Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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50 free Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a short book with a long shadow. Published in 1886, the tale of a respectable doctor and the violent stranger who shares his life gave English a phrase for anyone with a hidden side, and it has been a classroom staple and a horror touchstone ever since. This quiz covers the whole book: what happens and in what order, who each character is, the lines and images students are asked to remember, and the ideas about good, evil and respectability that run underneath. It also looks at how the book came to be written, and at the plays, films, comics and television it has inspired. It suits students revising the text for an exam, book clubs, teachers who want a ready-made multiple-choice quiz, and anyone who knows the names but has never checked how much of the plot they really remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print it for a class.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which name does Mr. Utterson jokingly give himself while lying in wait for Mr. Hyde?
Mr. Seek
Mr. Seek is his pun on the quarry's name: 'If he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek,' he thinks, haunting the by-street at all hours until a frosty night rewards him.
Q 02In which city did Edinburgh-born Robert Louis Stevenson set the events of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
London
London is the setting, though some critics see the author's birthplace in it: Edinburgh also had a respectable new quarter beside dark, crowded slums rife with crime.
Q 03What was Robert Louis Stevenson doing when key scenes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde first came to him?
Dreaming
Dreaming gave him the story, and he was cross to be woken: 'I was dreaming a fine bogey tale,' he told his wife Fanny, who had heard him cry out in horror.
Q 04Which Marvel hero did Stan Lee say borrowed from both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
The Hulk
The Hulk was built to change 'from his normal identity to his superhuman alter ego and back again', as Lee put it, while keeping a misunderstood monster's heart.
Q 05Which real killer was the star of a Jekyll and Hyde play accused of being after terrifying audiences?
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was at large in 1888 while Richard Mansfield's on-stage transformation horrified theatregoers, and one of them wrote to the police accusing the actor.
Q 06How does Dr. Jekyll turn himself into Mr. Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson's original story?
Drinking a potion
Drinking a potion does it, and the first dose brings 'a grinding in the bones' and deadly nausea before the pain gives way to a heady recklessness.
Q 07What is the profession of Mr. Utterson, who investigates Dr. Jekyll's strange bond with Mr. Hyde?
Lawyer
Lawyer is how the opening line introduces him, as a man 'of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile', yet somehow lovable.
Q 08Which Jerry Lewis comedy parodies Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a suave alter ego called Buddy Love?
The Nutty Professor
The Nutty Professor swaps the monster for Buddy Love, a smooth, narcissistic ladies' man unleashed whenever weak-willed chemist Julius Kelp swallows his serum.
Q 09In which Netflix series is small-town barista Tyler Galpin revealed to be a monster called a Hyde?
Wednesday
Wednesday borrows the name for its outcast monster and adds a rule of its own, found in a diary: a Hyde must always have a master.
Q 10What is Robert Louis Stevenson said to have done with his first draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
Burned it
Burned it, the story goes, after his wife Fanny said he had missed the allegory; he then rewrote the whole tale in three to six days.
Q 11Which Batman villain did Bob Kane base on the 1931 film of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
Two-Face
Two-Face, the acid-scarred Harvey Dent, grew out of what Kane called a 'classic story of the good and evil sides of human nature'.
Q 12Which TV star took over the lead in Broadway's Jekyll & Hyde from rock singer Sebastian Bach?
David Hasselhoff
David Hasselhoff, then known for Baywatch, stepped in during October 2000 and stayed to the final night of what was then the longest-running show in the Plymouth Theatre's history.
Q 13Which Hollywood star played the title role, a servant of Dr. Jekyll, in the 1996 film Mary Reilly?
Julia Roberts
Q 21Which old friend of Dr. Jekyll watches Mr. Hyde transform and dies within weeks from the shock?
Hastie Lanyon
Hastie Lanyon, a doctor who had dismissed his friend's ideas as 'unscientific balderdash', sees the change at midnight and writes: 'My life is shaken to its roots.'
Q 22Which detail in notes from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde does the clerk Mr. Guest find almost identical?
