These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Passages are public-domain poems (author, title and date given) or an original poem written by Marlbridge, labelled as such. Mark points are a suggested Marlbridge rubric, not an official scoring guideline. Questions 1 to 6 are multiple choice; Questions 7 and 8 are written responses. Allow about 45 minutes. No calculator is needed.
Question 1 (multiple choice · foundation)
Which of the following is an allusion rather than a direct quotation?
- (A) A poem whose last line is placed in quotation marks and credited to another poet.
- (B) A footnote that explains a word.
- (C) A poem that repeats its own first line at the end.
- (D) A poem about a man who spends his days pushing a heavy trolley up a ramp that rolls back down, which readers are meant to connect with the myth of Sisyphus without the name being used.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). An allusion is an indirect reference to a shared story or figure; here the situation recalls a well-known myth without naming it.
- (A) is a quotation: it reproduces another poet’s words and credits them.
- (B) is an editorial note, not a feature of the poem.
- (C) is repetition, which has no outside source.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
In Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” (written 1917, published 1920), the poem ends: “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori.” What is the function of the allusion to Horace’s phrase?
- (A) It brings in the associations of glory and classical authority so that the poem can expose them as false.
- (B) It supports the claim that dying for one’s country is sweet and fitting.
- (C) It repeats the poem’s opening lines.
- (D) It shows that the speaker admires classical education.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). The phrase carries the dignity of an ancient motto about the nobility of dying for one’s country. The poem calls it “The old Lie” after showing a gas victim’s death, so the associations are the target of the poem’s irony.
- (B) is the opposite of what the poem concludes.
- (C) is wrong because the opening lines describe tired soldiers and have no relation to the Latin.
- (D) is contradicted by the phrase “old Lie”.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
Why is the placement of the allusion at the very end of Owen’s poem effective?
- (A) It is the only place where the poet could have used Latin.
- (B) The final position makes the poem easier to memorise.
- (C) The reader has just been shown the dying man in graphic detail, so the motto, now seen against that evidence, sounds hollow and bitter.
- (D) Poems are traditionally closed with Latin.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). The sequence matters. By the time the motto appears, the poem has built an experience that contradicts it. The allusion therefore lands as irony.
- (A) has no textual basis; the placement is a choice.
- (B) is an irrelevant claim about memory.
- (D) is not a convention that explains the effect.
Question 4 (multiple choice · core)
In Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” (1867), the speaker says that “Sophocles long ago / Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought / Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery”. What does the allusion mainly accomplish?
- (A) It changes the subject to a history of Greek theatre.
- (B) It places the speaker’s sadness in a long tradition by suggesting that the sound of the sea has meant human suffering to listeners for thousands of years.
- (C) It proves that the speaker is a Greek.
- (D) It shows that Sophocles was a poor listener.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). The allusion gives the speaker’s mood an ancient precedent and a sense of permanence (“long ago”, “also”). It then allows the poem to add what is distinctive about modern sadness.
- (A) misreads a passing reference as a change of subject.
- (C) is contradicted by “this distant northern sea”.
- (D) is unsupported; Sophocles is presented as perceptive.
Question 5 (multiple choice · core)
Read this poem, “Penelope, Third Floor”, written by Marlbridge.
Each night she unpicks what she knitted by day,
the sleeve, the scarf, the long grey sock,
and winds the wool again. The neighbours say
she’s waiting for the post, or for the clock
to tell her something. For twenty years she’s kept
the porch light on, and when they ask, she says
she likes the view. The wool goes back to ball.
The knitting’s gone by morning, and the morning starts anew.
What does the allusion in the title most plausibly add to the poem?
- (A) It shows that the woman is Greek.
- (B) It shows that she is a bad knitter.
- (C) It links her nightly unpicking to the myth of a wife who unpicked her weaving to delay suitors while waiting for her husband’s return, adding the associations of faithful, deliberate waiting.
