Twelfth Night Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
98 free Twelfth Night trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Twelfth Night is the Shakespeare comedy people quote without realising it, from its opening line about music to the steward convinced his mistress adores him. Beneath the jokes it follows a shipwrecked girl who dresses as a boy, a countess in mourning who falls for the wrong messenger, and a household at war over whether anyone is allowed to have fun. These 98 questions cover the plot and its characters, the famous lines, the sources Shakespeare borrowed from and the night law students first saw it in 1602, then move through four centuries of stagings on radio, film and Broadway, the teen update She's the Man, and the midwinter festival that gives the play its name. It suits an English class, a theatre group or a pub quiz round with a Shakespeare theme. Play on your phone with instant explanations, or print it and read the questions aloud; every answer is cited to a reference page.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What name does shipwrecked Viola adopt when she disguises herself as a page to the Duke of Illyria?
Cesario
Cesario is the page Olivia promptly falls for, and Viola keeps the disguise so long that her own twin is later mistaken for him.
Q 02Which character, in love with the idea of love, opens Twelfth Night with 'If music be the food of love, play on'?
Orsino
Orsino spends the play sending a page to court a countess for him, then ends it engaged to that page once she is revealed as a woman.
Q 03Sir Toby Belch asks Malvolio whether, because he is virtuous, there shall be no more of what?
Cakes and ale
Cakes and ale is Sir Toby's jab at the steward who breaks up his late-night party, and Somerset Maugham took the phrase as the title of a 1930 novel.
Q 04The forged letter Malvolio reads says some are born great, some achieve greatness; how do the rest get it?
Thrust upon them
Thrust upon them is often quoted as Malvolio's own wisdom, yet he is only reading aloud a letter forged to make a fool of him.
Q 05In English Twelfth Night cake tradition a bean made its finder king; what hidden token made a woman queen?
A pea
A pea crowned the queen while the bean crowned the king, and Robert Herrick's 1648 poem has the whole party toast the pair from a bowl of 'lamb's-wool'.
Q 06Who won an Oscar as the queen who orders 'something more cheerful next time, for Twelfth Night' in Shakespeare in Love?
Judi Dench
Judi Dench won Best Supporting Actress as Elizabeth I, and joked in her speech that for eight minutes on screen she should only get a little bit of the statuette.
Q 07Olivia vows in Twelfth Night to mourn for seven years, walking veiled 'like a cloistress', an old word for what?
Nun
Nun is the meaning of 'cloistress', and Olivia drops the vow almost at once, falling for the Duke's disguised messenger.
Q 08Counting Christmas Day as the first of the Twelve Days, the Church of England keeps Twelfth Night on which date?
5 January
5 January is Epiphany Eve, and churches that begin counting on 26 December land the festival a day later, on the evening of Epiphany itself.
Q 09Who forges the love letter in Olivia's handwriting that tricks the steward Malvolio into wooing his own mistress?
Maria
Maria, Olivia's waiting-gentlewoman, plots the letter to punish Malvolio for breaking up a late-night party, and ends the play married to Sir Toby.
Q 10Which foolish knight, a rival suitor to Olivia, is goaded into a duel with Viola in her page disguise?
Sir Andrew Aguecheek
Sir Andrew Aguecheek is being bled of his money by Sir Toby, who stages the duel knowing that neither the knight nor the terrified 'page' can fight.
Q 11Which fool attached to Olivia's household sings 'O Mistress Mine' and 'Come Away, Death' in Twelfth Night?
Feste
Feste is named only once in the whole play, when the Duke asks who sang to him the night before, and he moonlights entertaining at the Duke's house too.
Q 12Under which curate's name does Olivia's fool torment the imprisoned Malvolio in Twelfth Night?
Sir Topas
Sir Topas is a voice the fool puts on outside the prisoner's door, insisting Malvolio is mad whatever he says and demanding he accept Pythagoras's doctrine of reincarnation.
Q 13Which sea captain, an old enemy of the Duke, rescues Sebastian and follows him into hostile Illyria?
Antonio
Q 21Before settling on a page's role, Viola first asks the sea captain to present her to the Duke as what?
A eunuch
A eunuch is Viola's first plan for getting into the Duke's service, an idea the play quietly drops once she appears at court as a young page.
