Shakespeare Character Quiz

1. Antonio cannot repay a loan secured by a dangerous bond. Which character is legally entitled by that bond to demand a pound of Antonio’s flesh?

2. Which two families sustain the feud at the center of Romeo and Juliet?

3. What name does Viola use while disguised as a young man in Twelfth Night?

4. Which Hamlet character acts as a foil to the hesitant prince by pursuing swift revenge after his own father is killed?

5. In Much Ado About Nothing, friends arrange separate overheard conversations so that two witty rivals will believe each secretly loves the other. Which pair is being brought together?

6. A prince learns from his father’s ghost that the reigning king committed murder. Which character is charged with avenging the crime?

7. Who disguises herself as a learned lawyer and uses the wording of a bond to save Antonio in The Merchant of Venice?

8. Othello trusts a subordinate who carefully turns him against Desdemona through hints, staged evidence, and lies. Who is this manipulator?

9. Which title character opens his play by declaring, “Now is the winter of our discontent”?

10. What is Prospero’s relationship to Miranda in The Tempest?

11. While living in the Forest of Arden in As You Like It, what name does Rosalind adopt as part of her disguise?

12. Who warns Julius Caesar to “beware the ides of March”?

13. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who mistakenly applies the love potion to Lysander, intensifying the lovers’ confusion?

14. An aging king decides to divide his realm according to how eloquently his daughters declare their love. Which character makes this decision?

15. A character who once called on spirits to suppress her remorse later sleepwalks while trying to wash imagined blood from her hands. Who is she?

16. In Macbeth, which newly granted title makes the witches’ predictions seem credible to Macbeth?