An inter-school quiz on the life and works of William Shakespeare, held in association with Oxford University Press, marked both the Bard’s birthday and the founder’s day of the host, Delhi Public School (DPS) Megacity.
“We organise dictionary quizzes across the country. We are also among the first publishers to bring out a Shakespeare dictionary,” said Priyadarshini Bhattacharyya, associate director, marketing, Oxford University Press in her address.
Three-member teams, drawn from classes IX to XII, took a written test by quiz master Samanway Banerjee to qualify. The prelims brought in modern-day actors Al Pacino, Maggie Smith and Andrew Scott, playing Shylock, Desdemona and Hamlet respectively, and required awareness of lesser-known Shakespeare plays like Two Gentlemen of Verona and Timon of Athens.
DPS Megacity topped with 13 points, while Don Bosco Bandel and Future Foundation followed with 11 and 10.5 respectively. The other three teams to make it were DPS Newtown, DPS Barasat and DPS Ruby Park.
DPS Newtown shot to an early lead with 60 points but the hosts “pounced” to get a 25-point lead by naming the play that was inspired by the 1588 Robert Greene novel Pandosto (The Winter’s Tale).
The second round topics ranged from Margaret Hughes as the first woman to act on stage, in a King’s Company production of Othello in 1660, to Irrfan Khan in the Hamlet-inspired Haider in 2014. The coup de grace in this round was a visual clue showing a bottle of sanitiser, launched during the pandemic in England, and asking for its brand name. In the context of a Shakespeare quiz, it required brilliant guesswork to hit upon the answer — Lady Macbeth — which came from the audience.
An audio clue played the soundtrack of Uttam Kumar’s Othello scene in Saptapadi and the teams were asked to identify the dubbed voice. After incorrect guesses of Sombhu Mitra and Sabyasachi Chakraborty, by others, it was again the home team which got it right — Utpal Dutt.
DPS Megacity sat on top of the pile at 115 points at the end of the second round, with DPS Newtown falling back at 85, but with Don Bosco Bandel hot on the latter’s heels at 80.
In the third round, Banerjee asked for a sport referred to in Richard III in the queen’s quote “What sport shall we devise here in this garden…”, adding as a clue that it was played in the last Commonwealth Games in Birmingham as well (lawn bowls). Megacity lost five points with a wrong answer but DPS Bandel scooped up 10, overtaking DPS Newtown.
By the time Judi Dench’s monologue was played from her appearance on The Graham Norton Show — one team wrongly identified the voice as Julia Roberts’ — Bandel went past Newtown again, which had caught up in between.
The last question of the quiz — on Nelson Mandela’s “Robben Island Bible” actually being Shakespeare’s complete works smuggled into the prison — was picked by DPS Ruby Park but they failed to break into the top three.
DPS Megacity had reached a mammoth 170 by identifying Denzel Washington’s voice in Othello. “We worked very hard for two weeks. Our English teacher selected us,” said Class IX student Devayudh Das, who stays near Kali Park in Rajarhat. The other winners in the home team were Amalia Das and Meher Bhurji. Don Bosco Bandel came second and DPS Newtown third.
“Our quiz team has gone to Youthopia (The Heritage School fest). The three of us have teamed up for the first time,” said Ayaana Banerjee, an FE Block resident studying in Class X, DPS Newtown. The team also comprised Trinetra Bihani, a resident of CD Block, and Priyadarshini Das.
The vote of thanks was delivered by senior school headmaster Anirban Roy.