Shakespeare Characters Trivia

1. The title of this quiz, "Why that's my spirit" is a quote from Shakespeare that is said by Prospero to Ariel in which play?

From Quiz Why That's My Spirit

Answer: The Tempest

'The Tempest' is believed to have been written between late 1610 and mid 1611 and is regarded as one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote. In the play Prospero and his daughter Miranda are living on a remote island, having been exiled by Prospero's brother Antonio. At the start of the play Prospero conjures a storm which leads to his brother's ship being wrecked on the island and Prospero proceeds to trick and torment his brother and his followers. Ariel is a spirit who inhabits the island and is bound to assist Prospero after Prospero released him from a tree he was trapped in. Prospero uses Ariel to assist him in his tormenting of Antonio and his retinue.

From Quiz Shakespeare Character Anagrams

Answer: Othello

"Othello" is the Shakespeare play most likely to have a black actor in the lead. The play also boasts the number one villain of all time, Iago, according to that bastion of literary knowledge, "The Christian Science Monitor".

From Quiz Run For Your Life

Answer: Romeo

Romeo, of "Romeo and Juliet," kills Juliet's cousin Tybalt in a vengeful rage after Tybalt had killed Mercutio. Romeo is banished for this crime, on pain of death, but cannot resist returning to die next to his wife Juliet when he learns that she is dead. He poisons himself over her apparently-dead body.

From Quiz Shakespeare's Girls

Answer: Rosalind in "As You Like It"

Elizabethan gender-benders ... Shakespeare used the girl-disguised-as-a-boy plot twist in several plays, including the wrong answers here, a useful device when all roles were played by males. However, only in "As You Like It" were the audience treated to the delight of a boy actor playing the role of a girl disguised as a boy pretending to be a girl! Confused? Rosalind's fella, Orlando, is, but it all turns out happily in the end as they marry in a quadruple wedding ceremony. Yes, quadruple. This play does nothing by halves.

From Quiz Confused Characters

Answer: Lady Macbeth talking about Orlando

Lady Macbeth, from "Macbeth" (or The Scottish Play), is famous for trying to wash bloodstains out of her hands, and Orlando, from "As You Like It," writes bad love poetry to Rosalind, with whom he is head over heels in love. In the forest of Arden, Orlando pins his horrible poetry to the trees. Rosalind finds it and reads it to Touchstone, who comments, "Truly, the tree yields bad fruit" (3.2).

From Quiz Shakespeare's Smaller Characters

Answer: The Taming of the Shrew

Gremio was a suitor to the fair Bianca, sister of the shrewish Katherina. Tranio and Biondello were servants to Lucentio, another of Bianca's suitors. Vincentio, an old gentleman of Pisa, also crops up in "Measure for Measure"

From Quiz Who's Who in Shakespeare

Answer: Falstaff

Falstaff is the drinking, fun loving coward and companion to Hal in the two parts of Henry IV. He also appears in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor'.

From Quiz Shakespeare Couples

Answer: Bassanio

Antonio is the merchant of Venice who lends Bassanio money so he can marry Portia. He borrows it from Shylock until his ships come in, but when they don't, Shylock literally wants his "pound of flesh" (which is where the term comes from). Portia pretends to be a male lawyer and saves Antonio. When she goes to do this she leaves her house in the care of Bassanio's friend Lorenzo (who's married to Shylock's daughter!)

From Quiz Shakespearean Dukes and Earls I

Answer: Arthur, Duke of Brittany

Arthur, Duke of Brittany, is King John's nephew, the son of the King's older brother Geoffrey. Many view Arthur as having a superior claim to the throne than John. John tries to have Arthur killed. He later repents, but Arthur throws himself off a castle wall and dies anyway.

From Quiz Shakespeare's Criminals

Answer: Macbeth

Fans of 'Macbeth', I recommend trying to find a chance to see Bob Carlton's 'From A Jack To A King'. A brilliant take on Shakespeare's work, with a fantastic sixties soundtrack!

From Quiz Shakespearean Deaths

Answer: Macduff

In the climax to this bloody play, Macduff avenges the deaths of his wife and son by killing Macbeth, and Malcolm is crowned king. One may recall the line, "Lay on, Macduff."

From Quiz Death by Shakespeare

Answer: Drinking poison and stabbing

Juliet takes a potion which leads Romeo to think she's killed herself. He swallows poison himself... Juliet comes to and finds Romeo's dead body and stabs herself. Oh, tragedy! oh, confusion!

From Quiz Why That's My Spirit

Answer: Father

'Hamlet' is set in Denmark and is the longest play written by Shakespeare. In Act 1 of the play a ghost appears on the battlements of the castle and tells Hamlet that it is the ghost of his father and that he was murdered by Hamlet's uncle Claudius who is now the king. The rest of the play sees Hamlet pretending to be mad while he tries to find out if the ghost is telling the truth and to take revenge on his uncle.

From Quiz Most Evil Villains of Shakespeare

Answer: Goneril poisons Regan and then stabs herself

Goneril and Regan start to self-destruct as the war pitting Albany and Cornwall's forces against Lear and the forces of France starts up. Regan, newly widowed after Cornwall's death, is interested in Edmund, and still-married Goneril becomes too angry about this to let her sister live. She then commits suicide offstage.

From Quiz Shakespeare's Characters

Answer: Bianca

The bad-tempered Katherina Minola is the 'shrew' from the title of Shakespeare's play, and the focus of the story is her relationship with Petruchio. Bianca, the other sister of the Paduan lord Baptista, has sworn not to marry until Katherina has done so, with the result that Bianca's various suitors (Gremio, Lucentio and Hortensio) agree to work together to get Katherina married off. In the 1967 Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton film version of the play, Natasha Pyne plays Bianca. In the 1953 adaptation, "Kiss Me Kate", Ann Miller plays Lois Lane (ie Bianca). The alternatives are the three major female characters in another Shakespeare play, "The Comedy of Errors".

