Robin Hood Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
59 free Robin Hood trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
48 free Robin Hood trivia questions with answers. Robin Hood has been robbing the rich for six hundred years, and almost everything you think you know about him arrived late. The oldest ballads have no Maid Marian, no Friar Tuck, no Richard the Lionheart and no giving to the poor; the first record of anyone called Robin Hood is a Yorkshire outlaw whose goods were seized in 1226. This quiz runs 59 questions from the medieval legend (Piers Plowman, the Gest, the May games, the Major Oak, the Yorkshire claim) through Ivanhoe and Howard Pyle to the screen: Errol Flynn's Technicolor classic, Disney's fox, Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, Prince of Thieves and Bryan Adams, Men in Tights, Ridley Scott, the BBC series and the 2018 flop. It starts with warm-ups and works up to questions that reward real folklore knowledge. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a school unit on legends, a movie night or a pub-quiz literature round.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Robin Hood traditionally wears which green cloth, named after the English city that dyed it?
Lincoln green
Lincoln green is worn in the legend as early as the Gest, though one later ballad clothes his men in it and Robin himself in scarlet red.
Q 02In the legend, what prize does the Sheriff of Nottingham offer at the archery contest meant to trap Robin Hood?
A golden arrow
A golden arrow: in the ballad named after it, Robin wins in disguise and slips away unrecognised, then Little John shoots a letter into Nottingham to tell the Sheriff who beat him.
Q 03Films make Robin Hood a nobleman, but what is his rank in the oldest ballads?
A yeoman
A yeoman, a free commoner between knight and peasant. The first earl version, in a 1569 chronicle, even suggested he was low-born and won the title 'for his manhood and chivalry'.
Q 04In the 1370s poem Piers Plowman, which deadly sin confesses to knowing rhymes of Robin Hood better than his prayers?
Sloth
Sloth cannot say his Paternoster properly but knows his rhymes of Robin Hood. It is the outlaw's oldest literary mention, proof the tales were popular generations before any surviving ballad was copied down.
Q 05In the oldest surviving Robin Hood ballad, who spots the outlaw at Mass in Nottingham and has him arrested?
A monk
A monk spots Robin at prayer and raises the alarm. Little John, who had just walked out on Robin over an unpaid bet, still kills the monk and breaks his master out of jail.
Q 06In 1953 a member of Indiana's textbook commission wanted Robin Hood taken out of schoolbooks for promoting what?
Communism
Communism: she said a hero who robbed the rich to give to the poor followed 'the Communist line'. Indiana's schools kept the book.
Q 07In the early ballad A Gest of Robyn Hode, the king disguises himself as what to meet Robin?
Abbot
An abbot: he and his men dress as churchmen, knowing that rich clerics were Robin's favourite prey. The ballad calls him 'Edward, our comely king', not the Richard of later legend.
Q 08Two Elizabethan plays of 1598 made Robin Hood the outlawed holder of which earldom, a title films still use?
Huntingdon
Huntingdon: playwright Anthony Munday made him Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, and in 1746 the antiquary William Stukeley drew up a bogus family tree to back the title.
Q 09Before Maid Marian entered the legend, which woman was the Robin Hood of the early ballads devoted to?
The Virgin Mary
The Virgin Mary: 'Robin loved Our dear Lady', says the early Gest, and for her sake he would never harm any company that had a woman in it.
Q 10When Robin Hood first meets Little John on a narrow bridge, what do the two men fight with?
Quarterstaffs
Quarterstaffs: Robin lays aside his bow to make it fair, cuts an oak staff and is knocked into the brook. The duel is a late arrival, from a 17th-century ballad and not the medieval tales.
Q 11Which minstrel joined the Merry Men in a 17th-century broadside ballad?
Alan-a-Dale
Alan-a-Dale joins after Robin, posing as a harper, stops his sweetheart's wedding to a rich old knight and sees her married to Alan on the spot.
Q 12Which silent-film star played the outlaw in 1922's Robin Hood, one of the costliest films of its day?
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks also wrote the story himself, hiding behind the credit 'Elton Thomas', which were his own two middle names.
