Shakespeare
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145 free Shakespeare trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Shakespeare trivia questions with answers. Think you're a Shakespeare expert? Put your knowledge to the test with our comprehensive Shakespeare trivia quiz. From his most famous plays like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet to lesser-known works, this quiz covers the life, times, and literary genius of William Shakespeare. Challenge yourself and discover how much you really know about the world's greatest playwright.
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Q 01Shakespeare's home town, Stratford, stands on which river?
Avon
The Avon gives Stratford-upon-Avon its name, and he never cut his ties to it: his family lived on in the town while he worked in London, he bought one of its largest houses, and he died there in 1616.
Q 02What was the name of Shakespeare's only son, who died aged 11 in 1596?
Hamnet
Hamnet was probably named after a Stratford neighbour, the baker Hamnet Sadler; a few years after burying him, his father wrote a tragedy whose title is one letter away. Edmund, Gilbert and Richard were the boy's uncles.
Q 03What did Shakespeare pointedly leave his wife in his will?
His second-best bed
His second-best bed 'with the furniture' is nearly all the will says of his wife, in a line squeezed in between others; scholars still argue whether it was a snub or a fond nod to their marriage bed.
Q 04Which two monarch-named eras of England’s history did Shakespeare write across?
Elizabethan and Jacobean
Elizabethan and Jacobean: he began writing under Elizabeth I by 1592 and continued into the reign of James I, who made his company the King's Men in 1603.
Q 05A Shakespearean sonnet is built from three quatrains and which closing unit?
A couplet
A couplet ends the form: three quatrains rhymed abab cdcd efef build an argument, and the last two lines, rhymed gg, turn it or clinch it, often with a sting.
Q 06Which candlelit indoor London playhouse became the winter home of Shakespeare's company?
Blackfriars
Blackfriars, a roofed hall lit by candles, held far fewer people than the Globe, but its cheapest seat cost sixpence against a penny to stand at the Globe, so it drew a wealthier crowd.
Q 07Which late play is printed first in the First Folio?
The Tempest
The Tempest opens the 1623 volume although it was among the last plays written; like 17 others it had never been printed before, so without the Folio it would probably be lost.
Q 08William Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, held what profession?
Glover
Glover: John Shakespeare made and sold gloves, dealt in wool on the side without a licence, and rose to be bailiff of Stratford, its mayor, in 1568 before money troubles set in and he dropped out of public life.
Q 09Which rival playwright called Shakespeare an 'upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers' in 1592?
Robert Greene
Robert Greene's name is on the 1592 pamphlet Groats-Worth of Wit, printed just after his death; its jibe twists a line from Henry VI, Part 3 and is the first surviving notice of Shakespeare in London.
Q 10Which words open Hamlet's most famous speech?
To be, or not to be
To be, or not to be opens the prince's Act 3 speech weighing life against death; he believes he is alone, but the king and a courtier have hidden nearby to spy on him.
Q 11Which London playhouse did Shakespeare's company build for itself in 1599?
The Globe Theatre
Members of Shakespeare's company built it themselves on the south bank of the Thames, and tradition gives it the motto Totus mundus agit histrionem, 'all the world plays the actor'.
Q 12Shakespeare's later sonnets address a mistress known by which nickname?
Dark Lady
The Dark Lady is the name critics give the woman of the sonnets from 127 on; one of them refuses to flatter her, saying her eyes are 'nothing like the sun', then swears she is as rare as any.
Q 13Which character in one of Shakespeare's tragedies drowns after going mad?
Ophelia
Q 21Which play features a shipwreck, separated twins and mistaken identities in Illyria?
Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night: the wreck parts the twins Viola and Sebastian, and Viola's disguise as the page Cesario leaves Olivia in love with her while she pines for Orsino.
Q 22Which device is at work when the audience knows Juliet is only drugged while Romeo believes her dead?
Dramatic irony
Dramatic irony: the friar's letter explaining the ruse never reaches Romeo because its carrier is shut in a plague house, so the audience watches him die beside a Juliet they know is alive.
