1. “Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; / But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed / One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods / Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate / Unto the state of Venice.” Portia speaks eloquently in his defence, but whose flesh is Shylock preparing to take in place of his unpaid debt in Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice?

   1. Antonio

   2. Bassanio

   3. Lorenzo

   4. Balthazar

2. What is the name of the debtor’s prison in Dickens’s Little Dorrit, in which William Dorrit – and, in real life, Dickens’s own father – are incarcerated?

   1. Kings’ Bench Prison

   2. Fleet Prison

   3. Marshalsea Prison

   4. Coldbath Fields Prison

3. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and – and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!" Says which of Dickens’s debtors?

   1. Pip

   2. Martin Chuzzlewit

   3. Mr Micawber

   4. William Dorrit

4. “When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probably that something or other – he did not necessarily conceive what – would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time.” Why is Fred Vincy in debt in Middlemarch?

   1. He takes out a large loan to enable him to woo Mary Garth

   2. He is an inveterate gambler

   3. He is paying off a blackmailer

   4. He gives all his money to the poor

5. Which fictional character says that debt "is the whole Cement whereby the Race of Mankind is kept together; yea, of such Vertue and Efficacy that, I say, the whole progeny of Adam would very suddenly perish without it"?

   1. Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas

   2. Voltaire’s Candide

   3. Voltaire’s Pangloss

   4. Rabelais’s Panurge

6. What is the name of the merchant and moneylender who leads Emma Bovary into hopelessly deep debt?

   1. Lheureux

   2. Dupuis

   3. Homais

   4. Vladimir

7. Moneylenders frequent the novels of Anthony Trollope, but how did the author get into debt himself?

   1. He was fired from his job at the post office for writing rather than working

   2. He lost a high profile game of cards with a bank manager

   3. He did not deliver a novel to his publisher for which he had been paid an advance

   4. He could not pay a tailor’s bill and ended up owing £200 because of the high interest charged by a moneylender

8. Which Booker prize-winning novelist has also written a discourse on debt called Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth?

   1. Peter Carey

   2. Salman Rushdie

   3. Margaret Atwood

   4. Penelope Lively

9. In which of the Canterbury Tales does a wife repay her debt of 100 francs by sleeping with a friar and then her husband?

   1. The Shipman’s Tale

   2. The Friar’s Tale

   3. The Wife of Bath’s Tale

   4. The Merchant’s Tale

10. Which famous author went bankrupt owing £17,000 in 1692, penning his best known work to escape from debt?

    1. Jonathan Swift

    2. Daniel Defoe

    3. Walter Scott

    4. John Milton

Solutions

1:A, 2:C, 3:C, 4:B, 5:D, 6:A, 7:D, 8:C, 9:A, 10:A

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   Overdrawn! Debtors' prison for you

2. 1 and above.

   Overdrawn! Debtors' prison for you

3. 2 and above.

   Overdrawn! Debtors' prison for you

4. 3 and above.

   Be careful – you're in danger of drifting into the red

5. 4 and above.

   Be careful – you're in danger of drifting into the red

6. 5 and above.

   Be careful – you're in danger of drifting into the red

7. 6 and above.

   Not bad at all. Firmly in the black

8. 7 and above.

   Not bad at all. Firmly in the black

9. 8 and above.

   Not bad at all. Firmly in the black

10. 9 and above.

    Well done. Your credit is excellent

11. 10 and above.

    Well done. Your credit is excellent