- (D) It shows that the neighbours are cruel.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). The Penelope myth is about a woman who undoes each day’s weaving each night so that she can postpone a decision while she waits for her husband. The allusion turns the woman’s habit into a long, deliberate fidelity and a refusal to move on.
- (A) misreads an allusion as an ethnic label.
- (B) ignores the deliberate nature of the unpicking.
- (D) overreads: the neighbours are puzzled, not cruel.
Question 6 (multiple choice · stretch)
A student cannot place a reference to “the Rubicon” in an unseen poem. Which response will earn the most credit?
- (A) “I do not know what the Rubicon is, so I cannot comment.”
- (B) “The poet clearly wants to show off.”
- (C) “The Rubicon is a river, and rivers are important in poems.”
- (D) “Although I am unsure of the source, the speaker’s tone as she ‘crosses’ it, with the finality of ‘no going back’, suggests the reference stands for an irreversible decision, which shows her commitment.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). It reasons from the poem’s own context (the verbs, the tone, the phrase “no going back”) to a defensible reading and links it to the speaker’s attitude. It is also consistent with what the Rubicon in fact stands for (a point of no return), though the student does not need to know that.
- (A) abandons the task.
- (B) describes the poet, not the poem.
- (C) is generic and does not use the context.
Question 7 (written response · core)
Write a paragraph of about 150 words explaining how Owen’s allusion to Horace in the last lines of “Dulce et Decorum Est” shapes the poem’s meaning. Refer to at least two specific words or phrases.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). Owen ends by quoting a Roman motto, “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori”, which means that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. By itself the phrase carries classical authority and the glamour of glory. The poem, however, has already shown a soldier “guttering, choking, drowning”, so when the motto arrives it appears beside the evidence that contradicts it. Owen labels it “The old Lie”, and “old” suggests a falsehood handed down through generations, while “children ardent for some desperate glory” shows who hears it. The speaker’s address to “My friend” makes the reader, not the soldier, the target. The allusion lets Owen turn a slogan into the poem’s final accusation, so the poem’s meaning is that the comfortable language of patriotism is dishonest in the face of real death.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A defensible claim about what the allusion does (undercuts, accuses). |
| 2 | Identifies the source and its associations (Roman motto, glory, authority). |
| 3 | Uses at least two accurate quotations as evidence. |
| 4 | Links the allusion to the poem’s whole meaning and structure (final position, “My friend”). |
Question 8 (written response · stretch)
Write a paragraph of about 150 words explaining how the title allusion to Penelope in “Penelope, Third Floor” (Question 5) shapes the reader’s understanding of the woman and of the poem’s ending. Refer to at least two details.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). The title invites us to read a modern woman through an ancient myth of waiting, and the details fit its associations. In the myth, Penelope delays her suitors by undoing her weaving at night; in the poem, the woman “unpicks what she knitted by day” and winds the wool “again”, turning an ordinary craft into a deliberate way of holding time still. The neighbours offer small explanations (“the post”, “the clock”), but the allusion suggests something more resolute: for twenty years she has “kept the porch light on”. Her claim that “she likes the view” understates this loyalty. The ending, in which “The knitting’s gone by morning, and the morning starts anew”, shows that her work has no product, only a repeated refusal to conclude. The allusion therefore elevates her routine into fidelity, while the modern setting hints that it may also be a form of entrapment.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A defensible claim about how the allusion shapes the reading of the woman. |
| 2 | Accurately states the source and chooses relevant associations. |
| 3 | Uses at least two details from the poem as evidence. |
| 4 | Links the allusion to the ending and overall meaning, including any complication of the source. |
How did you do?
- Questions 1 to 6 correct: move to the 8.6 study guide.
- Missed 1: reread “What an allusion is” in the study guide.
- Missed 2, 3, 4 or 5: use the five-step method and state the stance (honour, undercut or complicate).
- Missed 6: practise working out an unknown reference from tone and context.
- Written responses below 3 points: state the source in one sentence, then spend the rest on what it does.