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60 free John Milton trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This John Milton trivia quiz covers the whole life of England's great republican poet, not just his epic. The easy questions handle what most readers know: the subject and verse form of Paradise Lost, Satan's most famous line, Areopagitica, the blindness sonnet. Medium questions cover the early poems (the Nativity ode, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, Comus at Ludlow, Lycidas), the Italian journey and Galileo, the teenage bride and the divorce tracts, and Milton's decade as Cromwell's Secretary for Foreign Tongues. The harder end is for English students and pub-quiz specialists: Salmasius and Eikon Basilike, the Ready and Easy Way, the five pounds Milton got for Paradise Lost, the ten books that became twelve, the SATAN acrostic, Blake, Johnson, C. S. Lewis and Empson, De Doctrina Christiana, and where he is buried. We keep Paradise Lost itself to a dozen questions here; our separate Paradise Lost quiz goes book by book. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Milton and his individual works, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Fans should also try our English literature, English Civil War and poetry quizzes.
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Q 01Milton's epic Paradise Lost tells the story of what?
The fall of Adam and Eve
It also follows the rebel angels' war in Heaven and the tempter's journey through Chaos to the new-made Earth.
Q 02Paradise Lost is written in which metrical form?
Blank verse
Milton was the first modern writer to use unrhymed verse outside the theatre and translation, and later added a note explaining 'why the poem rhymes not'.
Q 03Milton was born in December 1608 in which part of London, also home to the Mermaid Tavern?
Bread Street
His father, also John Milton, was a composer whose day job paid for the family's comfortable Cheapside home.
Q 04Milton's father made his living in which profession?
Scrivener
He was also a composer, and the family home stood in Cheapside.
Q 05Where in London was the young Milton educated before Cambridge, beginning Latin and Greek?
St Paul's School
He met his lifelong friend Charles Diodati there.
Q 06Where at Cambridge did Milton study from 1625, sharing an alma mater with Charles Darwin?
Christ's College
He graduated fourth of 24 honours graduates in 1629.
Q 07Because of his fair complexion, what nickname did fellow students give Milton at Cambridge?
The Lady of Christ's
The detail comes from the gossipy 17th-century biographer John Aubrey.
Q 08Milton's first poem to appear in print was an epitaph on which writer?
Shakespeare
It appeared in the Second Folio of 1632, while Milton was still at Cambridge.
Q 09Milton's twin poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso celebrate which contrasting moods?
Mirth and melancholy
Both proceed in couplets of iambic tetrameter and first appeared in the 1645 Poems.
Q 10Milton wrote On the Morning of Christ's Nativity in December 1629, just after what milestone?
Turning 21
The Hymn that makes up most of the ode runs to 27 stanzas.
Q 11Milton's masque Comus was first performed in 1634 at which castle?
Ludlow
It celebrated the Earl of Bridgewater's new post as Lord President of Wales, and his own children played the Lady and her brothers.
Q 12What virtue does the Lady defend against Comus's magical cup in the masque?
Chastity
Thomas Arne's 1738 musical adaptation of the masque ran in London for more than 70 years.
Q 13Milton's pastoral elegy Lycidas mourns which Cambridge friend, drowned in the Irish Sea in 1637?
Edward King
The 193-line poem appeared in a memorial volume, Justa Edouardo King Naufrago, in 1638.
Q 21Milton's 1644 tract Of Education was prompted by discussions with which reformer?
Samuel Hartlib
It urged a reform of the national universities.
Q 22Which 1649 tract by Milton implicitly justified the execution of Charles I and won him a government post?
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
In March 1649 the Council of State rewarded him with a government post.
Q 23Milton's Eikonoklastes was written to demolish which royalist bestseller?
Eikon Basilike
The 'image of the king' portrayed Charles I as an innocent Christian martyr; Milton's title means 'image-breaker'.
Q 14Which critic dismissed Lycidas, saying no one could read it with pleasure 'had he not known its author'?
Samuel Johnson
He objected to the exhausted pastoral idiom and the mixing of Christian and pagan imagery.
Q 15On his 1638 tour of Italy, Milton met which astronomer, then under house arrest?
Galileo
The visit at Arcetri is the only meeting between the two great figures on record; Milton later cited it in Areopagitica.
Q 16Milton cut his continental tour short in 1639 after hearing what?
Reports of civil war brewing in England
He nonetheless lingered another seven months, spending time in Geneva with the uncle of his late friend Diodati.
Q 17In 1642 the 34-year-old Milton married Mary Powell; how old was she?
17
She soon went home to her parents at Forest Hill and did not return until 1645.
Q 18Milton's desertion by his young wife spurred him to write a series of pamphlets arguing for what?
Divorce on grounds of incompatibility
The four tracts, beginning with The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, were condemned by Puritan clergy as heretical.
Q 19Areopagitica (1644) is Milton's famous attack on what?
Pre-publication censorship
It was written against Parliament's Licensing Order of 1643, which the divorce tracts had helped provoke.
Q 20Areopagitica takes its title from a speech by which ancient Athenian orator?
Isocrates
Like its model, it was written as a speech but never delivered aloud to Parliament.
Q 24Milton's First Defence of the English People answered which humanist's defence of monarchy?
Claudius Salmasius
Milton was still fighting Royalist pamphleteers in a Second Defence two years later.
Q 25What official title did Milton hold under the Commonwealth from 1649 to 1660?
Secretary for Foreign Tongues
Once he was blind, his deputies did most of the work.
Q 26By which year had Milton become totally blind?
1652
Bilateral retinal detachment or glaucoma are the likeliest causes.
Q 27Milton's sonnet beginning 'When I consider how my light is spent' ends with which famous line?
They also serve who only stand and wait
The popular title by which the sonnet is known was added a century later by an editor.
Q 28Which fellow poet joined the blind Milton as Latin secretary in 1657 and later helped save him?
Andrew Marvell
By 1660 Marvell was MP for Hull; he also wrote prefatory verses for the 1674 Paradise Lost.
Q 29Milton's Sonnet 16, addressed to 'our chief of men', was written to whom?
Oliver Cromwell
It was not published until 1654; Milton later had major reservations about the Protector.
Q 30What happened to Milton at the Restoration in 1660?
He hid, was arrested and briefly jailed
A warrant was issued and his writings burnt; friends such as Marvell intervened to free him.