Shakespeare Quote Quiz: Name That Play
How well do you know your Shakespeare? A Shakespeare Quote Quiz.
Our Shakespeare quote quiz is a fun way to see just how many quotes you can identify correctly.
Who was William Shakespeare?
Though written over 400 years ago, William Shakespeare’s sharply written plays and sonnets could just as easily, if written in contemporary English, be on the New York Times bestseller list. Betrayal, love, intrigue, political backstabbing — the plots are timeless.
William Shakespeare was an English writer and actor of the Early Modern English era. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in April 1564 and died in April 1616.
His career began in London sometime in the late 1580s, when he joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men as an actor, playwright, and part-owner. Eventually, he became a shareholder in the Globe Theatre.
During his lifetime, he wrote 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and several longer poems.
Two of his friends, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a Folio of his work seven years after his death.
This Folio joined the Quarto editions that had already been published while Shakespeare was alive. The Folio and Quartos deviate somewhat from each other, which is why there is still debate over Shakespeare’s exact words.
Name That Play
Read a line, then name where it comes from. Every guess opens a short note on act, scene, speaker, and, where it matters, the Quarto and Folio history.
Round complete
How to Play Shakespeare Quote Quiz
Read the line, then name the play that it comes from. After each guess, a note opens with the act, scene, and speaker, so the answer doubles as a small lesson in placement. Where a line sits differently across the early texts, the note flags the Quarto and Folio history.
Set the round however you like before you start:
- Mode. Name the Play draws only from the 37 dramatic works. Name the Work widens the field to include the sonnets and the narrative poems.
- Question type. Multiple choice gives you four options. Free response asks you to type the work, with autocomplete to help, and is the harder test of recall.
- Difficulty. Easy questions draw their wrong answers from across the canon, so they are easy to rule out. Hard questions pull decoys from the same genre, so a tragedy hides among tragedies.
- Category and length. Narrow to one genre if you want focused drilling, and pick how many questions you face per round.
Your score and current streak sit at the top as you go. At the end, you get a breakdown by genre and by difficulty, so you can see where your gaps are.