Explanation

The clue is that Shakespeare was only relying on vibrant and colorful individuals, so the blank must be the opposite of vibrant and colorful. You need a word that means ordinary.

Eliminate original and extraordinary, synonyms that have the opposite meaning of ordinary. Eliminate imperial, which means regal, and domineering, which means authoritarian; neither one relates to the context of the blank. Choices (A) and (F), pedestrian and mundane, both mean common or ordinary and produce equivalent, appropriate sentences.

Hence options A and F are corrrect!