Faust
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50 free Faust trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Faust is the story of a brilliant scholar who strikes a bargain with the Devil, and few stories have travelled further. It began with a shadowy German magician of the 1500s, passed through cheap printed booklets and fairground stages, and reached its greatest form in the verse drama that put Goethe at the head of German literature. This quiz covers both halves of Goethe's play: the scholar in his study, the demon Mephistopheles and his disguises, the doomed love affair with Gretchen, and the stranger journey through emperors' courts and Greek myth that follows. It also looks at the real man behind the legend and at the composers, film-makers and novelists who retold the tale in their own ways. It is written for students revising the play, for readers and theatre-goers who know the story, and for anyone who has wondered where the phrase Faustian bargain comes from. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles first follows the scholar home from a country walk disguised as which animal?
A poodle
A poodle trails Faust and his assistant back from their holiday stroll, then swells into a monster in the study before Mephistopheles steps out dressed as a travelling scholar.
Q 02Which figure of Greek myth does Faust conjure for the Emperor, then pursue and win, in Goethe's Faust Part Two?
Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy is at first only a phantom summoned to amuse the court, but Faust falls for the vision and later has a son, Euphorion, with her.
Q 03In Goethe's Faust Part Two, what does Mephistopheles introduce to rescue the Emperor's failing finances?
Paper money
Paper money replaces gold at court, and the Emperor and his advisers promptly squander it: Goethe's satire on the banknotes issued during the French Revolution.
Q 04Which New York institution opened in 1883 with Gounod's Faust and was later nicknamed the Faustspielhaus?
The Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera chose Faust for its very first night, sung in Italian rather than French, and went on staging it so often that the house earned its German nickname.
Q 05Which Mississippi blues guitarist is said, in a legend that mirrors Faust, to have met the Devil at a crossroads?
Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson's crossroads tale was probably borrowed from an older bluesman, the unrelated Tommy Johnson, who first claimed to have traded his soul for skill on the guitar.
Q 06Which 1955 Broadway musical retells the Faust legend with a smooth-talking Devil who goes by Mr. Applegate?
Damn Yankees
Damn Yankees has a middle-aged Washington Senators fan sell his soul to become Joe Hardy, the young slugger his struggling baseball team needs.
Q 07In Goethe's Faust, the bells of which Christian festival stop the despairing scholar from drinking poison?
Easter
Easter bells reach Faust just as he lifts the phial, and they stir memories of a happy childhood rather than any sense of religious duty.
Q 08A 1625 painting in Auerbach's Cellar shows the legendary magician Faust riding out the door astride what?
A wine barrel
A wine barrel was his mount, a feat the old tale credits to the Devil's help, and the young Goethe saw the painting while drinking there as a student.
Q 09Which 1967 British comedy, remade in 2000 with Brendan Fraser, retells the Faust legend with Peter Cook as the Devil?
Bedazzled
Bedazzled has Dudley Moore's lovesick short-order cook trade his soul for seven wishes, each of which the Devil twists against him in Swinging London.
Q 10Despite the pact with Mephistopheles, where does Faust's soul finally go at the end of Goethe's Faust Part Two?
To Heaven
Angels carry Faust to Heaven while Mephistopheles is distracted, a reversal of the old legend, in which the Devil carries the magician off to Hell.
Q 11In Goethe's Faust, what does Mephistopheles insist the scholar use to sign the written pact between them?
Blood
Blood is the Devil's condition, and Faust grumbles that his word of honour ought to be enough before giving in and signing with a single drop.
Q 12In which German city is Auerbach's Cellar, the tavern Goethe frequented as a student and put into Faust?
Leipzig
Leipzig still has the cellar, its second-oldest restaurant, and in the play it is the first stop on the travels of Faust and Mephistopheles.
Q 13On which peak in the Harz Mountains do the witches gather for their revels in Goethe's Faust Part One?
The Brocken
The Brocken is the highest summit of the Harz, and Goethe had walked up it himself in 1777, decades before sending Faust there on Walpurgis Night.
Q 21A book by which Renaissance figure does Faust take up in the opening night scene of Goethe's play?
