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60 free George Bernard Shaw trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This George Bernard Shaw trivia quiz covers the Dublin-born playwright who dominated English-language theatre for half a century. The easy questions handle the essentials: where he was born, the play that became My Fair Lady, the prize he won in 1925 and the remarkable age he reached. From there it moves into his London years as a music critic, novelist and Fabian pamphleteer, his marriage to a rich Irishwoman and the plays that made his name. The harder end is for theatre lovers and literature students: the pen-name he used at The Star, the play that ran 622 performances, the king who laughed so hard he broke his chair, the play banned by the Lord Chamberlain, the five-play cycle that reaches the year 31,920, the screenplay Oscar he called an insult, his admiration for Stalin, his refusal of the Order of Merit, the alphabet his will paid for and the tree-pruning fall that ended his life. His opinions on vaccination, spelling and vegetarianism get questions too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for Shaw, his plays and his circle before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare and Irish literature quizzes next.
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Q 01In which city was George Bernard Shaw born in 1856?
Dublin
He was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello, a lower-middle-class part of the city.
Q 02Which part of his full name did the playwright insist on dropping?
George
He styled himself Bernard Shaw from 1876, and his will licensed publication only under that name.
Q 03Roughly how many plays did Shaw write?
More than 60
They range from contemporary satire to historical allegory.
Q 04In which year was Shaw awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?
1925
Biographer Weintraub wrote that even the Nobel committee could no longer ignore him after Saint Joan.
Q 05Shaw was the first person to win both a Nobel Prize and what other award?
An Oscar
He called the Academy Award for the Pygmalion screenplay an insult, coming from such a source.
Q 06Which music teacher who shared the Shaws' house did Shaw suspect might have been his biological father?
George John Lee
Lee shared a house with the Shaws from 1862, and Shaw's mother followed him to London in 1873.
Q 07What was Shaw's first job after leaving school in 1871?
Junior clerk at a land agents
He worked hard and quickly rose to head cashier before leaving for London in 1876.
Q 08Where did the young Shaw spend most weekdays educating himself after arriving in London?
The British Museum Reading Room
He briefly worked for the Edison Telephone Company in 1879-80 and again won rapid promotion.
Q 09What was Shaw's first completed novel, written in 1879 but not published until the 1930s?
Immaturity
Publishers found it too grim; his novels never sold well.
Q 10Which lifelong dietary practice did Shaw adopt in 1881, initially for economy?
Vegetarianism
He caught smallpox the same year and grew his famous beard to hide the scar.
Q 11Why did Shaw grow his famous beard?
To hide a smallpox scar
He suffered an attack of smallpox in 1881.
Q 12Which civil servant did Shaw meet at the Zetetical Society in 1880, beginning a lifelong friendship?
Sidney Webb
Shaw said each knew everything the other did not, with brains enough to learn from one another.
Q 13Which economist's 1882 lecture and book Progress and Poverty awakened Shaw's interest in economics?
Henry George
He then spent much of 1883 reading Das Kapital.
Q 21Which monarch reportedly laughed so hard at John Bull's Other Island that he broke his chair?
Edward VII
The play was withheld from Dublin's Abbey Theatre for fear of the affront it might cause.
Q 22Which London theatre staged fourteen Shaw plays from 1904 to 1909 under Vedrenne and Granville-Barker?
The Royal Court
Man and Superman was a success there in 1905.
Q 23Major Barbara (1905) contrasts the morality of arms manufacturers with which organisation?
The Salvation Army
The Doctor's Dilemma, about professional ethics, followed in 1906.
Q 14Which gradualist socialist group did Shaw join in 1884, becoming its most prominent pamphleteer?
The Fabians
He wrote its first manifesto, Fabian Tract No. 2, before the year was out.
Q 15Under what pen-name did Shaw write music criticism for The Star from 1889?
Corno di Bassetto
He moved to The World in 1890 and wrote a weekly column as G.B.S. for over four years.
Q 16Which Norwegian dramatist influenced Shaw's drive to bring realism to English-language drama?
Henrik Ibsen
Eugene O'Neill became a Shaw admirer at 17 after reading The Quintessence of Ibsenism.
Q 17What was Shaw's first play to bring him financial success, in 1894?
Arms and the Man
Its £341 in first-year royalties let him give up his job as a music critic.
Q 18Which Shaw play was written in 1893 but had to wait nine years to reach the stage?
Mrs Warren's Profession
It was also written five years before publication.
Q 19Which Shaw melodrama earned him over £2,000 from Richard Mansfield's 1897 New York production?
The Devil's Disciple
In the 1890s his plays were better known in print than on the West End stage.
Q 20Whom did Shaw marry in June 1898 after she nursed him through a breakdown?
Charlotte Payne-Townshend
Both were 41 at the register office wedding in Covent Garden, and there were no children.
Q 24Which Shaw comedy about suffragettes had his longest initial run, at 622 performances?
Fanny's First
It premiered in 1911.
Q 25Which Shaw play was banned on religious grounds by the Lord Chamberlain and produced at the Abbey Theatre?
The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet
It filled the Abbey Theatre to capacity.
Q 26In which city did Pygmalion premiere in 1913, in German translation?
Vienna
Its English-language premiere came at His Majesty's Theatre in London in April 1914.
Q 27Who played the Cockney flower girl in the 1914 London premiere of Pygmalion?
Mrs Patrick Campbell
Herbert Beerbohm Tree played opposite her as Henry Higgins.
Q 28What is the profession of Henry Higgins in Pygmalion?
Phonetician
He bets he can pass off a Cockney flower girl as a lady.
Q 29Which musical was adapted from Pygmalion in 1956?
My Fair Lady
Shaw disliked musical adaptations, saying his plays set themselves to a verbal music of their own.
Q 30Who wrote the music for The Chocolate Soldier, the 1908 operetta based on Arms and the Man?
Oscar Straus
Shaw disliked musical adaptations, saying his plays set themselves to a verbal music of their own.