Q 23Who is the main antagonist in Shakespeare's 'Othello'?
Iago
Ophelia loses her mind after her father is killed, then drowns when a willow branch snaps as she hangs flower garlands over a brook; it happens offstage, and the queen brings the news.
Q 14Which Shakespeare play features a notoriously villainous king with a physical deformity?
Richard III
Richard III makes its king a hunchbacked villain; the skeleton found under a Leicester car park in 2012 did have a badly curved spine, but no sign of the withered arm of legend.
Q 15Which playwright succeeded Shakespeare at the King's Men and likely co-wrote his last three plays?
John Fletcher
John Fletcher, already half of the writing duo Beaumont and Fletcher, shared The Two Noble Kinsmen and the lost Cardenio with Shakespeare, then took over as the King's Men's chief playwright.
Q 16Which of these is often classed as one of Shakespeare's 'problem plays'?
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure is filed with the comedies, yet its plot has a judge offer to spare a condemned man if his sister, a novice nun, will sleep with him, and it ends in forced marriages.
Q 17Who was William Shakespeare's wife?
Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway was 26 and pregnant when she married the 18-year-old Shakespeare in 1582; two farmer friends of her family pledged £40 so the wedding could go ahead in a hurry.
Q 18Which play's love quadrangle of Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena is muddled by fairies?
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Puck, told to charm an Athenian, anoints the wrong one, so Lysander and then Demetrius both drop Hermia to chase Helena until the mistake is undone.
Q 19A misfiring stage cannon set Shakespeare's playhouse ablaze in 1613 during a performance of which play?
Henry VIII
Henry VIII, then billed as All Is True: a cannon fired for the king's entrance ignited the Globe's thatch on 29 June 1613, and the theatre was rebuilt in 1614 with a tiled roof.
Q 20Where do Rosalind, Celia and Orlando take refuge after leaving Duke Frederick's court?
The Forest of Arden
The Forest of Arden, where the banished Duke Senior holds a rustic court; there Rosalind, disguised as the youth Ganymede, tests Orlando's love in As You Like It.
Iago, the ensign Othello trusts as 'honest', wrecks him with a lie about his wife, and when exposed he refuses to explain: 'From this time forth I never will speak word.'
Q 24Which play features the line, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players"?
As You Like It
As You Like It: the melancholy Jaques delivers the speech, tracing seven ages of man from the 'mewling and puking' infant to an old age 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything'.
Q 25What was the name of the acting company Shakespeare was a part of, later known as the King's Men?
The Lord Chamberlain's Men
The Lord Chamberlain's Men were run by eight 'sharers' who split the profits; Shakespeare was one of them, and that stake in the company made him a wealthy man.
Q 26Which Shakespeare play, set partly at Portia's Belmont, turns on a 'pound of flesh' bond?
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice: Antonio pledges a pound of his own flesh to borrow 3,000 ducats for a friend, and Portia, disguised as a lawyer, saves him by ruling the bond allows flesh but no blood.
Q 27What do the three witches prophesy for the general Banquo?
His descendants will be kings
His descendants will be kings, though Banquo will not be one himself; the promise drives the new king to have him murdered, and it flattered James I, who traced his line to Banquo.
Q 28In drama, what is the term for a speech in which a character alone on stage speaks their thoughts aloud?
Soliloquy
Soliloquy comes from the Latin for 'speaking alone'; Juliet's 'wherefore art thou Romeo?' is one, spoken in the belief that nobody hears, while Romeo listens in the dark below.
Q 29Which Shakespeare play features the bickering lovers Beatrice and Benedick?
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing: Beatrice and Benedick swear off love until their friends trick each into believing the other is secretly smitten, while Don John's slander nearly wrecks Hero and Claudio's wedding.
Q 30Why did Shakespeare turn from plays to poems like Venus and Adonis in 1593?
The theatres were closed by plague
The theatres were closed by plague, so he wrote narrative verse for a noble patron, and it paid off: Venus and Adonis became his most popular work in print during his lifetime.