Antony and Cleopatra
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50 free Antony and Cleopatra trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Antony and Cleopatra is Shakespeare at full stretch: a love story between two rulers past their youth, played out across half the ancient world while an empire changes hands around them. A great Roman general cannot leave the queen of Egypt, and a cooler, younger rival waits for him to slip. It has some of the richest verse Shakespeare ever wrote and one of the best-known deaths in the theatre. This quiz follows the play from its opening lines to its close. There are questions on the plot and its turning points, the main characters and the servants and soldiers around them, and the speeches and quotes that students are asked to identify. A final group looks at where Shakespeare found the story, how the play reached print, and the actors, composers and film-makers who have taken it on since. The questions suit students revising the play, theatre-goers and anyone who enjoys Shakespeare. They start gently and get harder, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches you something about the play.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The asp that kills Cleopatra is smuggled past her Roman guards in a basket of which fruit?
Figs
Figs hide the snakes when a rustic clown carries them in, and Cleopatra remarks how poor an instrument may do a noble deed. A guard later spots the slimy trail left on the fig leaves.
Q 02In Antony and Cleopatra, age cannot wither the queen, 'nor custom stale her infinite' what?
Variety
Variety is the point of the tribute: other women cloy the appetites they feed, the speaker goes on, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.
Q 03Which everyday phrase does Cleopatra coin when she brushes off her past love for an earlier Roman?
Salad days
Salad days were, she says, when she was green in judgment and cold in blood. The phrase only caught on in the 19th century, and Elizabeth II used it in her 1977 Silver Jubilee address.
Q 04Which Nile creature does a tipsy Antony describe to a drunken fellow ruler as shaped 'like itself'?
The crocodile
The crocodile, Antony adds with a straight face, is as broad as it has breadth, just as high as it is, and of its own colour too. His befuddled listener calls it a strange serpent.
Q 05Which blunt Roman officer gives the famous barge speech about Cleopatra, then later deserts Antony?
Enobarbus
Enobarbus has a far bigger role in the play than in Shakespeare's source. His barge speech, though, follows that source almost word for word.
Q 06At which sea battle does Cleopatra's fleet turn and flee, with Antony abandoning his men to follow?
Actium
Actium costs Antony his honour as much as his fleet: Cleopatra sails away with her sixty ships and he chases after her, then tells her his heart was tied to her rudder by the strings.
Q 07The hero of Antony and Cleopatra gives a famous funeral speech in which earlier Shakespeare tragedy?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar, written about seven years earlier, ends with a hint of the friction between Antony and his young ally that drives the later play.
Q 08In Antony and Cleopatra, the young rival called simply Caesar later ruled Rome under which name?
Augustus
Augustus is the title he took after the events of the play, when the deaths of the two lovers left him free to become Rome's first emperor.
Q 09Which colour are the sails of Cleopatra's barge, so perfumed that the winds grow love-sick?
Purple
Purple sails top a vessel with a stern of beaten gold and silver oars that keep stroke to the tune of flutes, while the water follows faster, as if amorous of their strokes.
Q 10Which Hollywood star directed a 1972 film of Antony and Cleopatra and cast himself as Antony?
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston wrote the screenplay himself and called the play the most filmable of all Shakespeare's works. He had already played Mark Antony on screen before.
Q 11Which sister of his rival Caesar does Antony marry to patch up their quarrel in Shakespeare's play?
Octavia
Octavia is meant to cement the alliance, but the marriage does the opposite: Antony drifts back east and her brother treats the insult as a cause for war.
Q 12In which city, home to Cleopatra's court, does Shakespeare's play both open and end?
Alexandria
Alexandria stands for pleasure and imagination in the play, set against a sterner, more practical Rome, and the action cuts between the two worlds again and again.
Q 13In the first scene of Antony and Cleopatra, Antony cries 'Let Rome in' which river 'melt'?
Tiber
Tiber and empire can both dissolve, Antony declares, because his space is here, with her. It is the first sign of how far the great general has let his duties slip.
Q 21In Shakespeare's play, which god is said to abandon Antony as eerie music sounds beneath the ground?
