M. Butterfly
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40 free M. Butterfly trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly starts from a headline that sounds impossible: a French diplomat who loved a Chinese opera singer for two decades without knowing who his lover really was. Hwang turned that scandal into a play about the fantasies the West projects onto the East, and it has been staged, filmed, sung and argued over ever since. This quiz walks through the play itself, scene by scene: Rene Gallimard's story as he tells it, Song Liling's double life, and the supporting characters who push the affair along. It also covers the famous opera the play answers, the real people behind the story, and the Broadway productions and the film that followed. It is written for students revising the play for a class or an essay, for theatre fans who want to test their memory of the plot and its themes, and for anyone curious about one of the strangest true stories ever put on stage.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How does Rene Gallimard's story end in the final scene of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly?
He stabs himself
He stabs himself, dying exactly as the heroine does in the opera he adores. By then he has dressed as her, completing the play's reversal of roles.
Q 02The real couple behind M. Butterfly, Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, first met in Beijing at what kind of event?
A Christmas party
A Christmas party at the French embassy brought them together in December 1964. Shi arrived dressed as a man and only later claimed to be a woman in disguise.
Q 03Rene Gallimard in M. Butterfly is unaware that female roles in traditional Beijing opera were long played by whom?
Male actors
Male actors took the women's parts because women had been banned from the stage. That tradition is what lets Song Liling's disguise pass for twenty years.
Q 04John Lone, the Song Liling of the 1993 M. Butterfly film, had earlier played the title role in which Oscar-winning epic?
The Last Emperor
The Last Emperor cast him as Puyi from the age of 18 into his sixties. Trained in Chinese opera as a child in Hong Kong, he did his own singing as Song.
Q 05In David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, the French diplomat Rene Gallimard has been convicted of which crime?
Treason
Treason is the charge, because he passed classified documents to China through his lover, Song Liling. The trial turns him into a laughingstock around the world.
Q 06Which Italian composer wrote Madama Butterfly, the 1904 opera that M. Butterfly borrows from and turns upside down?
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini saw the story as a one-act play in London and set it to music. The first version was poorly received in Milan, so he revised it within months.
Q 07Which Chinese upheaval forces Song Liling into farm labour and parts the lovers in Act 2 of M. Butterfly?
The Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, launched in 1966, denounced artists and intellectuals. Song is made to confess to being corrupted by a foreigner, and Gallimard is ordered home.
Q 08Which English actor played the diplomat Rene Gallimard in the 1993 film version of M. Butterfly?
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy Irons took the part soon after winning the Best Actor Oscar for Reversal of Fortune. More than sixty men auditioned to play Song opposite him.
Q 09Which American actor originated the role of Rene Gallimard when M. Butterfly opened on Broadway in 1988?
John Lithgow
John Lithgow earned a Tony nomination as the deluded diplomat. David Dukes was one of several replacements who took over the part later in the run of 777 performances.
Q 10Which actor made his Broadway debut as Song Liling in M. Butterfly and won a Tony Award for the role?
BD Wong
BD Wong is the only actor to win the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Clarence Derwent and Theatre World awards for one role. He later played Henry Wu in Jurassic Park.
Q 11In M. Butterfly, the womanizing Marc who keeps appearing in Rene Gallimard's memories is what to him?
A school friend
A school friend from Aix-en-Provence, Marc is everything Gallimard is not: popular, shameless and forever urging him to be bolder with women.
Q 12Why did Rene Gallimard marry Helga, by his own account to the audience in M. Butterfly?
For his career
For his career rather than love, he admits. In Beijing the marriage stays childless, and Helga never warms to the country around her.
Q 13Renee, the uninhibited student who has an affair with Rene Gallimard in M. Butterfly, comes from which country?
Denmark
Q 21Which Western fantasy does David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly set out to expose through Rene Gallimard's delusion?
The submissive Asian woman
The submissive Asian woman is the stereotype Song performs and Gallimard cannot see past. The play links that fantasy to the way Western powers misjudged the East.
Q 22Bernard Boursicot, the real Frenchman behind M. Butterfly, held which job at the Beijing embassy when the affair began?
