A Doll's House Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
57 free A Doll's House trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This A Doll's House trivia quiz covers Henrik Ibsen's three-act drama that premiered in Copenhagen in December 1879 and has been slamming doors ever since. The easy questions are the ones any student of the play remembers: Nora's crime, her husband's pet names for her, the blackmailer's name, the dance she rehearses and how the play ends. From there it moves through Dr. Rank's illness, Mrs. Linde's bargain, the letter box, the fancy-dress party and the wedding ring left on the table. The harder end is for theatre historians: the real friend whose forged loan and asylum committal inspired Nora, the actress who refused to leave her children on stage, the ending Ibsen called a barbaric outrage, the London adaptation that turned the play into Breaking a Butterfly, the private production with Eleanor Marx and George Bernard Shaw, the two rival 1973 films, Ingmar Bergman's stripped-down Nora and Lucas Hnath's Tony-winning sequel. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the play, its characters, Ibsen and its adaptations before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Henrik Ibsen, classic plays and world literature quizzes next.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sweets, banned by Torvald, does Nora nibble in secret in A Doll's House?
Macaroons
Macaroons. Torvald has banned them for the sake of her teeth, so Nora swears she has eaten none, then tells Dr. Rank the bag was a present from a friend.
Q 02A Doll's House is a Norwegian classic, yet in which foreign capital did it have its world premiere?
Copenhagen
Copenhagen. Ibsen's publisher was based there; the book had been on sale for 17 days, and the first night sold out.
Q 03In A Doll's House, how did Nora secretly earn money one winter to pay off her debt?
Copying documents at night
Copying documents at night. She locked herself away to write every evening until late, exhausted but thrilled: earning money of her own, she tells her old friend, felt 'like being a man'.
Q 04What was the original 1879 title of A Doll's House?
Et dukkehjem
Et dukkehjem. Its first German translator retitled the play Nora, and the name caught on there: Ibsen himself calls it 'Nora' in a letter about the German productions.
Q 05What new position has Torvald Helmer just won as A Doll's House begins?
Bank manager
Bank manager. Torvald, a lawyer who turned down shady cases, starts in the New Year, and the promise of a big salary is why Nora feels free to overspend on presents.
Q 06How does Dr. Rank let the Helmers know he has gone home to die?
Cards marked with a black cross
Cards marked with a black cross. Rank had told Nora what the mark would mean: he wanted to spare the squeamish Torvald his sickroom, so two visiting cards say goodbye instead.
Q 07What crime did Nora commit to get the loan for Torvald's rest cure?
She forged her father's signature
She forged her father's signature. He was dying and she would not trouble him, but she dated it some days after his death, and that slip is what the lender holds over her.
Q 08To which country did the Helmers travel for Torvald's health, using the secretly borrowed money?
Italy
Italy. The doctors warned Nora, not Torvald, that his life was in danger, so she passed the year abroad off as her own whim and never told him where the money came from.
Q 09Told by Torvald that she is 'before all else a wife and a mother', what does Nora say she is first?
A human being
A human being. 'Just as you are,' she adds, 'or at all events I must try and become one', and she will no longer settle for what most people say or what is found in books.
Q 10Which old school friend of Nora's arrives seeking work at the start of Act One?
Kristine
Kristine. Widowed and penniless, Mrs. Linde gets her job from Torvald: the very post he is taking away from the man who is blackmailing Nora.
Q 11Dr. Rank blames which illness on his father's 'youthful amusements'?
Tuberculosis of the spine
Tuberculosis of the spine. Rank jokes that his 'poor innocent spine' must suffer for his father's womanising: the play's coded way of saying inherited syphilis.
Q 12What does Dr. Rank confess to Nora in Act Two?
That he has always secretly loved her
That he has always secretly loved her. Nora had been working up to ask him a great favour; once he has spoken she calls for the lamp and refuses to say what it was.
Q 13What does a porter deliver to the Helmers' door as A Doll's House opens?
A Christmas tree
Q 21What does Torvald do with the returned bond and Krogstad's letters?
Burns them
Burns them. 'I am saved!' he cries, and Nora has to ask, 'And I?', before he tears up the bond and both letters and throws them into the stove.
