Sarah Bernhardt Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
50 free Sarah Bernhardt trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Sarah Bernhardt trivia quiz covers the French actress who was arguably the first global celebrity of the stage. It begins with her birth in the Latin Quarter to a Dutch-Jewish courtesan, the convent school where she buried a pet lizard with full rites, the Duke of Morny who steered her to the Conservatory, and the slap that ended her first spell at the Comédie-Française. It follows her to the Odéon, the Franco-Prussian War hospital she ran there, Victor Hugo's toast to her golden voice, and the tantrum-prone superstar years of Fédora, Theodora, La Tosca and Cleopatra's live snakes. The quiz also takes in the legends and the facts behind them: the satin-lined coffin, the balloon flight over Paris, the whale in Boston, the menagerie, the disastrous marriage to Jacques Damala, Mucha's Gismonda poster, her Hamlet, L'Aiglon, the theatre she named after herself, the leg amputated in 1915 and the wartime recitals that followed, the early films and Edison recording, and the 30,000 mourners at her funeral. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Bernhardt, her theatre and Alphonse Mucha, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for theatre students, Belle Époque enthusiasts and quiz setters looking for a subject nobody else has covered this deeply.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Sarah Bernhardt's name at birth?
Henriette-Rosine Bernard
Henriette-Rosine Bernard: her birth record burned with the Paris archives in 1871, so even the day she was born was long disputed.
Q 02What was the profession of Bernhardt's mother, Judith Bernard?
Courtesan
Courtesan: her aunt was one too, and in her lean early years Sarah followed them, living off wealthy admirers between roles at the theatre.
Q 03Which ceremony did the animal-loving young Bernhardt stage at her convent school?
Giving her pet lizard a Christian burial
Giving her pet lizard a Christian burial: she led her classmates in a funeral procession for it, and the passion lasted, since the grown star kept a cheetah, an alligator and other strange pets.
Q 04Which powerful family friend proposed at a family council that the teenage Bernhardt should become an actress?
The Duke of Morny
The Duke of Morny: she had wanted to be a nun, but he was the emperor's half-brother and his word settled it, then opened the doors of the Conservatoire and France's national theatre for her.
Q 05Which novelist said of the stick-thin young Bernhardt that she had 'the head of a virgin and the body of a broomstick'?
Alexandre Dumas père
Alexandre Dumas père: the creator of The Three Musketeers made the crack after her 1866 debut at a new theatre, yet two years later his own play Kean gave her a first resounding success.
Q 06At her Conservatoire audition, the teenage Bernhardt recited a fable by which writer?
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine: with nobody to feed her cues for a scene, she recited his 'The Two Pigeons'; a judge grumbled that this was no place for fables, and she was admitted anyway.
Q 07What did Bernhardt do in 1863 that ended her first stint at the Comédie-Française?
Slapped a senior actress in the face
Slapped a senior actress in the face: Madame Nathalie had shoved Sarah's little sister into a pillar for treading on her train, and Sarah gave up her place rather than apologise.
Q 08Which writer sent Bernhardt a bracelet with a tear-shaped jewel after her acting in his play moved him to weep?
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo: after she played Doña Sol in his Hernani in 1877 he wrote that the tear she had made him shed was hers, and sent the jewel to stand for it.
Q 09With which Belgian aristocrat did Bernhardt have her only child, Maurice, in 1864?
Henri, Prince de Ligne
Henri, Prince de Ligne: they never married and the boy took her surname; she doted on Maurice for life, even putting him in charge of a Paris theatre while he was still in his teens.
Q 10At which Left Bank theatre did Bernhardt make her name from 1866, in plays such as Kean and Le Passant?
The Odéon
The Odéon: its director Félix Duquesnel hired her over his partner's objections, and she later called it the theatre she loved most, a happy company that felt like school carried on.
Q 11Which novelist, a woman who wrote under a man's name, called the young Bernhardt 'my little Madonna' during rehearsals of her plays?
