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150 multiple-choice questions and 45 flashcards, written to the AP English Literature blueprint. Every question carries a full rationale.
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AP English Literature, Common Core ELA 9-12 reading drama, IB English A: Literature
CoStudy's The Tempest (Shakespeare) bank holds 195 items. Every multiple-choice question carries a written rationale explaining why the correct answer is correct and why each distractor is tempting but wrong.
A sample of 12 multiple-choice questions from the bank, with the full rationale shown.
Which courtier does Prospero address with personal gratitude in the reconciliation scene?
Answer: B — Gonzalo
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — Gonzalo's old kindness is publicly acknowledged.
Why does Prospero pretend to suspect Ferdinand of being a spy and treat him harshly?
Answer: B — To slow the romance so the young couple value each other, not so easy a victory
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — Prospero's aside explains the deliberate test.
The masque conjured for Ferdinand + Miranda features:
Answer: A — Iris, Ceres, Juno — Roman goddesses of rainbow + harvest + marriage
B/C/D) Wrong. A) Correct — the masque is interrupted when Prospero remembers Caliban's plot.
Which famous textual moment most pointedly stages art as fragile illusion?
Answer: C — The 'our revels now are ended' meditation after the masque
A/B/D) Wrong. C) Correct — the speech turns the masque's collapse into a metaphor for all theatrical or worldly performance.
Ariel is most accurately described as:
Answer: D — An airy spirit owing service in exchange for the promise of freedom
A/C/B) Wrong. D) Correct — Ariel's nature is elemental, not human.
After the masque ends, what does Prospero command Ariel to do with the conspirators?
Answer: D — Lure them into a foul-smelling pond and then through brambles
A/C/B) Wrong. D) Correct — Ariel leads them by music into filthy water and prickle bushes.
The Tempest opens with:
Answer: B — A storm wrecking a ship carrying the king of Naples + his courtiers
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — the storm is Ariel's work, instigated by Prospero.
The masque, as a symbol, represents:
Answer: B — Political fantasy of an ordered, fertile commonwealth, fragile enough to be broken by recollection of conspirators
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — the masque's fragility is part of its meaning.
Prospero combines which two roles in a single figure?
Answer: C — Magician and dispossessed political ruler
A/B/D) Wrong. C) Correct — magus and exiled duke meet in one character.
Why is Act 4's masque often read as 'meta-theatrical'?
Answer: A — Because a stage character explicitly stages another show and then comments on its illusory nature
B/C/D) Wrong. A) Correct — theater within theater is dramatized and then critiqued.
What does Ariel report about the wrecked passengers?
Answer: A — All have survived, scattered across the island, their clothes unstained
B/C/D) Wrong. A) Correct — Ariel preserves the survivors and even keeps the ship safely hidden.
Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête (1969) reworks the play as:
Answer: B — An explicit anti-colonial drama with a Black Caliban + a 'civilizer' Prospero
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — Césaire's adaptation became central to postcolonial readings.
6 sample cards from the 45 in the bank.
'Our revels now are ended' speech?
One of Shakespeare's most-quoted speeches. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.' Often read as Shakespeare's farewell to theatre.
Caliban's account of the island?
Says Prospero stole the island from him + that 'this island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, which thou tak'st from me.' Articulates the play's colonial dimension.
What is the play's debt to romance?
Late Shakespeare romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Tempest) share: shipwrecks, lost children, magical interventions, forgiveness over justice, family reunion. Tempest is the tightest.
Who is Ferdinand?
Alonso's son, prince of Naples. Believes his father drowned. Falls in love with Miranda + serves Prospero as log-bearer.
Who are Stephano + Trinculo?
Drunken butler + jester from the ship. Encounter Caliban + plot (drunkenly) to kill Prospero + rule the island. Comic subplot.
Who is Miranda?
Prospero's daughter, ~15. Has lived on the island since age 3. Sees Ferdinand + immediately falls in love. Speaks the play's most-quoted line ('O brave new world').
These samples are a small slice. The full bank runs flashcards, multiple choice and timed mock exams with per-chapter progress tracking, on the web and in the iOS app.
Open The Tempest (Shakespeare) →
The The Tempest (Shakespeare) bank holds 195 items: 150 multiple-choice questions, 45 flashcards. 18 of them are on this page to read free, with no signup.
Yes. Every multiple-choice item carries a written rationale that states the controlling principle behind the correct answer and then addresses each wrong option in turn — why it tempts and precisely where it fails. Knowing why the plausible answer was wrong is worth more than knowing which letter was right.
The samples on this page are free to read in full, rationales included, with no account. The complete 195-item bank, the timed mock exams and per-chapter progress tracking are part of CoStudy on the web and in the iOS app.
Last reviewed 2026-08-22. Banks are written against the certifying body's published exam outline and re-checked when that outline changes — exams get renumbered, retired and reweighted, and a bank written to a superseded outline teaches the wrong proportions. Figures that are re-indexed annually are deliberately not asserted as rules; the questions test the governing principle instead.