CHAPTER 31 Practice Quiz — Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: CHAPTER 31
What event do Pip and Herbert attend in Chapter 31?
They attend a London production of Hamlet in which Mr. Wopsle plays the lead role.
What stage name does Mr. Wopsle perform under?
He performs under the name "Mr. Waldengarver," which is so unfamiliar that Herbert has to whisper "Probably Wopsle" to Pip.
How does the gallery audience react to Wopsle's Hamlet?
They heckle relentlessly — shouting advice during soliloquies, calling for "Rule Britannia," yelling "Waiter!" and pelting a supporting actor with nuts.
What nickname does the audience give the Queen of Denmark?
They call her "the kettledrum" because she is covered in broad bands of brass — around her chin, waist, and both arms.
What happens when Pip and Herbert visit Wopsle backstage?
Wopsle receives their polite compliments with patronizing dignity, completely unaware that his performance was terrible.
What does Herbert whisper to Pip to say about Wopsle's performance?
Herbert whispers "capitally" and then "massive and concrete," which Pip repeats as though the opinions were his own.
How does Chapter 31 end?
Pip invites Wopsle to supper, then goes to bed miserable, dreaming that his expectations are cancelled and he must play Hamlet before twenty thousand people without knowing the words.
Who is the dresser that leads Pip and Herbert backstage?
He is an unnamed Jewish man who dressed Wopsle for the role. He critiques Wopsle's leg positioning and boasts of coaching the previous Hamlet with red wafers on his shins.
What does the dresser suggest about Wopsle's performance?
He says Wopsle showed his cloak beautifully at the grave scene but should have "made more of his stockings" during the ghost scene, revealing a comically narrow understanding of acting.
How does Wopsle explain the hostile audience member?
He identifies the man as an employee of the actor playing Claudius, blaming the heckler's rudeness on professional jealousy rather than admitting his own poor performance.
What does Pip's treatment of Wopsle reveal about his character?
Pip's decision to invite Wopsle to supper out of sympathy reveals a core decency and compassion beneath his acquired snobbery as a London gentleman.
What are Wopsle's plans after supper at Barnard's Inn?
He sits until two in the morning outlining plans to "revive the Drama" and eventually "crush it," since his death would leave theater utterly bereft — showing his complete self-delusion.
How does Wopsle's Hamlet parallel Pip's own story?
Both men have reinvented themselves — Wopsle as Waldengarver, Pip as a gentleman — and both are blind to the gap between their aspirations and reality, making Wopsle a comic mirror of Pip.
What does Chapter 31 suggest about performance and identity?
Everyone in the chapter is performing: Wopsle acts Hamlet, Pip and Herbert act as admiring friends, and the dresser performs the role of devoted retainer — suggesting identity itself is a kind of theater.
How does the chapter explore the theme of class pretension?
Wopsle's aspiration to high art mirrors Pip's aspiration to high society. The audience's mockery of his Shakespeare suggests that culture cannot simply be adopted as a costume.
What does the audience's behavior say about Victorian class dynamics?
The rowdy gallery audience refuses to treat Shakespeare with reverent silence, asserting working-class energy against cultural pretension — a dynamic that mirrors the novel's broader class tensions.
What type of irony pervades Chapter 31?
Dramatic irony: the reader and Pip see that Wopsle's performance is terrible, but Wopsle himself believes it was excellent, creating sustained comic irony throughout.
How does Dickens use satire in the Hamlet scene?
Dickens satirizes theatrical pretension through absurd details — the ghost reading from a manuscript, a single actor playing five roles, and the audience turning soliloquies into a debating society.
What literary function does Pip's closing dream serve?
It foreshadows the collapse of Pip's expectations and functions as a symbolic parallel — performing Hamlet without knowing the lines mirrors Pip playing a gentleman without understanding the role.
How does Dickens use the play-within-a-novel structure?
The embedded Hamlet performance creates parallelism: Hamlet's themes of uncertain parentage, deferred action, and appearance versus reality all mirror the central concerns of Great Expectations itself.
What does "approbation" mean in the context of Wopsle asking for Pip's opinion?
Approbation means approval or praise. Wopsle says "I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen" after Pip and Herbert compliment his performance.
What does "derisively" mean when describing the audience's reaction to the ghost?
Derisively means in a mocking or scornful manner. The ghost's entrances are "received derisively" because it obviously comes from a nearby wall rather than appearing supernaturally.
Who says "massive and concrete" and what is its significance?
Herbert whispers it from behind Pip as a diplomatic way to describe Wopsle's acting. Pip repeats it "boldly, as if I had originated it," highlighting the performative dishonesty of social politeness.
What is the significance of the gallery member's line "Now the baby's put to bed let's have supper"?
A sulky audience member says this after Ophelia's painfully slow mad scene. It captures the audience's irreverent impatience and deflates the production's attempt at tragic seriousness.