the island

   A mirror “hangs before her all the year,” and in it “Shadows of the world appear”: the highway, the river, the village churls, the market girls in red cloaks, and the knights who “come riding two and two.” She weaves these reflections into her web, so everything she knows of the world reaches her second-hand.

   Read the passage
5. 5

   Question 5. Just before she says “I am half sick of shadows,” what two sights does the mirror show her?

   • A knight in armor fighting at a tournament, and a ship arriving at Camelot
   • A ship sailing up the river, and a mother singing to her child on the bank
   • Correct answer: A funeral going to Camelot with plumes and lights, and two young lovers lately wed
   • A royal wedding procession, and a beggar woman weeping alone by the river

   Through the silent nights she sees “A funeral, with plumes and lights” going to Camelot, and under the moon “two young lovers lately wed.” Death and marriage are two of the greatest events in any life, and she can only watch them in a glass. Right after these sights she says “I am half sick of shadows,” the first sign that she longs for real life.

   Read the passage
6. 6

   Question 6. What does "Refrain" mean in this story?

   • A comparison of two unlike things that uses the words like or as
   • Correct answer: A word or line repeated at the same place in stanza after stanza
   • A pause or break that falls in the middle of a line of poetry
   • The repetition of the same first sound in several nearby words

   A refrain is a word or line that comes back at a regular place in a poem. In nearly every stanza the fifth line ends on Camelot and the ninth on Shalott, and many ninth lines are simply “The Lady of Shalott.” The refrain keeps the two places, the busy city and the shut-away island, always in front of the reader.

   Read the passage
7. 7

   Question 7. How does Tennyson make Sir Lancelot seem as he rides past Shalott in Part III?

   • Dark and threatening, a shadowy rider in black armor who frightens the reapers
   • Weary and wounded, slumped in his saddle after a long and losing battle
   • Plain and humble, dressed like a farmer so that no one in Camelot will know him
   • Correct answer: Dazzling: sun flames on his armor, his bridle glitters like stars, his helmet burns

   Part III is a blaze of light. The sun “flamed upon the brazen greaves / Of bold Sir Lancelot,” his bridle shines “Like to some branch of stars we see,” and his helmet and its feather “Burn'd like one burning flame together.” He is everything bright and alive that the Lady has known only as shadow, and right after he flashes into her mirror she leaves the loom.

   Read the passage
8. 8

   Question 8. What happens at the moment the Lady leaves her loom and looks down to Camelot?

   • Correct answer: Her web flies out, the mirror cracks, and she cries out that the curse has come
   • Lancelot looks up, sees her at the window, and stops his horse beneath her tower
   • The four gray towers crumble into the river, and the island sinks beneath the water
   • The reapers drop their sheaves and run to warn the knights of Camelot about the curse

   She leaves the web and the loom, takes three paces through the room, and looks down to Camelot. At once: “Out flew the web and floated wide; / The mirror crack'd from side to side.” She cries, “The curse is come upon me.” Her art and her shut-away world end in the same instant.

   Read the passage
9. 9

   Question 9. Which best describes the form of the poem?

   • Fourteen-line sonnets in iambic pentameter, each one closing on a rhyming couplet
   • Correct answer: Four parts of nine-line stanzas, each rhymed AAAABCCCB on short, songlike lines
   • One long stretch of unrhymed blank verse, spoken by the Lady herself to Lancelot
   • Rhymed couplets grouped into four-line stanzas, with no refrain or repeated words

   The poem has four numbered parts and 19 stanzas of nine lines each. Every stanza rhymes AAAABCCCB: four lines on one rhyme, a fifth line that nearly always ends on Camelot, three lines on a new rhyme, and a ninth that nearly always ends on Shalott. The first stanza shows it: lie, rye, sky, by, then Camelot; go, blow, below, then Shalott.

   Read the passage
10. 10

    Question 10. In Part IV the Lady looks to Camelot “Like some bold seër in a trance, / Seeing all his own mischance.” What does this simile suggest?

    • That she is angry and plans to take revenge on the knights of Camelot
    • That she has fallen asleep and dreams she is still weaving in her tower
    • Correct answer: That she sees her own coming doom and faces it boldly, like a prophet
    • That she believes Lancelot will ride back and rescue her from the river

    A seer is a prophet, someone who sees the future. Like a seer in a trance who foresees his own misfortune, the Lady seems to know what is coming, and she looks toward Camelot “With a glassy countenance,” calm and fixed. She does not fight her fate; she lies down in the boat and lets the stream carry her.

    Read the passage
11. 11

    Question 11. Did it happen? Review these statements about the poem and mark each one.

    • The reapers, working early in the barley, hear the Lady’s song.

      Happened

      Part I says that only the reapers, reaping early in the bearded barley, “Hear a song that echoes cheerly” from the river. They are almost the only people who know she is there.

    • The Lady has a loyal knight who comes to visit her in her tower.

      Didn't happen

      She watches the knights ride by two and two in her mirror, but the poem says plainly, “She hath no loyal knight and true.”

    • Before she lies down in the boat, the Lady writes her name round its prow.

      Happened

      In Part IV she finds a boat beneath a willow, “And round about the prow she wrote / The Lady of Shalott.” Later the people of Camelot read the name there.

    • A boatman rows the Lady down the river to the palace steps.

      Didn't happen

      No one rows her. “She loosed the chain, and down she lay; / The broad stream bore her far away.” The river carries her alone.

    • The Lady dies before her boat reaches the first house of Camelot by the river.

      Happened

      Before she reached “The first house by the water-side,” the poem says, “Singing in her song she died.” Her boat floats silent into the city.

    Read the passage
12. 12

    Question 12. When the Lady’s boat reaches Camelot, how do the knights and Lancelot respond?

    • The knights carry her into the palace for a royal funeral, which Lancelot leads in tears
    • No one notices the boat at all, and it drifts on past the city and out to the open sea
    • Lancelot confesses that he loved her from afar and swears never to marry
    • Correct answer: The knights cross themselves in fear; Lancelot muses, then says she has a lovely face

    The royal cheer dies away, and “they cross'd themselves for fear, / All the knights at Camelot.” Then “Lancelot mused a little space” and said, “She has a lovely face; / God in his mercy lend her grace.” Nothing shows that he knows what his ride past her tower cost her; his kind but passing words end the poem.

    Read the passage
13. 13

    Question 13. Many readers take the Lady’s web and mirror as a picture of art. What reading of the poem does that lead to?

    • Correct answer: An artist makes beauty from the world at a distance, and stepping into life ends that art
    • Art can break a curse, so her steady weaving at last sets her free to leave the tower
    • Patient work is rewarded, so her long years at the loom win her the love of Lancelot
    • Art must copy life exactly, so the poem praises the mirror for showing the world truly

    The Lady weaves something beautiful from the reflections in her mirror, and she can do it only while she stays apart. The moment she turns to the real Camelot, the web flies loose and the mirror breaks; her weaving neither frees her nor wins her Lancelot, and it does not copy life truly but only its shadows. Many readers see Tennyson thinking about the artist’s need for solitude and its cost. Others read the poem as a picture of a woman confined by a rule she did not make.

    Read the passage