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50 free King Lear trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
King Lear is the bleakest of Shakespeare's tragedies and, many would say, the greatest, and this quiz covers it from the first scene to the last. It follows the plot closely: the love test, Cordelia's nothing, the suitors from Burgundy and France, Kent's banishment and disguise, the hundred knights, the storm on the heath, Edmund's forged letter, Edgar as Poor Tom, the blinding of Gloucester, the imaginary cliff at Dover, the poisoned sister and the hanging in the prison. Then it steps back to the making and afterlife of the play: the legendary Leir who founded Leicester, Holinshed and Geoffrey of Monmouth, Sidney's Arcadia, the anonymous King Leir, the eclipses of 1605, the first recorded performance at court, Richard Burbage, the two very different texts of 1608 and 1623, and the astonishing 150 years in which Nahum Tate's happy-ending version drove Shakespeare's off the stage. It closes with Lear on screen and page: Peter Brook and Paul Scofield, Kozintsev, Olivier, Kurosawa's Ran, Anthony Hopkins, Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres and the novels that keep retelling it. Easy questions suit anyone who has read the play at school; the expert tier is for Shakespeare scholars. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the play, its characters and adaptations, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many daughters does King Lear divide his kingdom among?
Three
He offers a third of the realm to each, provided they declare how much they love him.
Q 02What is Cordelia's one-word reply when Lear asks what she can say to earn a richer share?
Nothing
She says she cannot heave her heart into her mouth, and Lear disowns her on the spot.
Q 03One suitor drops the disinherited Cordelia and the other takes her anyway. Which is which?
Burgundy out, France in
The King of France is impressed by her honesty and takes her without a dowry.
Q 04Which of Lear's daughters is the eldest?
Goneril
She is married to the Duke of Albany, an archaic name for Scotland.
Q 05Regan, the middle daughter, is married to which duke?
Cornwall
Her husband is the one who later gouges out Gloucester's eyes.
Q 06How many knights does Lear insist on keeping as his retinue after abdicating?
A hundred
Goneril soon orders him to dismiss half of them, calling them a disorderly mob, and Regan cuts further.
Q 07After Lear banishes him for defending Cordelia, the Earl of Kent returns in disguise under what name?
Caius
Lear hires the stranger after he beats Goneril's steward Oswald for insolence.
Q 08What punishment do Regan and her husband inflict on the disguised Kent after he quarrels with Oswald?
They put him in the stocks
Lear finds his messenger humiliated in the stocks at Gloucester's house, one more insult on the road to madness.
Q 09Edmund, the Earl of Gloucester's illegitimate son, turns his father against his brother Edgar using what?
A forged letter
He then hints that Edgar plans to murder their father, and Gloucester proclaims Edgar an outlaw.
Q 10On the run, Edgar disguises himself as a mad beggar under what name?
Tom o' Bedlam
Lear and the Fool meet him in a hovel during the storm, and he later leads his blinded father toward Dover.
Q 11Who finds Lear and the Fool on the heath in the storm and leads them to shelter?
Kent
Gloucester then arrives and urges him to take Lear to Dover, where a French army will land.
Q 12Which philosopher's Essays, translated by John Florio in 1603, are among the play's possible sources?
Montaigne
Other candidates include Marston's The Malcontent, The London Prodigal and John Higgins's Mirror for Magistrates.
Q 13Who mortally wounds Regan's husband right after he gouges out Gloucester's eyes?
One of his own servants
The servant objects to the torture of Gloucester; Albany, by contrast, is one of the few main characters left alive at the end.
Q 21According to the 12th-century chronicler, the legendary Leir founded which English city?
Leicester
He called it Kaerleir, City of Leir; the name really comes from the old Brittonic name of the River Soar.
Q 22Shakespeare's most important direct source was probably the 1587 second edition of whose Chronicles?
Raphael Holinshed
The same chronicle supplied Macbeth and the English history plays.
Q 23The Gloucester subplot, with a blinded father and two sons, comes from a tale in which Elizabethan work?
Sidney's Arcadia
Sidney's version has a blind Paphlagonian king and sons named Leonatus and Plexirtus.
Q 14Edgar tricks the suicidal Gloucester into believing he has survived a leap from what?
The cliffs of Dover
There is no cliff at all; the blind man simply falls forward on flat ground.
Q 15The steward Oswald is killed by whom while trying to murder Gloucester?
Edgar
In Oswald's pocket Edgar finds Goneril's letter urging Edmund to kill her husband.
Q 16How does Regan die?
Poisoned by Goneril
She collapses declaring she will marry Edmund, unaware her sister has spiked her drink.
Q 17What happens to the eldest daughter after Edmund is mortally wounded?
She kills herself offstage
The play offers little explanation; her plans are thwarted and her poisoning of Regan has been exposed.
Q 18Edmund is defeated in trial by combat by whom, appearing as an anonymous champion?
Edgar
The dying Edmund repents and tries to cancel his order to execute Lear and Cordelia, but too late.
Q 19How does Cordelia die?
Hanged in prison
Edmund had sent her and Lear to prison with secret orders for their execution.
Q 20Which 12th-century writer first recorded Leir, the legendary king of the Britons behind the play?
Geoffrey of Monmouth
In that version Cordelia restores her father to the throne and succeeds him; the deaths are Shakespeare's invention.
Q 24Which characters in the play were created wholly by Shakespeare rather than taken from his sources?
The Fool, Oswald and Edmund's Captain
The daughters come from the chronicles and the Gloucester family from Sidney.
Q 25King Lear's 'late eclipses in the sun and moon' likely refers to two eclipses over London in which year?
1605
A lunar eclipse on 27 September and a solar eclipse on 12 October help date the play to 1605-06.
Q 26King Lear's earliest recorded performance, for James I on 26 December 1606, fell on which feast day?
Saint Stephen's Day
The Stationers' Register notes the court performance, the day after Christmas.
Q 27Shakespeare wrote the role of Lear for which leading tragedian of his company?
Richard Burbage
Shakespeare kept writing older characters for him as both men aged.
Q 28The Fool may have been written for which comic actor of Shakespeare's company?
Robert Armin
The alternative theory is that a boy actor doubled the Fool with another role, since the two never share the stage.
Q 29Modern texts of King Lear are drawn from the 1623 First Folio and a quarto first published in which year?
1608
The two versions differ by at least a thousand words, and Alexander Pope started the habit of conflating them.
Q 30Which writer's 1681 King Lear had a happy ending and an Edgar–Cordelia romance?
Nahum Tate
His adaptation also cut the Fool entirely, and it displaced Shakespeare's play from the professional stage until 1838.