The Merchant of Venice Trivia
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100 free The Merchant of Venice trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Merchant of Venice trivia for anyone who studied the play at school, saw the Pacino film, or just wants to know why a 'comedy' ends with a forced conversion. The quiz opens with the plot: who the merchant actually is, the 3,000 ducats, the interest-free bond, the ships at Tripolis and Mexico, the gold, silver and lead caskets, the Prince of Morocco's mistake, Jessica's elopement with Leah's turquoise ring, and the courtroom in which Portia, disguised as Balthazar, turns Shylock's own contract against him. The ring trick and the three ships that come home close the plot section. The second half is about where the play came from and what people have done with it since: Il Pecorone and the Gesta Romanorum, the 1598 Stationers' entry as 'the Jew of Venice', the ship Andrew and Cádiz, Marlowe's Jew of Malta, the 1605 court performance, Granville's rewrite, Macklin, Kean, Edwin Booth, Irving and Ellen Terry, Jacob Adler in Yiddish, the Nazi productions, Auden's essay, Harold Bloom's verdict, Wesker's The Merchant and the 2004 film with its one-take kiss. A few questions on Portia herself, from Cato's daughter to a moon of Uranus, round it out. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the play, Shylock, Portia and the 2004 film, with the supporting sentence attached to each question. Easy questions cover the plot; the expert tier reaches Thomas Heyes, Foerster's opera Jessika and Deuteronomy 32.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01From which part of Antonio's body does Shylock come to court ready to cut his pound of flesh?
His breast
His breast: when Shylock first proposes the bond he says any part of the body that pleases him, but the paper read out in court says 'nearest the merchant's heart'.
Q 02The Merchant of Venice's 1600 title page says which company, Shakespeare's own, acted it?
Lord Chamberlain's Men
Lord Chamberlain's Men: Shakespeare was a business partner in the company as well as its playwright, so he took a share of the profits each time it played.
Q 03How is The Merchant of Venice classified in the First Folio of 1623?
A comedy
A comedy: nobody dies and three couples end up married. Francis Meres was already counting it among Shakespeare's comedies in 1598, 25 years before the Folio.
Q 04How many ducats does Bassanio need to borrow so he can woo Portia in style?
3,000
3,000 ducats, for three months: Bassanio has already run through his own estate and owes Antonio the most, so the new loan is his bet that marrying an heiress will clear every debt.
Q 05Why can't Antonio lend Bassanio the money himself?
His ships and goods are all at sea
His ships and goods are all at sea, bound for Tripolis, the Indies, Mexico and England, so he tells Bassanio to borrow on his good name instead, which is how he ends up in Shylock's debt.
Q 06Besides insulting him, how has Antonio hurt Shylock's business before the play begins?
By lending money without interest
By lending money without interest: in an aside Shylock says he hates Antonio most because his free loans 'bring down the rate of usance', the interest a lender can charge in Venice.
Q 07What interest does Shylock charge Antonio on the loan?
None
None: Shylock offers the money as a kindness and calls the forfeit a 'merry sport', so Antonio agrees cheerfully, saying there is 'much kindness in the Jew'.
Q 08Which talkative, tactless friend accompanies Bassanio on his wooing trip?
Gratiano
Gratiano: Bassanio only lets him come after warning him that he is 'too wild, too rude and bold of voice', and he still ends the trip married to Portia's maid.
Q 09Where does the heiress Portia live?
Belmont
Belmont: the Italian tale Shakespeare borrowed already had a rich lady at a port called Belmonte, but she drugged her suitors' wine and kept their ships; he swapped that trick for the caskets.
Q 10Portia's suitors must choose between three caskets made of which materials?
Gold, silver and lead
Gold, silver and lead: her dead father's will set the lottery, so Portia can neither choose a husband nor refuse one, and complains that she is 'curbed by the will of a dead father'.
Q 11Which suitor picks the gold casket, reading 'what many men desire' as meaning Portia?
The Prince of Morocco
The Prince of Morocco: instead of Portia's portrait he finds a skull with a scroll in its eye socket, which begins 'All that glisters is not gold'.
Q 12Which casket contains Portia's portrait?
Lead
Lead: its motto warns 'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath', and Bassanio picks it because he distrusts a showy outside, saying 'the world is still deceived with ornament'.
Q 13What must Portia's suitors swear if they pick the wrong casket?
To remain a bachelor for life
Q 21Under the law Portia cites against Shylock, who splits his forfeited goods?