Nostradamus
Nostradamus wrote the mysterious volume Faust opens, yet neither its sign of the Macrocosm nor the Earth Spirit he then conjures gives him the knowledge he craves.
Q 22The magician of legend was called Johann, but which first name does Goethe give the scholar in Faust?
Heinrich
Heinrich Faust is the name in Goethe's cast, a step away from the real Johann Georg Faust, the wandering alchemist and astrologer behind the legend.
Q 23Which fellow dramatist and Weimar friend urged Goethe in 1797 to take up his unfinished Faust again?
Friedrich Schiller
Q 14Which Austrian composer was only 17 when he set Gretchen's spinning-wheel scene from Faust as a song?
Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert wrote the song in a single October day in 1814, with a whirling piano part that imitates the wheel and its foot treadle.
Q 15The German word Gretchenfrage, a blunt and awkward question, recalls Gretchen asking Faust where he stands on what?
Religion
Religion is what she presses him on in her neighbour's garden, and Germans now call any direct question that forces someone to reveal their true attitude a Gretchen question.
Q 16Which brother of Gretchen challenges Faust to a duel outside her door and curses his sister as he dies?
Valentin
Valentin loses the duel because Mephistopheles guides his opponent's hand, and his dying curse deepens the torment of the already pregnant Gretchen.
Q 17Which bookish assistant joins Faust on his walk outside the town gate in Goethe's play?
Wagner
Wagner, the famulus, stands for the vain scholar who understands only book-learning, a cold contrast to his master's hunger for deeper truths.
Q 18Which book of the Bible does Faust sit down to translate in his study, struggling with its opening sentence?
The Gospel of John
The Gospel of John begins with the Word, but Faust tries several renderings of the Greek Logos and finally settles on the deed, an act rather than speech.
Q 19The wager between the Lord and Mephistopheles that opens Goethe's Faust echoes which Old Testament book?
Job
Job, too, is a good man whom Satan is allowed to torment on a bet, and the Lord in Goethe's prologue is just as sure that his servant will come through.
Q 20Which symbol on Faust's doorway traps Mephistopheles inside the study until rats gnaw part of it away?
A pentagram
A pentagram, slightly misshapen, let the demon slip in but not out, and from this Faust reasons that devils are bound by rules and can be held to a pact.
Friedrich Schiller's prodding worked: Goethe returned to the abandoned play, though Part One only reached print in 1808, three years after his friend had died.
Q 24Goethe sealed the finished manuscript of Faust Part Two in 1831, intending it to be published when?
After his death
After his death was the plan, and it held: Part Two appeared in 1832, the year Goethe died, though he sometimes took it out to read aloud to his daughter-in-law.
Q 25Roughly how long did Goethe work on Faust, from his first drafts as a young man to the sealed Part Two?
About 60 years
About 60 years passed between the first sketches of the early 1770s and the finished Part Two of 1831, so the play grew with Goethe from his twenties into his eighties.
Q 26Which tiny being in a glass flask guides Faust and Mephistopheles to the Classical Walpurgis Night in Goethe's Part Two?
Homunculus
Homunculus is an artificial human made by alchemy in the laboratory of Faust's former assistant, and he can live only inside his glass until he finds a way to be fully born.
Q 27Which old couple from Ovid's Metamorphoses are killed when Faust covets their cottage in Goethe's Part Two?
Baucis and Philemon
Baucis and Philemon own a hut and chapel that Faust wants cleared from his new estate, and Mephistopheles, overreading the order, murders them.
Q 28What great engineering project occupies the ageing Faust in the final acts of Goethe's Faust Part Two?
Winning land from the sea
Winning land from the sea with dikes and drainage ditches is his last ambition, and the Emperor rewards his help in a war with a strip of coast to do it on.
Q 29At Faust's death in Goethe's Part Two, what is showered on the demons who come for him, driving them off?
Rose petals
Rose petals scatter the lesser devils, and the roses even befuddle Mephistopheles with desire, so that he loses his grip on the prize at the last moment.
Q 30Which famous phrase from the closing chorus of Goethe's Faust names the force said to draw humanity onward?
The Eternal Feminine
The Eternal Feminine, das Ewig-Weibliche in German, comes in the last two lines of the play, sung by a mystical chorus rather than by any named character.