Accountant
Accountant was his first embassy job, taken at the age of 20. The embassy had opened only that year, after France recognised the People's Republic in January 1964.
Q 23When Song Liling testifies in the Paris courtroom in Act 3 of M. Butterfly, what is Song wearing?
Denmark is home for Renee, a Western student he meets in Beijing. She is the opposite of the modest lover he imagines Song to be: frank, bold and unembarrassed.
Q 14Which post does Monsieur Toulon hold in Beijing, making him Rene Gallimard's superior in M. Butterfly?
The French ambassador
The French ambassador promotes Gallimard, approves of his affair, and finally sends him back to Paris when his forecasts prove wrong.
Q 15Late in Act 1 of M. Butterfly, Rene Gallimard is promoted to run which division of his embassy?
Intelligence
Intelligence becomes his brief just as the affair begins, which is what makes him so useful to Beijing. Song is soon passing on what he lets slip.
Q 16Rene Gallimard loses his post in M. Butterfly after wrongly predicting an American victory in which country?
Vietnam
Vietnam undoes him: he insists the East will always submit to a show of Western strength. The play ties that misjudgment to his fantasy about Song.
Q 17Which false announcement by Song Liling in Act 2 of M. Butterfly prompts Rene Gallimard to propose marriage?
She is pregnant
She is pregnant, Song says, then vanishes to the countryside for three months and comes back carrying a child the authorities have supplied.
Q 18In M. Butterfly, what is Comrade Chin to the opera singer who seduces Rene Gallimard during his Beijing posting?
A state handler
A state handler, Chin collects the secrets Song gathers and later supervises Song's public confession. In the opera scenes she doubles as the maid Suzuki.
Q 19When Rene Gallimard acts out the opera for the audience in Act 1 of M. Butterfly, which role does he give himself?
Pinkerton
Pinkerton is the American naval officer who marries a Japanese girl and abandons her. Gallimard envies him, yet ends the play as the one betrayed.
Q 20In the closing scene of M. Butterfly, Rene Gallimard sits alone and puts on makeup, a wig and which garment?
A kimono
A kimono completes his transformation into the opera's Japanese heroine. Moments earlier he had clung to it while throwing Song's own clothes away.
A man's suit
A man's suit marks Song's first appearance without the disguise. Song calmly tells the judge that Gallimard supported him and their supposed son in Paris for fifteen years.
Q 24Madama Butterfly, the opera at the heart of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, is set in which Japanese port city?
Nagasaki
Nagasaki is where the American officer rents a hillside house for his young bride. A memorial to the opera's composer stands in the city's Glover Garden.
Q 25What is the real name of the heroine called Butterfly in the Italian opera that M. Butterfly reworks?
Cio-Cio-San
Cio-Cio-San comes from the Japanese word for butterfly, with a plain honorific added. She is only fifteen when the opera begins.
Q 26David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly was named a finalist in 1989, but not the winner, for which major American award?
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama eluded the play, though it had won the Tony for best play. Two later works by its author, Yellow Face and Soft Power, were also finalists without winning.
Q 27The director of the 1993 M. Butterfly film felt it was overshadowed by which earlier hit built on a similar surprise?
The Crying Game
The Crying Game had sprung its own gender surprise on audiences a year earlier. Hwang later said the stage reveal no longer carried the shock it had in 1988.
Q 28After first visiting Song Liling's flat in M. Butterfly, how does Rene Gallimard test his power over her?
He stays away
He stays away for weeks and ignores her pleading letters, until shame at making her suffer sends him back to her door.
Q 29Which French president pardoned Shi Pei Pu, the opera singer whose story inspired M. Butterfly, a year after the trial?
François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand pardoned Shi in April 1987 to ease tensions with China over a case described as very silly. Shi's French lover was freed that August.
Q 30Which director, better known for body-horror films, made the 1993 screen version of M. Butterfly for Warner Bros.?
David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg read the screenplay before he had ever seen the play. He invented the film's police-van scene because he doubted the stage ending would work on screen.