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Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Youth and Beauty. Old age and ugliness are so last year.

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In line 18, the word "beadsman" most nearly means... what?

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And here are the potential answers...

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Okay, so now the question that's been on everyone's mind... the question that's been keeping you

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up at night and torturing you at all hours of the day...

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...what in the name of Queen Elizabeth is a beadsman?

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Here's the good news -- this is a literary comprehension question, not a vocab question...

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so we shouldn't really have to know what a beadsman is in order to answer it correctly.

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Instead, there must be some clues in the passage that will lead us in the right direction...

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As it turns out, we can determine the right order by process of elimination...

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For example, it can't be A -- a knight in hiding -- because the speaker already came

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out and said he's hanging up his suit of armor, and will be a knight no more.

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B is possible but not likely, since there's no mention of jewelry-making in the rest of

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the passage, so this would be a bit out of left field.

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Can't be C, because if he's "teaching swains to sing," he can't be in solitude.

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Not unless he's Skyping with them.

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And, by the same logic, he's not retiring to become D -- a swain -- because he claimed

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he's going to be teaching swains, not becoming one.

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And we're left with E -- a person who prays... which totally makes sense, because when people

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pray they often do so over rosary beads.

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Speaking of which, if you're the praying type... you might want to have some rosary beads with

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you on test day.

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Preparation is key, but... it couldn't hurt.

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