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50 free A Midsummer Night's Dream trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This A Midsummer Night's Dream trivia quiz covers Shakespeare's most performed comedy from Theseus's wedding plans to Puck's closing apology. The early questions test the plot and characters: the ancient Athenian law that threatens Hermia, the four lovers and who loves whom, the changeling boy that sets Oberon against Titania, the flower called love-in-idleness, Puck's mistake with the sleeping Athenians, and the night Titania 'waked, and straightway loved an ass'. The mechanicals get their due too, from Peter Quince's casting session to Snug the joiner's roaring lion and the roles of Wall and Moonshine. The middle of the quiz turns to the play's history: when it was written and printed, Ovid and Chaucer among its sources, Samuel Pepys's verdict, the drolls of the Puritan years, Purcell's Fairy-Queen, Madame Vestris and the seventy years when women played Oberon, Beerbohm Tree's live rabbits, and Peter Brook's white box. The last questions cover the music and screen versions: Mendelssohn's overture written at 17 and his Wedding March, Britten's opera with a countertenor Oberon, Balanchine and Ashton, the 1935 Reinhardt film with James Cagney and Mickey Rooney, the 1999 Michael Hoffman film with bicycles in Tuscany, and Neil Gaiman's award-winning Sandman issue. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the play and its adaptations.
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Q 01In which city is A Midsummer Night's Dream set?
Athens
The plots revolve around the wedding of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta, though most of the action takes place in the fairy-haunted woods outside the city.
Q 02Hippolyta, whom Theseus is about to marry, is queen of which people?
The Amazons
The couple are four days from their wedding when the play opens, and Theseus complains about the wait.
Q 03What does the Athenian law invoked by Egeus threaten if Hermia refuses to marry the man he has chosen?
Death
Theseus offers a third option: lifelong chastity as a nun of Diana, which the lovers reject before fleeing to the woods.
Q 04How many days before Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding does the play open?
Four
Theseus is unhappy about the wait, while Hippolyta says it will pass like a dream.
Q 05Where do Hermia and Lysander plan to flee to escape Athenian law?
His aunt's house
Hermia tells the plan to Helena, who betrays it to Demetrius in the hope of winning back his love.
Q 06What is Theseus's Master of the Revels called?
Philostrate
He is one of the Athenians listed alongside Egeus, Hermia's father.
Q 07Over what are Oberon and Titania quarrelling?
An Indian changeling boy
Titania refuses to give up the child because his mother was one of her worshippers; Oberon wants him as his 'knight' or 'henchman'.
Q 08What is the name of the flower whose juice makes a sleeper dote on the first creature seen on waking?
Love-in-idleness
It turned from white to purple when struck by Cupid's arrow; Oberon can undo the charm 'with another herb'.
Q 09How does Oberon describe Puck when he first summons him?
A shrewd and knavish sprite
Puck's other name is Robin Goodfellow; the Quarto and Folio use both names inconsistently.
Q 10Puck anoints the wrong sleeping Athenian. Who wakes him and instantly becomes the object of his love?
Helena
Never having seen either man, Puck mistook Lysander for Demetrius; Helena thinks she is being mocked and runs away.
Q 11What does Hermia dream just before she wakes to find Lysander gone?
A snake ate her heart
She goes out into the woods to search for him.
Q 12What is Nick Bottom's trade?
Weaver
He plays Pyramus but wants to play Thisbe and the Lion as well; Quince the carpenter directs.
Q 13Which of the mechanicals is a bellows-mender who plays Thisbe?
Francis Flute
Snout the tinker plays Wall and Starveling the tailor plays Moonshine.
Q 14Which role does Snug the joiner take, because he is 'slow of study'?
Q 21What is the full title of the mechanicals' play?
The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe
The nobles laugh at the terrible performance as if it were meant to be a comedy.
Q 22Who has the last word in the play, suggesting the audience may only have dreamed it all?
Puck
After the fairies bless the house, he 'restores amends' in a closing speech to the audience.
Q 23The play is usually dated to 1595 or early 1596 partly because of an allusion to which poem?
Spenser's Epithalamion
The Lion
Quince reassures him that the part is 'nothing but roaring'.
Q 15Where does Quince tell the players they will meet to rehearse?
At the Duke's oak
They rehearse in the forest near Titania's bower, which is how Bottom comes to be transformed.
Q 16What does Puck do to Bottom during the rehearsal in the woods?
Gives him a donkey's head
Puck takes the name Bottom as another word for a jackass; the other workmen flee, crying that they are haunted.
Q 17What wakes Titania and makes her fall in love with the transformed Bottom?
His singing
In the play's words, 'Titania waked, and straightway loved an ass'; while she dotes on him, Oberon takes the changeling.
Q 18How does Puck stop the two Athenian men from fighting over the same woman?
He mimics their voices and leads them apart
Once all four lovers sleep in the glade, he applies the antidote to Lysander so his love returns to Hermia.
Q 19What are Theseus and Hippolyta doing when they discover the sleeping lovers?
Hunting
Since Demetrius no longer loves Hermia, Theseus overrules Egeus and arranges a group wedding.
Q 20Which of these is one of Titania's fairy servants?
Mustardseed
Peaseblossom, Cobweb and Moth are the others who wait on the transformed Bottom at her command.
Some scholars think it was written for an aristocratic wedding such as that of Thomas Berkeley and Elizabeth Carey.
Q 24Which bookseller registered the play in October 1600 and published the first quarto?
Thomas Fisher
Jaggard printed the second quarto in 1619 as part of his 'False Folio', and the play appeared again in the First Folio of 1623.
Q 25Which of Chaucer's works, along with Ovid's Metamorphoses, is cited as an inspiration for the play?
The Knight's Tale
The play is not an adaptation of any single earlier work.
Q 26Which diarist wrote in 1662 that it was 'the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life'?
Samuel Pepys
He conceded it had 'some good dancing and some handsome women'.
Q 27During the Puritan closure of the theatres, the Bottom subplot survived as what kind of performance?
A droll
Drolls were short comic playlets attached to acrobats' and jugglers' acts to get round the ban.
Q 28Which composer's 1692 masque The Fairy-Queen was based on the play?
Henry Purcell
It ran successfully at the Dorset Garden Theatre but was not revived; the full play was not staged again until the 1840s.
Q 29Madame Vestris's 1840 revival began a seventy-year tradition of which two roles being played by women?
Oberon and Puck
Vestris herself took the fairy king's role at Covent Garden, adding music and ballet.
Q 30What live animals followed trails of food across the stage in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's 1911 production?
Rabbits
It also had mechanical birds in beech trees, a simulated stream and fairies wearing battery-powered lights.