Q 22What had Nora expected Torvald to do when the scandal broke?
Sacrifice his reputation to protect her
Sacrifice his reputation to protect her. She was ready to kill herself to stop him taking the blame; instead he tells her that no man gives up his honour for the one he loves.
Q 23What two things does Nora leave with Torvald when she walks out?
Her keys and wedding ring
A Christmas tree. Nora has the maid hide it so that the children will not see it until it is decorated, then tips the porter double his fee.
Q 14Which dance does Nora rehearse wildly to keep Torvald busy on the eve of the costume party?
A tarantella
A tarantella. The dance was long said to sweat out a tarantula's venom; Torvald remarks that Nora is dancing as if her life depended on it, and she answers, 'So it does.'
Q 15Where does Krogstad leave his written account of Nora's crime?
In Torvald's locked letter box
In Torvald's locked letter box. Only Torvald keeps the key, so Nora is reduced to working at the lock with a hairpin, which he later finds there, broken.
Q 16Which two creatures does Torvald use as pet names for Nora?
Squirrel and skylark
Squirrel and skylark. The skylark came from life: it was Ibsen's own pet name for the young writer whose secret debts gave him the plot.
Q 17Why does Torvald insist on dismissing Krogstad even though he calls him a good worker?
He takes too familiar a tone
He takes too familiar a tone. The two were friends as boys, and Krogstad still hails Torvald like an old chum in front of the staff, which Torvald says would make his position intolerable.
Q 18Why did Mrs. Linde marry her late husband rather than Krogstad?
To support her sick mother and siblings
To support her sick mother and siblings. With her mother dead and her brothers grown, she tells Krogstad she needs someone to work for, and proposes that the two of them join forces.
Q 19Why does Mrs. Linde stop Krogstad from taking back his letter?
She thinks Torvald should know the truth
She thinks Torvald should know the truth. After a day in the house she tells Krogstad the couple must reach a full understanding, which is impossible amid so much concealment.
Q 20How does Torvald react on first reading Krogstad's letter?
He calls her unfit to raise their children
He calls her unfit to raise their children. He rages that she has wrecked his happiness and that they must keep up appearances; minutes later, once he is safe, he forgives everything.
Her keys and wedding ring. Nora asks for her own ring back too, frees Torvald from every obligation to her, and says she can accept nothing from a stranger.
Q 24What sound ends A Doll's House?
The front door closing
The front door closing. It shuts somewhere below a second after Torvald's last flicker of hope; in 1905 the critic James Huneker wrote that the slam 'reverberated across the roof of the world'.
Q 25In one standard translation, what does Nora say must happen before she could return?
The most wonderful thing of all
The most wonderful thing of all. Other translators make it 'the miracle of miracles'; either way, both of them would have to change until their life together became a real marriage.
Q 26Why did Ibsen write the alternative ending in which Nora stays?
German theatres would adapt it anyway
German theatres would adapt it anyway. With no copyright treaty to protect him, Ibsen chose to commit the 'barbaric act of violence' himself; the star Hedwig Niemann-Raabe is said to have refused to play a mother who walks out.
Q 27In Ibsen's alternative ending to A Doll's House, what makes Nora stay?
She is led to see her sleeping children
She is led to see her sleeping children. Torvald drags her to the nursery door and says they will wake up motherless, 'as you once were'; she sinks down, saying she sins against herself.
Q 28Which writer friend of Ibsen's, sent to an asylum after her secret debts came out, was the model for Nora?
Laura Kieler
Laura Kieler. Ibsen had encouraged her writing, yet refused to recommend the novel she hoped would clear her debts; once the play appeared she spent years asking him to deny that she was Nora.
Q 29What did the real-life model for Nora need her secret loan for?
A trip south for her husband's health
A trip south for her husband's health. Life then outdid the play: when the debts came out her husband had her committed and kept the children from her, though he later took her back.
Q 30How did Ibsen describe A Doll's House in his first notes for it, written in Rome in 1878?
A modern tragedy
A modern tragedy. The note argues that a woman 'cannot be herself' in a society whose laws are made by men and whose judges weigh her conduct 'from a masculine standpoint'.