Antonio and the state
Antonio and the state: Venice's law gives half an alien's goods to the citizen he plotted against and half to the treasury, and leaves his life to the Duke, so Shylock is told to kneel and beg.
Q 22As the price of his mercy, what does Antonio demand of the beaten Shylock?
That he convert to Christianity
That he convert to Christianity: Antonio also makes him will everything to the daughter who robbed him and the man she ran off with, and Shylock can only answer 'I am content'.
Q 23What gift does the disguised Portia finally ask of Bassanio for saving Antonio?
To remain a bachelor for life: a loser must also swear never to reveal which casket he chose, so no later suitor can learn from his mistake, and to leave at once.
Q 14Shylock's daughter Jessica elopes with which Christian?
Lorenzo
Lorenzo: Jessica slips away dressed as a boy with her father's ducats and jewels, and Shylock is heard in the streets crying 'My daughter! O my ducats!' in a single breath.
Q 15What keepsake from his late wife Leah does Jessica take when she flees?
A turquoise ring
A turquoise ring: Jessica trades it for a monkey, and Shylock groans that Leah gave it to him when he was a bachelor and he would not have sold it 'for a wilderness of monkeys'.
Q 16Who accompanies the disguised Portia to court, posing as a lawyer's clerk?
Nerissa
Nerissa: Portia's waiting-woman copies her mistress in everything, marrying Bassanio's friend at the same moment and then fooling her own husband in court just as Portia does.
Q 17Under what male name does Portia appear in the Venetian court?
Balthazar
Balthazar: Portia borrows the name from her own servant, the man she has just sent hurrying to her lawyer cousin to fetch the notes and robes she needs.
Q 18Portia's lawyer cousin Bellario lives in which nearby city, then under Venetian rule?
Padua
Padua: Portia sends her servant there for Bellario's notes and robes. Ruled by Venice since 1405, the city had long been famous for its university, where law was among the first subjects taught.
Q 19In court, Shylock praises the disguised Portia as which biblical figure 'come to judgment'?
Daniel
Daniel: Shylock cheers 'A Daniel come to judgment!' while the ruling is going his way, and once it turns, one of Antonio's friends gleefully throws the same words back at him.
Q 20How does Portia stop Shylock collecting on his bond?
It allows flesh but not a drop of blood
It allows flesh but not a drop of blood: Portia waits until Shylock is about to cut, then says 'Tarry a little', and adds that he must take exactly a pound, not a hair's weight more or less.
His ring
His ring: Portia gave it to him with the warning that parting with it would 'presage the ruin of your love', so the lawyer asking for it is his own wife testing him.
Q 24What good news does Portia hand Antonio in the final scene?
Three of his ships have safely returned
Three of his ships have safely returned: her letter says his argosies 'are richly come to harbour suddenly', and she will not say how she came by it: 'You shall not know by what strange accident'.
Q 25Promised 'as much as he deserves', whose portrait does the Prince of Aragon find in the silver casket?
A fool
A fool: 'I will assume desert', he announces, then finds 'the portrait of a blinking idiot' and leaves admitting he came to woo with one fool's head and goes away with two.
Q 26In Portia's roll call of suitors, what is her complaint about the English baron Falconbridge?
They share no language
They share no language: the Englishman has 'neither Latin, French, nor Italian', so Portia calls him 'a proper man's picture' and asks who can 'converse with a dumb-show'.
Q 27Which proverb does Antonio mutter when Shylock defends interest with the tale of Jacob's sheep?
The devil can cite Scripture
The devil can cite Scripture: Shylock has just told how Jacob bred himself streaked lambs from Laban's flock, and Antonio tells Bassanio the man is 'a goodly apple rotten at the heart'.
Q 28Asked what good Antonio's flesh could be to him, what does Shylock answer?
To bait fish
To bait fish: 'if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge', Shylock snaps, and the jibe sets off his list of every wrong Antonio has done him.
Q 29The Merchant of Venice's 'wealthy Andrew' may echo a galleon seized in the Earl of Essex's 1596 raid on which port?
Cádiz
Cádiz: the galleon San Andrés was seized in the harbour that summer, so a rich ship called Andrew tells scholars the play can't have been written before then.
Q 30Before Shylock, London playgoers had Barabas in The Jew of Malta, a stage hit by which contemporary of Shakespeare?
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe: his Barabas also has heaps of gold and a daughter who deserts him to turn Christian, and Shakespeare's play was registered in 1598 with the alternative title 'the Jewe of Venyce'.