50 free Hamlet trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Hamlet trivia quiz covers Shakespeare's longest play from every angle: the plot and its body count, the characters from Claudius and Gertrude to Yorick and Fortinbras, the famous lines and who actually says them, the medieval Amleth legend and the lost Ur-Hamlet behind it, and the three very different early texts. It also takes in the play's afterlife on stage and screen, from Sarah Bernhardt and Richard Burbage to Olivier's Oscar-winning film, Branagh's four-hour uncut version, Mel Gibson, Ethan Hawke, David Tennant, Benedict Cumberbatch, The Lion King and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. About a third of the questions are answerable by anyone who studied the play at school, a third are medium, and the rest are for people who know their Second Quarto from their First Folio. It works equally well as a literature-class quiz or a pub round. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the play's full title?
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The neighbouring Norwegians, led by Fortinbras, are the threat hovering over the whole play, and one of them ends up with the crown.
Q 02Who has murdered Hamlet's father and married his mother?
Claudius, his uncle
Marcellus's line about something being 'rotten in the state of Denmark' is usually read as pointing at this fratricide.
Q 03What is the name of Hamlet's mother?
Gertrude
She dies drinking the poisoned wine Claudius meant for her son, after he tries and fails to stop her.
Q 04Which of Hamlet's friends witnesses the ghost first and survives to tell the story at the end?
Horatio
By the final scene he is the only main figure left alive; Hamlet dies in his arms.
Q 05How does Hamlet kill the king's eavesdropping counsellor?
Stabbing him through a wall hanging
Polonius is eavesdropping on Hamlet and Gertrude behind an arras when he cries out; Hamlet stabs wildly, thinking it might be the king.
Q 06How does Ophelia die?
She drowns
Gertrude reports that a willow branch broke and dropped her into the brook; a 1569 coroner's report on a drowned girl called Jane Shaxspere may have inspired it.
Q 07Where does Ophelia's brother go at the start of the play, before returning in a rage in Act 4?
France
Before he leaves he warns her off Hamlet, and their father then orders her to reject the prince outright.
Q 08Who is Ophelia's brother, who fights Hamlet in the final duel?
Laertes
He wields a poison-tipped foil, but the two swap weapons in the scuffle and both are fatally wounded.
Q 09Two of Hamlet's old friends are sent to spy on him and later escort him to England. Who are they?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Hamlet rewrites the sealed letter so that they, not he, are executed on arrival; Tom Stoppard built a whole play around them.
Q 10What is the title of the play Hamlet has the travelling actors perform to test Claudius's guilt?
The Murder of Gonzago
Hamlet mockingly calls it 'The Mousetrap' when Claudius asks; the king rises and rushes out mid-performance.
Q 11Why does Hamlet decide NOT to kill the king when he catches him alone and unarmed?
He is praying
He reasons that killing a man at prayer would send him to heaven; ironically Claudius admits he cannot truly repent.
Q 12Whom does the dying Hamlet name as his successor to the Danish throne?
Fortinbras
The Norwegian prince arrives with his army just in time to inherit a court full of corpses.
Q 13Whose skull does Hamlet hold in the graveyard scene?
Yorick's
The court jester has been in the earth 'three-and-twenty years'; the image became a symbol for theatre itself.
Q 21When did Shakespeare most likely write Hamlet?
Between 1599 and 1601
It isn't in Francis Meres's 1598 list of Shakespeare's plays, and it alludes to Julius Caesar, dated to mid-1599.
Q 22Which 13th-century chronicler's 'Life of Amleth' is the play's main legendary source?
Saxo Grammaticus
His Latin prince also feigns madness, kills a hidden spy in his mother's room and swaps the execution order for two retainers.
Q 23Which 2022 Robert Eggers film retells the Amleth legend with Alexander Skarsgård?
The Northman
Amleth is the son of Horvendill, king of the Jutes, in Saxo's telling; Eggers co-wrote the script with the Icelandic author Sjón.
Q 14Which pianist left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 hoping it would be used as Yorick?
André Tchaikowsky
It was eventually used on stage by David Tennant in the RSC's 2008 production.
Q 15At what point in the play does Hamlet deliver 'To be, or not to be'?
Act 3, Scene 1
It's the 'nunnery scene': Ophelia is on stage waiting, and Claudius and Polonius are hidden nearby listening.
Q 16How does the 'bad' First Quarto of 1603 mangle the opening of the famous soliloquy?
'To be, or not to be, aye there's the point'
Q1 has barely half the text of the Second Quarto and may have been reconstructed from memory by the actor who played Marcellus.
Q 17Which character gives the advice 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be' and 'To thine own self be true'?
Polonius
He's also the source of 'Brevity is the soul of wit', which is funny coming from the most long-winded man in the play.
Q 18Which minor character says 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'?
Marcellus, a guard
It's often misattributed to Hamlet himself; the guard says it as the ghost leads the prince away.
Q 19Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play. Roughly how many lines does a conflated modern text run to?
About 3,900
The Second Quarto alone contains 28,628 words, and Branagh's uncut film runs more than four hours.
Q 20How many early printed versions of Hamlet survive, each with lines the others lack?
Three
The First Quarto (1603), Second Quarto (1604) and First Folio (1623); barely 200 lines are identical between Q2 and F1.
Q 24What do scholars call the lost earlier play, possibly by Kyd, that Shakespeare may have reworked?
The Ur-Hamlet
It would have existed by 1589 and included a ghost, but no copy survives to compare with anyone's style.
Q 25Shakespeare's only son, who died in 1596 aged eleven, had what near-identical name?
Hamnet
Most scholars call it coincidence, but Stephen Greenblatt argues the father's grief may lie at the heart of the tragedy.
Q 26Which German university city do Hamlet and his student friends attend?
Wittenberg
It's where Martin Luther nailed up his Ninety-five Theses in 1517, a resonance an Elizabethan audience wouldn't have missed.
Q 27Which real Danish castle is the Elsinore of the play?
Kronborg
It stands in Helsingør at the narrowest point of the Øresund and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.
Q 28For which leading actor of his company did Shakespeare almost certainly write the role of Hamlet?
Richard Burbage
Burbage was the star of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and the play was described in 1602 as 'latelie Acted' by them.
Q 29Which French actress famously played the prince in London in 1899 and filmed the fencing scene in 1900?
Sarah Bernhardt
Her five-minute 1900 film is one of the earliest pieces of Hamlet on screen; Asta Nielsen played a secretly female Hamlet in 1921.
Q 30Whose 1948 black-and-white Hamlet won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor?
Laurence Olivier
It was the first British film to win Best Picture and remains the only Shakespeare film to have won it.