The handwriting
The handwriting matches in many points and is 'only differently sloped', so a horrified Utterson concludes that Henry Jekyll has forged a note for a murderer.
Q 23Why can Dr. Jekyll no longer make the drug that turns him back from Mr. Hyde?
His first salt was impure
Julia Roberts played Mary opposite John Malkovich's doctor, in a retelling from below stairs that earned back less than a third of its budget.
Q 14What first name does Robert Louis Stevenson give Mr. Hyde, the evil half of Dr. Jekyll?
Edward
Edward is the evil half's name, while the respectable doctor is Henry, or 'my poor old Harry Jekyll' to his worried friend Mr. Utterson.
Q 15In which district does Mr. Hyde keep the rooms that Mr. Utterson searches with Inspector Newcomen?
Soho
Soho appears through swirling fog as a 'dismal quarter' of muddy ways and slatternly passers-by, 'like a district of some city in a nightmare'.
Q 16What public position does Sir Danvers Carew hold before Mr. Hyde kills him in a moonlit lane?
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament: newsboys are soon crying 'Shocking murder of an M.P.', and the victim's high position makes the crime all the more notorious.
Q 17What weapon does Mr. Hyde use to beat the elderly Sir Danvers Carew to death in the street?
A heavy cane
A heavy cane of rare, tough wood, which snaps in the middle under the blows. Utterson recognises the broken stick as one he gave Henry Jekyll many years before.
Q 18What position does Poole hold in Dr. Jekyll's household in Robert Louis Stevenson's novella?
Butler
Butler for decades, he refuses to be fooled by the changed voice behind the cabinet: 'Have I been twenty years in this man's house, to be deceived about his voice?'
Q 19What does Richard Enfield see Mr. Hyde do to a young girl at a street corner one winter night?
Tramples over her
Tramples over her and leaves her screaming, 'like some damned Juggernaut'; the furious bystanders then squeeze a hundred pounds out of him for her family.
Q 20Which document of Dr. Jekyll's, kept in Mr. Utterson's safe, first makes him wary of Mr. Hyde?
His will
His will leaves everything to Hyde if the doctor dies or simply vanishes for three months, a clause that makes Utterson fear the ghost of some old sin has caught up with his friend.
His first salt was impure, he concludes, and that unknown flaw was what gave the mixture its power, so every fresh supply his servants fetch proves useless.
Q 24What does Poole use to break into the cabinet where Mr. Hyde is hiding on the last night?
An axe
An axe, dug out from under a stack of packing straw; the tough wood takes five blows before the lock bursts, while Utterson stands by with a kitchen poker.
Q 25How does Mr. Hyde die just before Mr. Utterson breaks into Dr. Jekyll's cabinet?
He takes poison
He takes poison: the body is still twitching when they reach it, a crushed phial in its grip and a strong smell of kernels hanging in the air.
Q 26How does Mr. Hyde's body compare with Dr. Jekyll's in Robert Louis Stevenson's original novella?
Smaller and younger
Smaller and younger, because the evil side had been 'much less exercised' in a life of effort and virtue, so the doctor's clothes hang absurdly loose on him.
Q 27How is the secret linking Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde finally revealed to Mr. Utterson?
In letters read afterwards
In letters read afterwards: one left by a dying friend and a full confession found in the cabinet, which Utterson carries back to his office to open alone.
Q 28Which chapter opens Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with Richard Enfield recalling a strange encounter?
Story of the Door
Story of the Door begins with a Sunday walk past a blistered entrance with neither bell nor knocker, the sight that prompts Enfield's tale.
Q 29Which adventure novel did Robert Louis Stevenson publish three years before Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
Treasure Island
Treasure Island gave the world Long John Silver; the tale of the divided doctor then carried its author's name well beyond adventure fiction.
Q 30Which Victorian scientist's ideas fed the fear of 'degeneration' that critics see in Mr. Hyde?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was widely misunderstood, and many Victorians feared that if humans could evolve they could also slide back into something more primitive.