The Lady of Shalott
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40 free The Lady of Shalott trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Lady of Shalott is one of the most recognisable poems in English: a woman shut in a tower on a river island, a curse she does not understand, and one glance that ends everything. It has been taught in schools for generations, and its images have travelled far beyond the page. This quiz covers the poem part by part: the setting, the life in the tower, the knight who rides past and the final journey downstream. It also covers the medieval legend the story grew from, the life of its author and how the text changed between its two published versions, and the long afterlife of the poem in Victorian painting, novels, television and popular music. It suits students revising the poem for an English literature class, teachers looking for a quick check after a first reading, and anyone who knows the famous paintings and wants to see how much of the story has stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Which Victorian writer, later made a baron, wrote the Arthurian poem The Lady of Shalott?
Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson published it at 23, then rewrote it so heavily for his 1842 collection that the later text became the standard one.
Q 02Which knight of the Round Table rides past the tower and draws the Lady of Shalott to her window?
Sir Lancelot
Sir Lancelot flashes into her mirror in full sunlight, and in the last stanza he is the one figure who pauses over her body to offer a prayer.
Q 03Which crime writer titled a 1962 village mystery after a line from The Lady of Shalott?
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie has a character quote the poem to describe a film star's frozen look moments before a party guest dies.
Q 04What happens to the Lady of Shalott's mirror at the moment she looks out of her tower window?
It cracks side to side
It cracks side to side, and she cries out that the curse has come upon her: the turning point of the poem, closing the third of its four parts.
Q 05What does the cursed Lady of Shalott do night and day while watching the world in her mirror?
Weaves a magic web
Weaves a magic web is the poem's own phrase: she works the mirror's sights into her cloth without ever learning what the curse on her is.
Q 06Who painted the famous 1888 canvas showing the Lady of Shalott setting out in her boat?
John William Waterhouse
John William Waterhouse returned to the poem in 1894 and 1915, so his three canvases show three different moments of her story.
Q 07In which 1985 television film does the heroine's boat sink while she acts out The Lady of Shalott?
Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Green Gables leaves Anne clinging to a bridge until Gilbert rows past to rescue her, and she still refuses to forgive him.
Q 08Toward which legendary city does the river flow past the island in The Lady of Shalott?
Camelot
Camelot ends the fifth line of almost every stanza, a steady reminder of the world the Lady is forbidden to look at.
Q 09Which country act's If I Die Young video shows a woman adrift holding The Lady of Shalott?
The Band Perry
The Band Perry had Kimberly Perry pushed off in a canoe holding a book of verse, which lies open at the poem in the video's final shot.
Q 10Whose death in 1850 opened the post of Poet Laureate for the author of The Lady of Shalott?
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth died in April 1850 and Samuel Rogers turned the post down, so it passed to a man who then held it for 42 years, longer than anyone else.
Q 11What does the Lady of Shalott write around the prow of her boat before floating away?
Her own name
Her own name is how the court learns who she is: knights, burghers, lords and dames come out onto the wharfs and read it off the prow.
Q 12Who are the only people said to hear the Lady of Shalott's voice echoing from her island?
Reapers
Reapers cutting grain at dawn hear her song drifting down the river, though the poem asks whether anyone has ever actually seen her.
Q 13After seeing two newlyweds in her mirror, the Lady of Shalott says she is half-sick of what?
Shadows
Shadows are all she ever sees, since the mirror shows only reflections of real life, and a 1915 painting takes this very line as its title.
Q 21Which later Arthurian cycle by the author of The Lady of Shalott retells her legend at length?
Idylls of the King
Idylls of the King gives her a family, a tournament and a back story drawn from medieval romance, and there a servant rows her body to court.
Q 22Which maiden of Arthurian legend, who dies of unrequited love, is the Lady of Shalott based on?
Elaine of Astolat
Elaine of Astolat is not the Elaine who bears Sir Galahad, and Shalott is simply another form of Astolat, her home in the older romances.
Q 23The Lady of Shalott drew on a thirteenth-century novella written in which language?
Italian
Q 14Which refrain is the knight singing as he flashes into the Lady of Shalott's mirror?
Tirra lirra
Tirra lirra was sung twice over in the 1832 text and once in the revision, and it later gave the novelist Jessica Anderson a book title.
Q 15In what conditions does the Lady of Shalott come down from her tower to find the boat?
An autumn storm
An autumn storm sets the scene: an east wind strains, the pale yellow woods are fading and rain falls from a low sky, a sharp turn from the sunlit harvest of Part III.
Q 16What colour robes does the Lady of Shalott wear as she lies down in the boat?
White
White robes fly loosely left and right as she drifts, and the 1832 version added a crown of pearl that the revision cut.
Q 17What does the knight she glimpsed say of the dead Lady of Shalott in the poem's closing lines?
She has a lovely face
She has a lovely face is his whole verdict, followed by a brief prayer: he never learns that the sight of him brought on her curse.
Q 18Which solemn procession with plumes, lights and music does the Lady of Shalott watch pass at night?
A funeral
A funeral passing in the mirror is followed at once by two newlyweds, the pairing of death and love that makes her tire of reflections.
Q 19Which two crops fill the long fields along the river at the opening of The Lady of Shalott?
Barley and rye
Barley and rye clothe the wold up to the sky, and the harvest runs through the poem: the knight later rides between the sheaves.
Q 20Which flowers blow around the island in the first stanza of the poem The Lady of Shalott?
Lilies
Lilies return at the climax, when a water-lily in bloom is among the last things she sees before the curse falls.
Italian storytellers gave only the outline: her isolation in the tower and her decision to join the living world appear nowhere in that tale.
Q 24Who told the legend behind The Lady of Shalott centuries earlier in Le Morte d'Arthur?
Thomas Malory
Thomas Malory has the maiden nurse the wounded knight back to health, then die of heartbreak ten days after he rides away.
Q 25In the medieval legend behind The Lady of Shalott, what does the dead maiden hold as her boat reaches court?
A letter
A letter explains why she died, and after it is read out at court the knight she loved sees to her rich burial.
Q 26The Lady of Shalott, told in four parts with a recurring refrain, is usually classed as what?
A ballad
A ballad tells a story in song-like stanzas, and all but one of this poem's 19 close on the word Shalott.
Q 27One influential reading treats The Lady of Shalott as a study of the isolation of which figure?
The artist
The artist is the reading of scholar David Staines, who saw the Arthurian setting as a frame for the dangers of personal isolation.
Q 28The author of The Lady of Shalott was born in 1809 at Somersby rectory in which English county?
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire was his home when, the year the poem appeared, he broke into a local church to ring the bells for the Reform Act.
Q 29What do listeners who hear her by moonlight say that the Lady of Shalott must be?
A fairy
A fairy is their guess because nobody has ever seen her wave a hand or stand at the casement: all the outside world knows is her song.
Q 30How do the knights at the palace react when the dead Lady of Shalott drifts into the city?
They cross themselves
They cross themselves in fear and the sound of royal cheer dies away in the lighted palace, leaving one knight to speak.