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60 free A Doll's House trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This A Doll's House trivia quiz covers Henrik Ibsen's three-act drama that premiered in Copenhagen in December 1879 and has been slamming doors ever since. The easy questions are the ones any student of the play remembers: Nora's crime, her husband's pet names for her, the blackmailer's name, the dance she rehearses and how the play ends. From there it moves through Dr. Rank's illness, Mrs. Linde's bargain, the letter box, the fancy-dress party and the wedding ring left on the table. The harder end is for theatre historians: the real friend whose forged loan and asylum committal inspired Nora, the actress who refused to leave her children on stage, the ending Ibsen called a barbaric outrage, the London adaptation that turned the play into Breaking a Butterfly, the private production with Eleanor Marx and George Bernard Shaw, the two rival 1973 films, Ingmar Bergman's stripped-down Nora and Lucas Hnath's Tony-winning sequel. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the play, its characters, Ibsen and its adaptations before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Henrik Ibsen, classic plays and world literature quizzes next.
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Q 01Who wrote A Doll's House?
Henrik Ibsen
The Norwegian playwright is often called the father of modern drama.
Q 02In which city did A Doll's House have its world premiere on 21 December 1879?
Copenhagen
Every performance of the Royal Danish Theatre run sold out.
Q 03The action of A Doll's House takes place in a small town in which country?
Norway
The whole action takes place in the Helmers' living room over the Christmas holiday.
Q 04What is the play's original Norwegian and Danish title?
Et dukkehjem
Some American scholars prefer the translation A Doll House.
Q 05What is Torvald Helmer's newly won position at the start of the play?
Bank manager
The promotion means Nora feels the family can finally spend a little at Christmas.
Q 06How many children do Nora and Torvald Helmer have?
Three
They are Ivar, Bobby and Emmy, looked after by the nanny Anne Marie.
Q 07What crime did Nora commit to obtain the loan that paid for Torvald's rest cure?
She forged her father's signature
Women could not conduct such financial business without a man's endorsement, and her father was already dead.
Q 08To which country did the Helmers travel for Torvald's health, using the secretly borrowed money?
Italy
Nora told Torvald her father had provided the money.
Q 09Who lent Nora the money and later blackmails her?
Nils Krogstad
He is a lower-level employee at Torvald's bank whom Torvald intends to fire.
Q 10Which old school friend of Nora's arrives seeking work at the start of Act One?
Kristine
She is a widow who has fallen into poverty and once had a relationship with Krogstad.
Q 11What is Dr. Rank dying of?
Tuberculosis of the spine
The dialogue implies the illness stems from a venereal disease his father contracted.
Q 12What does Dr. Rank confess to Nora in Act Two?
That he has always secretly loved her
The confession stops her from asking him the favour she had planned.
Q 13What does the porter deliver to the Helmer household at the very start of the play?
A Christmas tree
The play begins just before Christmas with Nora returning laden with presents.
Q 21What does Torvald do with the returned bond and Krogstad's letters?
Burns them
He then declares he is saved and forgives his wife, which is when Nora sees him clearly.
Q 22What had Nora expected Torvald to do when the scandal broke?
Sacrifice his reputation to protect her
She had planned to kill herself to prevent him making that sacrifice.
Q 23What two things does Nora leave behind when she walks out?
Her keys and wedding ring
Torvald breaks down and cries, baffled by what has happened.
Q 14Which dance does Nora rehearse frantically to keep Torvald from the letter box?
A tarantella
Critics have read the frenzied wordless dance as a metaphor for her inner terror.
Q 15Where does Krogstad leave his written account of Nora's crime?
In Torvald's locked letter box
Nora keeps Torvald from opening it by feigning anxiety about the dance.
Q 16Which two of Torvald's pet names for Nora are among the animals he calls her?
Squirrel and skylark
He also calls her his little bird; the names emphasise how he treats her as a plaything.
Q 17Why does Nora's husband insist on firing the blackmailer even after deciding he is a decent worker?
He is too familiar with his boss in front of staff
Their past friendship makes Krogstad address him casually, which Torvald finds intolerable.
Q 18Why did Mrs. Linde marry her late husband, as she tells Krogstad in the last act?
To support her sick mother and siblings
She offers Krogstad her love again, and he agrees to withdraw his letter.
Q 19Why does Mrs. Linde tell Krogstad not to take back his letter after all?
She thinks Torvald should know the truth
She believes the marriage can only survive if the secret comes out.
Q 20How does Torvald react on first reading Krogstad's letter?
He calls her unfit to raise their children
He says their marriage will from now on be only a matter of appearances.
Q 24What sound ends the play?
The front door closing
James Huneker wrote in 1905 that the slammed door reverberated across the roof of the world.
Q 25What phrase does Nora use for the change that would be needed for her to return to Torvald?
The most wonderful thing of all
Torvald repeats it to himself, hopefully, a second before the door closes.
Q 26Why did Ibsen write an alternative ending in which Nora stays?
A German actress refused to play the original
Hedwig Raabe declared she would never leave her children; Ibsen called the result a barbaric outrage.
Q 27In the alternative ending, what makes Nora collapse and stay?
She is led to see her sleeping children
The version played in Flensburg, Hamburg and Berlin before protests restored the original.
Q 28Which friend of Ibsen's, committed to an asylum by her husband over a forged loan, inspired Nora?
Laura Kieler
She had asked Ibsen to intervene in her scandal; he declined and wrote the play instead.
Q 29What did the real-life model for Nora need her illegal loan for?
A cure for her husband's tuberculosis
She later became a well-known Danish author and lived to 83, resenting being known only as Ibsen's Nora.
Q 30How did Ibsen describe the play in a note written in Rome in October 1878?
A modern tragedy
He argued that a woman cannot be herself in an exclusively male society with laws made by men.