Sample Question 1

Worth 20 points total as follows:
 

• 5 points: Identify the work and the author(s) as well as the approximate date of publication.
• 3 points: Identify the passage’s speaker and the context in which the speaker is speaking.
• 12 points: Briefly discuss the significance of the passage with regard to the larger work and to the broader field of texts and cultural history we have covered in the course so far.

[18] This great authority being indivisible, and inseparably annexed to the sovereignty, there is little ground for the opinion of them, that say of sovereign kings, though they be singulis majores, of greater power than every one of their subjects, yet they be universis minores, of less power than them all together. For if by all together, they mean not the collective body as one person, then all together, and every one, signify the same; and the speech is absurd. But if by all together, they understand them as one person (which person the sovereign bears,) then the power of all together, is the same with the sovereigns power; and so again the speech is absurd; which absurdity they see well enough, when the soveignty is in an assembly of the people; but in a monarch they see it not; and yet the power of Soveraignty is the same in whomsoever it be placed.

[19] And as the power, so also the honour of the sovereign, ought to be greater, than that of any, or all the subjects. For in the sovereignty is the fountain of honour. The dignities of Lord, Earle, Duke, and Prince are his creatures. As in the presence of the master, the servants are equal, and without any honour at all; So are the subjects, in the presence of the sovereign. And though they shine, some more, some less, when they are out of his sight; yet in his presence, they shine no more than the stars in [the] presence of the sun.