Read the excerpt from Midsummer by Derek Walcott. Their thick skulls bled with rancor when the riot police and the skinheads exchanged quips you could trace to the Sonnets, or the Moor’s eclipse. What can be concluded about the speaker’s perspective by the allusions to sonnets and the moor’s eclipse?

The Sonnets and “the Moor’s eclipse” allude to Shakespeare, including Othello, whose central character is a Moor. By saying the riot police and skinheads exchanged quips that could be traced to these works, the speaker connects both groups to a shared literary and cultural tradition. This suggests a common history, not that everyone in the riot has read Shakespeare or that one group alone is to blame. The correct choice is A, “The speaker thinks that the riot police and skinheads have a common history.”

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