Q 22Illyria, where Twelfth Night is set, was a real ancient region on the eastern shore of which sea?
Adriatic
Adriatic Illyria covered today's Albania and Montenegro and became a Roman province, yet the play fills it with London in-jokes.
Q 23Elizabethan Twelfth Night festivities were led by which mock official, who called for songs and mummery?
Lord of Misrule
The Lord of Misrule presided over licensed disorder, and the play is often read as preserving that topsy-turvy mood, with a steward humbled and a servant wed to a knight.
Antonio's devotion gets him arrested by the Duke's officers when he interrupts a duel, mistaking the disguised Viola for the twin he saved.
Q 14Which token from Olivia, carried by her steward, tells the disguised Viola that the countess has fallen for her?
A ring
A ring is the pretext, and Viola's soliloquy on it admits that only time can untangle a knot too hard for her to untie.
Q 15In Twelfth Night, Olivia's stern steward Malvolio is described as 'a kind of' what?
Puritan
Puritan is a fellow servant's label for him, and one reveller says he would beat the steward like a dog for it before the speaker takes it back, calling him only a time-pleaser.
Q 16Malvolio's name, apt for Twelfth Night's pompous steward, comes from the Italian for what?
Ill will
Ill will is the meaning, and Shakespeare had already used its opposite: Benvolio, 'good will', is the peacemaker of an earlier tragedy.
Q 17Where is Malvolio confined, in a common treatment for madness at the time, after following the letter's absurd orders?
A dark room
A dark room, with the patient bound, was a common Elizabethan treatment for madness, and the fool visits the prisoner there both as himself and in the voice of a curate.
Q 18When Olivia asks the disguised Viola 'Are you a comedian?', what does the Elizabethan word mean?
An actor
An actor is what 'comedian' meant, and Viola's reply, 'I am not that I play', admits her disguise without giving it away.
Q 19Which inn, named like a real Bankside house near the Globe, does Sebastian's rescuer call the best lodging in Illyria?
The Elephant
The Elephant is placed 'in the south suburbs' of Illyria, and a real Elephant stood on Bankside, London's own southern suburb and the Globe's neighbourhood.
Q 20Where do the twins Viola and Sebastian come from, the home Viola names when reunited with her brother?
Messaline
Messaline is Viola's answer when her twin asks 'What countryman?', and the pair then test each other with their father's name, the mole on his brow and the day he died.
Q 24Law student John Manningham saw the first recorded Twelfth Night at a feast in the hall of which Inn of Court?
Middle Temple
Middle Temple Hall still stands, and Shakespeare's Globe restaged the play there in 2002 to mark the premiere's 400th anniversary, exactly where law students had watched it.
Q 25Twelfth Night leans on Gl'ingannati, a 1531 comedy written collectively by an academy in which Italian city?
Siena
Siena's Accademia degli Intronati wrote 'The Deceived Ones' as a group, and the diarist who saw the 1602 premiere already spotted its likeness to the 'Inganni' plays.
Q 26Which palace held Elizabeth I's Twelfth Night revels of 1601, for which some scholars say the play was commissioned?
Whitehall
Whitehall's guest of honour that night was a visiting Italian duke whose name echoes the play's lovesick one, the clue behind Leslie Hotson's 1954 theory.
Q 27Which servant of Olivia's confesses in the final scene that he and Sir Toby set the letter trap for Malvolio?
Fabian
Fabian owns up that he and Sir Toby set the trap, pleads that it deserves laughter rather than revenge, and reveals that Sir Toby has married the letter's forger.
Q 28Which gathering of bishops in AD 567 declared the days from Christmas to Epiphany one festive season?
Council of Tours
Council of Tours bishops also set a fast before the feast, ordering monks to fast every day of December until Christmas.
Q 29Which London theatre has served its company a Twelfth Night cake since 1795, paid for by Robert Baddeley's will?
Drury Lane
Drury Lane's Theatre Royal has kept up Baddeley's £100 bequest for more than 200 years, the money invested to buy cake and punch for the resident company each Twelfth Night.
Q 30Who directed the 1996 film of Twelfth Night, set in the 19th century with Imogen Stubbs as Viola?
Trevor Nunn
Trevor Nunn cast his then wife, Imogen Stubbs, as Viola and filmed in Cornwall, with Lanhydrock House and Padstow standing in for Illyria.