As You Like It
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50 free As You Like It trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
As You Like It is the Shakespeare comedy that sends almost its whole cast into the woods. A duke's daughter is banished, puts on boy's clothes and runs for the forest, and there she meets the young man who fell for her at court and coaches him in how to woo her, without ever telling him who she is. The play also holds one of the best-known speeches in English, the one that begins 'All the world's a stage' and follows a man from the cradle to extreme old age. This quiz gives that speech a full run of questions, then moves through the famous lines, the tangle of lovers and disguises, the songs, and what became of the play afterwards on stage and screen. It suits students revising the text, teachers who want a quick check on the reading, and anyone who knows the opening line of the speech and wonders how much of the rest has stuck.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which character in As You Like It, a gloomy exile who weeps over a wounded deer, delivers 'All the world's a stage'?
Jaques
Jaques is a hanger-on of the banished duke who takes no part in the plot and simply comments on it. When the others head back to court at the end, he chooses to stay behind.
Q 02A moon named after Rosalind from As You Like It, spotted by Voyager 2 in 1986, orbits which planet?
Uranus
Uranus counts Rosalind among a group of small inner moons with similar orbits, alongside Juliet, Portia and Desdemona.
Q 03Charles, a court champion in As You Like It, says the banished duke lives in the forest like which English outlaw?
Robin Hood
Robin Hood is invoked in the opening scene, where young gentlemen are said to flock to the duke's merry men and pass the time without a care.
Q 04Kenneth Branagh's 2006 film of As You Like It moves the action to a 19th-century European colony in which country?
Japan
Japan after the Meiji Restoration is the backdrop, though filming took place at Shepperton Studios and in the gardens of Wakehurst Place.
Q 05In the 'All the world's a stage' speech from As You Like It, all the men and women are merely what?
Players
Players was the Elizabethan word for actors, and the speech goes on to give each person exits, entrances and many parts in a single lifetime.
Q 06Orlando first wins Rosalind's heart in As You Like It by beating the duke's champion at which sport?
Wrestling
Wrestling brings the lovers together when Orlando throws Charles, a champion his own brother had quietly encouraged to break his neck.
Q 07Which English novelist took the title Under the Greenwood Tree from a song in As You Like It?
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy published the novel anonymously in 1872. It follows a village church choir and was the first of his Wessex novels.
Q 08From which animal does Orlando rescue his sleeping brother Oliver in the forest of As You Like It?
A lioness
A lioness crouches waiting for Oliver to stir, and Orlando twice turns to walk away before he fights her off, which ends the brothers' feud.
Q 09In the 'All the world's a stage' speech from As You Like It, what is the infant doing in the nurse's arms?
Mewling and puking
Mewling and puking, meaning crying feebly and being sick, opens the speech on a comic note before the whining schoolboy takes over.
Q 10Which Surrealist painter designed the sets and costumes for a 1948 staging of As You Like It in Rome?
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí published his designs for the production, which Luchino Visconti directed at the Teatro Eliseo.
Q 11How many ages of man does the 'All the world's a stage' speech in As You Like It run through?
Seven
Seven ages take a man from the cradle to helpless old age. Splitting life into ages was already a commonplace of art, though ancient writers more often counted three or four.
Q 12Which forest, sharing its name with the family of Shakespeare's mother, shelters the exiles in As You Like It?
Arden
Arden was also a real forest covering much of Warwickshire, and it gave its name to the old family of Shakespeare's mother, Mary.
Q 13Which name, borrowed from the cupbearer of the gods, does Rosalind use when dressed as a boy in As You Like It?
Ganymede
Ganymede was the beautiful Trojan youth chosen to serve the king of the gods, and Rosalind picks the name herself, calling him Jove's own page.
Q 21Which London playhouse, new when As You Like It was written, supposedly had a motto echoing 'All the world's a stage'?
The Globe
The Globe opened in 1599, and tradition gives it the Latin motto 'Totus mundus agit histrionem', roughly 'all the world plays the actor'.
Q 22The schoolboy in As You Like It's 'All the world's a stage' speech creeps to school like which creature?
A snail
A snail sets his pace, and Shakespeare adds a satchel and a shining morning face to complete the portrait of a reluctant pupil.
Q 23Which American actress, later the star of Jurassic World, played Rosalind in the 2006 film of As You Like It?
Bryce Dallas Howard
Q 14Where does the lovesick Orlando hang his poems in praise of Rosalind in As You Like It?
On the trees
On the trees is where he posts them, and he carves her name into the bark as well. Touchstone mocks the verses by improvising worse ones.
Q 15How are Rosalind and Celia, who run away from court together in As You Like It, related?
Cousins
Cousins by birth, the two were raised together, and Celia says they have always slept, risen, learned, played and eaten side by side.
Q 16Which English actor made his first Shakespeare film as Orlando in the 1936 version of As You Like It?
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier found a long-term collaborator on the film in composer William Walton, who later scored his Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III.
Q 17The 'All the world's a stage' speech in As You Like It ends with old age sans teeth, eyes, taste and what?
Everything
Everything goes in the last line, which keeps repeating the French word 'sans', meaning without, until the old man has nothing left.
Q 18What post does Touchstone hold at Duke Frederick's court in As You Like It before he flees with the two heroines?
Jester
Jester to the usurping duke, Touchstone is one of Shakespeare's witty fools, whose humour comes from intellect rather than clowning.
Q 19Which everyday phrase does Rosalind use in As You Like It while pushing Orlando towards a mock wedding?
Too much of a good thing
Too much of a good thing is Rosalind's joke: she asks whether anyone can want that, then has Celia play the priest and marry them.
Q 20A hit 2018 Vancouver staging of As You Like It had its cast perform the songs of which band?
The Beatles
The Beatles supplied the songbook for the Bard on the Beach production, which broke the festival's box office records and went on tour.
Bryce Dallas Howard had already played the part on stage in 2003, in a production where the director M. Night Shyamalan spotted her.
Q 24How many couples marry in the final scene of As You Like It, where a god blesses them all at once?
Four
Four couples pair off: the two heroines with two brothers, a shepherd with his shepherdess, and the fool with a goatherd.
Q 25How long does Orlando tell Rosalind he would keep his wife in As You Like It?
For ever and a day
For ever and a day is his answer, and Rosalind tells him to drop the 'ever': men, she says, are April when they woo and December when they wed.
Q 26Touchstone in As You Like It shares his name with a dark stone once used to test the purity of which metal?
Gold
Gold drawn across a touchstone leaves a visible streak, and comparing its colour with known samples reveals how pure the metal is.
Q 27The banished duke in As You Like It says adversity wears a precious jewel in its head like which ugly creature?
A toad
A toad, 'ugly and venomous', is his image for hardship, and he goes on to find sermons in stones and books in the running brooks.
Q 28A song in As You Like It tells the winter wind it is not so unkind as which human failing?
Ingratitude
Ingratitude bites deeper than frost in the song, which is sung for the exiled duke's men later in the same scene as the play's most famous speech.
Q 29The lover in the 'All the world's a stage' speech of As You Like It sighs like what, while writing a ballad?
A furnace
A furnace is the comparison, and the lover's woeful ballad is addressed to nothing grander than his mistress's eyebrow.
Q 30Which old servant in As You Like It, a part Shakespeare himself is said to have played, follows Orlando into exile?
Adam
Adam offers Orlando his life savings of five hundred crowns, and is carried in, half starved, just as the famous speech on old age ends.