Hercules
Hercules, whom Antony loved, now leaves him: so one soldier on night watch decides when oboes play under the stage. The omen comes on the night before the play's last two days of fighting.
Q 22Who warns Antony that his guardian spirit turns fearful whenever young Caesar stands near him?
A soothsayer
A soothsayer from Egypt tells him to keep space between them: at any game against that rival, he says, Antony is sure to lose, whatever the odds.
Q 23Which rebel sea commander hosts Antony and his fellow rulers at a drunken feast aboard his galley?
Sextus Pompey
Q 14Which third triumvir, sharing the Roman world with Antony and Caesar, is carried drunk from a feast?
Lepidus
Lepidus is the makeweight of the three, and an onlooker jokes that the man carrying him out bears a third of the world. Caesar later deposes him, leaving two rivals.
Q 15Where does Cleopatra lock herself away after the last defeat, sending Antony word that she is dead?
Her monument
Her monument is where an attendant tells her to hide from his fury. The lie about her death is meant to win him back, but it destroys him instead.
Q 16How do Cleopatra and her women bring the dying Antony into their locked hiding place?
They haul him up
They haul him up by hand, and Cleopatra jokes grimly at how heavy her lord weighs. She will not come down to him for fear of being captured.
Q 17Which follower kills himself rather than obey Antony's order to run his master through?
Eros
Eros draws his sword, asks Antony to turn his face away, then stabs himself instead. Antony calls him thrice nobler and tries to follow his example, but botches the blow.
Q 18What does Cleopatra ask her women to dress her in before she puts the asp to her breast?
Her robe and crown
Her robe and crown turn the suicide into a royal ceremony: she means to meet Antony looking as she did on the day they first met, and she calls out to him as her husband.
Q 19Where does the victorious Caesar order Cleopatra to be buried in the play's closing speech?
Beside Antony
Beside Antony is his answer: no grave on earth, he says, will hold a pair so famous. Even the cold winner is moved, and he orders his army to attend the funeral.
Q 20Which wife of Antony dies early in the play, after stirring up a war against Caesar in Italy?
Fulvia
Fulvia's death frees Antony to remarry, and he greets the news with guilt rather than relief: there's a great spirit gone, he says, admitting he had wished for it.
Sextus Pompey has just made peace with them, keeping Sicily and Sardinia in return for clearing the sea of pirates. Once Antony has left Italy, the others break the truce and attack him.
Q 24Which attendant of Cleopatra dies last, telling a Roman guard the deed was fit for a princess?
Charmian
Charmian straightens the dead queen's headdress, closes her eyes, then takes a snake herself as the guards rush in. Iras has already fallen dead after a farewell kiss.
Q 25Which gift does the departed Antony kiss many times before sending it back to Cleopatra?
A pearl
A pearl is only a petty present, his message says, and he promises to mend it by piecing her throne with kingdoms until all the east calls her mistress.
Q 26What does Cleopatra's diver secretly hang on Antony's hook as a prank during an angling wager?
A salt fish
A salt fish, already cured and long dead, is what he eagerly reels in. Cleopatra recalls laughing him out of patience, then next morning drinking him to bed and dressing him in her own clothes.
Q 27On which river does Cleopatra first meet Antony, arriving in the barge of the famous speech?
The Cydnus
The Cydnus is where she pursed up his heart, the speech says: he sat alone in the marketplace, whistling to the air, while the whole city went to gaze on her.
Q 28What does Antony send after the trusted officer who deserts him for Caesar's camp?
His treasure
His treasure arrives with extra gifts on top, and the kindness breaks the deserter, who calls himself the villain of the earth and dies of shame soon after.
Q 29What does the beaten Antony challenge Caesar to, a dare the younger man simply laughs off?
Single combat
Single combat, sword against sword, is the old soldier's last throw. Caesar replies that he has many other ways to die, and calls him an old ruffian.
Q 30What punishment does Antony order for Caesar's envoy after catching him kissing Cleopatra's hand?
A whipping
A whipping it is, until the man whines aloud for mercy. Antony then sends him back with a taunt: Caesar may flog one of Antony's freed slaves in return to make them quits.