Q 13Which 1819 novel by Walter Scott did much to shape the modern Robin Hood legend?
Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe brings him in as a Saxon outlaw defying Norman lords: a Saxon-against-Norman feud no medieval ballad mentions, but one that films have used ever since.
Q 21Which gangster-film star was Warner Bros.' first choice to play Robin in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood?
James Cagney
James Cagney was pencilled in for the part, then walked out on the studio in a contract dispute, and the role had to be recast.
Q 22Who plays Maid Marian in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood?
Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland was not a certainty for the part: the studio also weighed Anita Louise for Marian before settling on her.
Q 23In 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, how does Robin win the archery tournament?
By splitting a rival's arrow
Q 14Which American author's 1883 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood became a classic children's version?
Howard Pyle
Howard Pyle wove the ballads into one wholesome story: where the ballad's Robin kills more than a dozen foresters over a bet, Pyle's kills one, who shot first, and is sick at heart over it.
Q 15In Ridley Scott's 2010 Robin Hood, which Australian star plays Marion as a knight's widow?
Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett's Marion is the widow of the very knight Robin is impersonating, and she is cold to the soldier at first, sceptical of his motives.
Q 16From the 1260s, what did 'Robehod' or 'Robinhood' start appearing as in English court rolls?
A nickname for outlaws
A nickname for outlaws: in 1262 a clerk entered the Berkshire fugitive William, son of Robert the smith, as 'William Robehod', perhaps because the outlaw legend was already well known.
Q 17Which famous tree in Sherwood Forest is claimed as the Merry Men's hideout?
The Major Oak
The Major Oak failed to come into leaf in 2026 and was judged to have reached the end of its life, though the great trunk still stands near Edwinstowe.
Q 18Which English king once burst into his queen's chamber disguised as Robin Hood?
Henry VIII
Henry VIII, not yet a year on the throne, surprised Catherine of Aragon in January 1510 with eleven nobles dressed as the outlaw band.
Q 19Besides Sherwood, which northern English region has a strong claim to be Robin Hood's original home?
Yorkshire
Yorkshire: the oldest ballads put him in Barnsdale, near Doncaster, at least as often as in Sherwood, so the county has claimed him ever since.
Q 20Which Hollywood star plays Robin in the 1938 Technicolor classic The Adventures of Robin Hood?
Errol Flynn
Errol Flynn did most of his own stunts, though a double made the leap onto a horse with his hands tied and the climb over the castle gate.
By splitting a rival's arrow: elsewhere in the film the arrows that strike men are real, fired by archery expert Howard Hill into padding hidden under their costumes.
Q 24Which British actress played Robin Hood's daughter Gwyn in the 2001 Disney TV film Princess of Thieves?
Keira Knightley
Keira Knightley's Gwyn takes over her father's mission, fighting to put King Richard's son Philip on the throne instead of Prince John.
Q 25In Disney's 1973 animated Robin Hood, what animal is Robin?
A fox
A fox: Disney had long toyed with a film about the trickster Reynard the Fox, and designer Ken Anderson carried those ideas over to Robin Hood.
Q 26In Disney's Robin Hood, which actor voices Prince John, a scrawny lion without a mane?
Peter Ustinov
Peter Ustinov, who spoke fluent German, also recorded the lion's lines himself for the film's German release.
Q 27In Disney's Robin Hood, singer Roger Miller voices the narrator, drawn as which bird?
A rooster
A rooster: Miller did more than narrate, writing and singing several of the film's songs himself, among them 'Oo-De-Lally'.
Q 28In Disney's Robin Hood, Little John shares his voice actor and much of his look with which Jungle Book character?
Baloo
Baloo: Phil Harris voiced both bears six years apart, and the studio reused so much old animation in the film that critics still fault it for recycling.
Q 29Who plays the scene-stealing Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)?
Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman won a BAFTA for the part, which joined Die Hard's Hans Gruber among the screen villains that made his name.
Q 30Who plays Azeem, Robin's Moorish companion, in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves?
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman's Azeem made enough of a mark to be spoofed two years later in Men in Tights, as Asneeze and his son Ahchoo.