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50 free The Tempest trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Tempest trivia quiz covers Shakespeare's late romance from the opening storm to the epilogue in which Prospero asks the audience to free him with applause. The easy questions handle the plot: who usurped whom, which spirit raises the storm, whose son falls for Miranda, and what the drunken butler and jester get up to with Caliban. From there it moves into the play's sources, from the 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda to Montaigne's cannibals and Ovid's Medea. The harder end is for English students and theatre lovers: which scrivener prepared the First Folio text, why 'wise' might really be 'wife', the Restoration adaptation that gave Miranda a sister, the 1838 production that finally restored Shakespeare's words, the moons of Uranus that borrow the play's names, and the science-fiction film that moved the story to Altair IV. There are also questions on Aimé Césaire, Margaret Atwood, W. H. Auden, Robert Browning, John Gielgud and Julie Taymor's gender-swapped Prospera. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the play, its characters, sources and adaptations before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our Shakespeare, Hamlet and English literature quizzes are natural next stops.
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Q 01Prospero, the magician at the centre of The Tempest, was formerly the duke of which city?
Milan
His treacherous brother Antonio usurped him twelve years before the play begins, with help from the King of Naples.
Q 02Who is Prospero's treacherous brother?
Antonio
On the island he conspires again, this time with Sebastian to murder the King of Naples.
Q 03Alonso, who helped depose Prospero, is king of which realm?
Naples
The court party was sailing home from Tunis when Prospero's storm caught them.
Q 04Which airy spirit does Prospero free from a tree and bind into his service?
Ariel
The name means 'Lion of God' in Hebrew, and the spirit later appears disguised as a harpy and as the goddess Ceres.
Q 05Which witch, banished from Algiers, imprisoned Ariel in a cloven pine before Prospero arrived?
Sycorax
She never appears on stage; she died before Prospero landed, leaving her son Caliban behind.
Q 06How many years was Ariel trapped in the pine before Prospero released him?
12
Prospero uses that rescue as leverage whenever the spirit asks for his freedom.
Q 07What is the name of Prospero's daughter, the play's only female character to appear on stage?
Miranda
She was three when banished to the island and is fifteen by the time the play begins.
Q 08Which shipwrecked prince falls in love with Prospero's daughter?
Ferdinand
He is the King of Naples' son and heir, and Prospero deliberately steers the youth into the romance.
Q 09Which two comic characters join Caliban in a failed 'rebellion' against Prospero?
Trinculo and Stephano
One is the king's jester and the other his drunken butler; they end up chased into a swamp by spirit hounds.
Q 10Prospero's loyal old counsellor, who helped him escape Milan, is called what?
Gonzalo
His speech imagining an ideal commonwealth echoes a famous French essay on the New World.
Q 11Which three goddesses appear in the Act IV betrothal masque?
Juno, Ceres and Iris
The masque is broken off when Prospero suddenly remembers the plot against his life.
Q 12In the epilogue, Prospero asks the audience to set him free with what?
Their applause
The moment has often been read as Shakespeare's own farewell to the stage.
Q 13The Tempest is thought to have been written in which years?
1610–1611
It is one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote alone, though later collaborations followed.
Q 21The Folio text of The Tempest was based on a manuscript prepared by which scrivener of the King's Men?
Ralph Crane
He loved hyphens and apostrophes and may be responsible for the play's unusually elaborate stage directions.
Q 22A famous Tempest textual crux asks whether a word Ferdinand speaks after the masque is 'wise' or what?
Wife
A broken piece of type on the long 's' may have changed the word; Oxford prints one reading and Arden the other.
Q 23In which category does the 1623 collected edition list The Tempest, despite its tragic themes?
Comedies
Modern critics created the label 'late romance' for it and Shakespeare's other final plays.
Q 14Which playwright collaborated with Shakespeare on Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen after The Tempest?
John Fletcher
Their lost play Cardenio also postdates The Tempest, so it was not truly Shakespeare's final work.
Q 15The wreck of which ship on Bermuda in 1609 is widely thought to have inspired the play's opening?
Sea Venture
William Strachey's eyewitness account circulated in 1610, and Shakespeare knew members of the Virginia Company.
Q 16The ship wrecked on Bermuda in 1609 was the flagship of a supply mission to which struggling colony?
Jamestown
Her crew and passengers washed up on uninhabited Bermuda during the Third Supply of 1609.
Q 17Prospero's speech renouncing magic borrows from which sorceress's invocation in Ovid's Metamorphoses?
Medea
Many in Shakespeare's audience would have known the source, which complicates Prospero's claim to practise only 'white' magic.
Q 18The old counsellor's vision of an ideal society echoes an essay by which French writer, translated by Florio in 1603?
Montaigne
The essay 'Of the Canibales' praised the natives of the Caribbean for having no trade, letters or magistrates.
Q 19The Tempest's earliest printed text appears in which 1623 collection?
The First Folio
It is the very first play in the volume and is considered the cleanest printed text of all 36.
Q 20Which two colleagues of Shakespeare gathered and edited the plays for the 1623 collected edition?
John Heminges and Henry Condell
Of perhaps 750 copies printed, 235 survive, with 82 at the Folger Library in Washington.
Q 24The earliest recorded performance of The Tempest, on 1 November 1611, was before James I at which palace?
Whitehall
It was played by the King's Men on Hallowmas night, and again at court during the 1612-13 wedding festivities of Princess Elizabeth.
Q 25Stage directions suggest the play was written with which indoor theatre in mind rather than the Globe?
Blackfriars
John Dryden stated in 1669 that it had been performed there.
Q 26Dryden and Davenant's 1667 Tempest adaptation gave Prospero's daughter a sister named what?
Dorinda
They also gave Caliban a sister called Sycorax, and Pepys thought their version was Shakespeare's own.
Q 27Whose 1838 production finally restored Shakespeare's own text over the adapted versions?
William Charles Macready
George Bennett's Caliban in it was praised for showing resistance to tyranny.
Q 28Which actor, hailed as the 20th century's greatest stage Prospero, played the role at 87 in Prospero's Books?
John Gielgud
He voiced every character in Peter Greenaway's 1991 film, which was famous for its nudity and digital imagery.
Q 29Which 1956 sci-fi film transplanted The Tempest to Altair IV?
Forbidden Planet
It was the first film of any genre with an entirely electronic score, and introduced Robby the Robot.
Q 30In the 1956 science-fiction version, the Prospero figure is a scientist named what?
Edward Morbius
He warns the starship C-57D not to land, and his household robot Robby became a screen icon.