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60 free Robin Hood trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
48 free Robin Hood trivia questions with answers. Robin Hood has been robbing the rich for six hundred years, and almost everything you think you know about him arrived late. The oldest ballads have no Maid Marian, no Friar Tuck, no Richard the Lionheart and no giving to the poor; the first record of anyone called Robin Hood is a Yorkshire outlaw whose goods were seized in 1226. This quiz runs 60 questions from the medieval legend (Piers Plowman, the Gest, the May games, the Major Oak, the Yorkshire claim) through Ivanhoe and Howard Pyle to the screen: Errol Flynn's Technicolor classic, Disney's fox, Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, Prince of Thieves and Bryan Adams, Men in Tights, Ridley Scott, the BBC series and the 2018 flop. It starts with warm-ups and works up to questions that reward real folklore knowledge. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a school unit on legends, a movie night or a pub-quiz literature round.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What colour is Robin Hood traditionally dressed in?
Lincoln green
The dyed woollen cloth came from the city of Lincoln, a real medieval textile centre.
Q 02Who is Robin Hood's chief opponent in the legend?
The Sheriff of Nottingham
The enmity with the Sheriff is one of the earliest features of the story, present in the oldest surviving ballad.
Q 03In the oldest ballads, what is Robin Hood's social class?
A yeoman
Attempts to make him a nobleman began in the 16th century; Anthony Munday's plays made him the Earl of Huntingdon.
Q 04Which 14th-century poem contains the first clear reference to 'rhymes of Robin Hood'?
Piers Plowman
William Langland's poem is thought to date from the 1370s, a century before the surviving ballads.
Q 05Written after 1450, what is the earliest surviving ballad about the outlaw?
The Monk
Written after 1450, it already has the Nottingham setting and the feud with the Sheriff, but no Maid Marian or Friar Tuck.
Q 06Which of these characters does NOT appear in the earliest Robin Hood ballads?
Maid Marian
Marian and a jolly friar apparently entered the legend through the May Day games; the minstrel did not turn up until a 17th-century broadside.
Q 07In the early compilation A Gest of Robyn Hode, which king does Robin meet?
Edward
The idea of Robin as a loyalist to Richard the Lionheart during John's misrule only took hold in the 16th century.
Q 08Which 1590s playwright turned Robin Hood into Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, in the reign of Richard I?
Anthony Munday
His two plays even featured Friar Tuck played, in the fiction, by the poet John Skelton.
Q 09Where does the first explicit statement that Robin robbed the rich to give to the poor appear?
John Stow's Annales of England, 1592
No surviving early ballad actually shows him giving to the poor, though the Gest has him lend money to a needy knight.
Q 10Which weapon do Robin's men use in the early ballads, marking them as yeomen?
Swords
Robin does not take up a quarterstaff until the 17th-century ballad of his fight with Little John.
Q 11Which minstrel joined the Merry Men in a 17th-century broadside ballad?
Alan-a-Dale
He is one of the few late additions to stick; Disney made him a rooster narrator in 1973.
Q 12Joseph Ritson's hugely influential 1795 anthology of the outlaw's verse had what title?
A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs and Ballads
Ritson admired Thomas Paine and the French Revolution and cast Robin as a hero against tyranny; Walter Scott used his book for Ivanhoe.
Q 13Which 1819 novel by Walter Scott did much to shape the modern Robin Hood legend?
Ivanhoe
Q 21Which actor was originally cast as Robin in the 1938 film before quitting Warner Bros.?
James Cagney
His walkout handed Errol Flynn the role that defined the character on screen.
Q 22Who plays Marian opposite Flynn in the 1938 film?
Olivia de Havilland
Basil Rathbone plays Guy of Gisbourne and Claude Rains Prince John.
Q 23How many Oscars did The Adventures of Robin Hood win in 1939?
Three
Art direction, editing and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score; it was Warner's third full three-strip Technicolor film.
Which California location stood in for Sherwood Forest in the 1938 film?
Scott's Robin of Locksley helped cement the Saxon-versus-Norman framing later used by the 1938 Hollywood film.
Q 14Which American illustrator's 1883 Merry Adventures of Robin Hood shaped children's versions?
Howard Pyle
Pyle's Robin is a yeoman, not an aristocrat, and never takes on Prince John.
Q 15What are the earliest legal records of a person called Robin Hood, from the 1226 York Assizes?
Goods seized from an outlawed Robert Hod
Robert Hod's goods, worth 32 shillings and 6 pence, were seized; he is the only early 'Robin Hood' known to have been an outlaw.
Q 16From 1261, what did 'Robehod' or 'Robinhood' start appearing as in English legal rolls?
A nickname for outlaws
At least eight 'Rabunhod' references turn up between 1261 and 1300, from Berkshire to York.
Q 17Which famous tree in Sherwood Forest is claimed as the Merry Men's hideout?
The Major Oak
It stands near the village of Edwinstowe, whose church is also linked to the legend.
Q 18Which Tudor king dressed up as Robin Hood in 1510 to surprise Catherine of Aragon in her chamber?
Henry VIII
He brought eleven courtiers and a Maid Marian; Robin Hood games were a staple of May Day by then.
Q 19Besides Sherwood, which northern English region has a strong claim to be Robin Hood's original home?
Yorkshire
The Gest is written in a northern, probably Yorkshire, dialect and several ballads are set in Barnsdale.
Q 20Which Hollywood star plays Robin in the 1938 Technicolor classic The Adventures of Robin Hood?
Errol Flynn
James Cagney was originally cast but walked out on his Warner Bros. contract.
Bidwell Park in Chico
The archery tournament was shot at the old Busch Gardens in Pasadena.
Q 25In Disney's 1973 animated Robin Hood, what animal is Robin?
A fox
The idea grew out of Walt Disney's interest in the Reynard the Fox tales; Marian is a fox too.
Q 26In the Disney version, Prince John is a scrawny, maneless lion voiced by whom?
Peter Ustinov
Terry-Thomas voices his snake sidekick Sir Hiss and Phil Harris is the bear Little John.
Q 27Which country singer voices the rooster minstrel who narrates Disney's Robin Hood?
Roger Miller
He also wrote and sang 'Oo-De-Lally' and 'Whistle Stop'.
Q 28Disney's Robin Hood recycled animation from which earlier films in the 'Phony King of England' dance?
Snow White, The Jungle Book and The Aristocats
The animators reused the sequences to hit their deadline; the film cost $5 million and made $33 million.
Q 29Who plays the villainous Sheriff, George, in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)?
Alan Rickman
He won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor and, by his own account, had Ruby Wax secretly punch up his lines.
Q 30Who plays Azeem, the Moor who owes Robin a life debt, in Prince of Thieves?
Morgan Freeman
Azeem kills the witch Mortianna in the finale to repay the debt.