From Quiz Shakespeare Character Anagrams

Answer: Desdemona

Desdemona is the central female character in the the tragedy of "Othello". Much to her father's dismay, she elopes with the Moorish nobleman and becomes entangled in a web of lies, jealousy and deception which ultimately leads to the death of both her and Othello. To be fair, it is the snubbed "inhuman dog" Iago whose evil nature really is responsible for so many "men so dead" at the play's end. Her name is derived from the Greek, and really means "ill-fated" not "of the devil."

From Quiz That Doesn't Belong There

Answer: Imogen

Imogen is the heroine of "Cymbeline," and thus never ends up in the Danish castle of Elsinore. However, the other three - Hamlet, Horatio, and Gertrude - all spend the vast majority (or all) of "Hamlet" confined to the castle.

From Quiz Confused Characters

Answer: Beatrice talking about Bottom

In "Much Ado About Nothing," Beatrice has a speech explaining why she could not marry a man with a beard or without, stating, "he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him" (2.1). In this question, she's not sure what to do, however, as she's spied Bottom, from "A Midsummer Night's Dream," whose head has been changed into that of an ass by Puck.

From Quiz Shakespeare Couples

Answer: Claudius

Gertrude is Hamlet's mother, the queen of Denmark. Hamlet's father was killed by his brother Claudius so he could become king and also marry Gertrude. Hamlet's father then comes back as a ghost and convinces Hamlet to avenge his murder. Polonius is the king's advisor, who is mistaken for Claudius and killed by mistake. Bernardo is one of the guards who first sees the ghost and reports it to Hamlet's friend Horatio.

From Quiz Shakespeare's Criminals

Answer: Casca

As in "speak hands, for me", which he says before he stabs Caesar. (From 'Julius Caesar', obviously.)

From Quiz A Double Take on Names from Shakespeare!

Answer: "The Taming of the Shrew"

Vincentio is the father of Lucentio, who loves Bianca, the shrewish Katherine(Kate)'s sister.Unfortunately for him, Baptista, the girls' father has decreed that Bianca cannot marry unless the shrewish Kate is married first...But that doesn't stop him from trying!

From Quiz Why That's My Spirit

Answer: Puck

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is a comedy by Shakespeare set in and around the city of Athens in Greece. In Elizabethan England, the time that Shakespeare was writing his plays, Puck was believed to be a mischievous fairy type character who would play pranks on people such as misdirecting travellers or turning milk sour. The name Robin Goodfellow was an alternative name in England for the sprite Puck and that is likely why Shakespeare used both names in the play. In 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' Puck serves Oberon, the King of the Fairies, who uses him to carry out many of the pranks he plays on the other characters including, most famously, giving a donkey's head to the character Bottom.

From Quiz Shakespeare Character Anagrams

Answer: Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth is literature's iconic sleepwalker, and is additionally cursed with a terminal case of obsessive compulsive disorder, as she tries in vain to wash the blood of multiple murders from her hands.

From Quiz That Doesn't Belong There

Answer: Hotspur

The Quickly tavern is the hangout of Prince Hal, Falstaff, and the gang of rowdy bar-goers (including Poins as well as Bardolph, Pistol, Nym, and others) from the Henry IV plays. Hotspur (the nickname of Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland) is a straight-laced soldier, and does not hang out with ruffians in bars like the prince does.

From Quiz Run For Your Life

Answer: Lucius

Lucius tries to rescue his brothers Martius and Quintus but is prevented and banished. But he gathers an army of Goths and returns to visit his vengeance on the Romans who have wronged him.

From Quiz Shakespeare's Girls

Answer: Ophelia in "Hamlet"

Ophelia doesn't really count as feisty, does she, poor lamb. Why she gets so grief-stricken over her father's death is beyond me, after he's wrecked her relationship with Hamlet with his meddlesome suspicions. However, after that, when she's not spending her time singing faintly dirty folk-songs, she's hanging around the river picking water-flowers, and once she's fallen in, she's got little hope of getting out again, given the voluminous clothes she would have been wearing. Shame. Yes, the other girls in the wrong answers all have problems with their daddies too.

From Quiz Confused Characters

Answer: Caliban talking about Gloucester

In "The Tempest," Prospero has enslaved the island's native man-beast Caliban and often forces him to gather wood. Caliban hates Prospero and curses his name. Unfortunately for Caliban, however, he won't find any relief with this visitor, as Gloucester, blinded by Cornwall in "King Lear," will most likely not want to hurt Prospero.

From Quiz Shakespeare's Smaller Characters

Answer: Othello

Brabantio is a high-ranking senator in Venice. Gratiano is his brother; Lodovico, his kinsman. Bianca (not the Shrew's sister!) is the mistress of Othello's lieutenant, Cassio.

From Quiz Who's Who in Shakespeare

Answer: Beatrice

Beatrice is a witty clever woman who engages in verbal battles with Benedict. Both long to have the last word. One memorable example from Benedict, when he could not think of anything else to say is, 'I wish my horse had the speed of your tongue'.

From Quiz Shakespeare Couples

Answer: Petruchio

She is the shrew, and he is the one who tames her. Baptista is her father who says that she has to be married before her younger (and prettier, and sweeter) sister Bianca. Lucentio and Hortensio are two of Bianca's many suitors. This is the play on which the musical, "Kiss Me, Kate!" is based.

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Last Updated May 10 2025 5:52 AM

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