George Sand
George Sand: Bernhardt adored the notorious rebel, whose plays gave her early roles, and remembered her as timid and gentle, saying little and smoking all through rehearsals.
Q 12What did Bernhardt turn her theatre into during the Prussian siege of Paris in 1870?
A hospital for wounded soldiers
A hospital for wounded soldiers: she ran it herself, nursing and begging supplies from every rich man she knew, and by her own account even talked the police prefect out of his fur-lined overcoat.
Q 13At the supper for the 100th performance of Ruy Blas, its author raised a toast to Bernhardt's what?
Q 21Which playwright wrote Fédora, Theodora, La Tosca and Cleopatra for Bernhardt?
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou: he directed the plays himself and schooled her in a broad, flamboyant style of lavish sets, exotic costumes and long death scenes, melodramas built from the first line to show her off.
Q 22What did Bernhardt keep to play the asp in Cleopatra's death scene?
Two garter snakes
Two garter snakes: the harmless pair stood in for the deadly asp, and she painted her palms red where no audience could see, explaining that if she caught sight of her hand it would be Cleopatra's.
Q 23Which future king, then a pleasure-loving prince, was long rumoured to be one of Bernhardt's lovers?
Golden voice
Golden voice: the phrase clung to her for life as 'la voix d'or', but the supper ended grimly when one of her two managers collapsed at the table and died without regaining consciousness.
Q 14What piece of furniture did Bernhardt famously keep in her bedroom and sometimes sleep in?
A satin-lined coffin
A satin-lined coffin: she lay in it to learn her roles, slept in it when her dying sister needed the bed, and posed in it for a photograph that fed the legend.
Q 15Which 1878 stunt got Bernhardt fined 1,000 francs by the director of the Comédie-Française?
A balloon flight over Paris
A balloon flight over Paris: the balloon, named Doña Sol after her current stage role, came down miles from the city, and when she refused to pay and offered her resignation, a government minister had to step in to keep her.
Q 16Which composer turned La Tosca, a melodrama written for Bernhardt in 1887, into one of the world's best-loved operas?
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini: he saw Bernhardt play the part on tour in Italy and begged his publisher for the rights, but the project passed to a rival composer for a time, and his opera did not open until 1900.
Q 17Which play did Bernhardt give 65 times on her first American tour, more often than any other in her repertoire?
La Dame aux Camélias
La Dame aux Camélias: Americans knew it as 'Camille', and when preachers denounced the French star from their pulpits as a corrupter of the New World, the crowds only grew.
Q 18Which inventor made a recording of Bernhardt when she visited his laboratory on her first American tour?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison: she took a train out to Menlo Park and, by her own account, found the place lit up for her by his new electric lamps, a reception she called worthy of fairyland.
Q 19On what unusual object did Bernhardt stand in Boston harbour, at a showman's urging?
The back of a dead whale
The back of a dead whale: its owner then hauled the salted carcass after her from city to city, with posters claiming she had killed it for the whalebone in her corsets.
Q 20Whom did Bernhardt marry in London in 1882?
Jacques Damala, a Greek diplomat
Jacques Damala, a Greek diplomat: he gave up his post to act in her company, but he walked out within the year, and morphine killed him seven years after the wedding.
Edward VII of Britain
Edward VII of Britain: as Prince of Wales he haunted her London and Paris seasons, and one night, as a prank, he lay on stage as the dead prince she wept over in Fédora.
Q 24Which Brazilian ruler came to every one of Bernhardt's performances in Rio de Janeiro in 1886?
Emperor Pedro II
Emperor Pedro II: he led a continent's welcome, with audiences showering her stage with their jewels, and the thirteen-month tour of the Americas sent her home a millionaire.
Q 25Which then-unknown artist made Bernhardt's poster for Gismonda in 1894, launching his career?
Alphonse Mucha
Alphonse Mucha: the story goes that he was the only artist left at the printer's over Christmas when she demanded a poster at once; she loved it and signed him to design her posters, sets and costumes.
Q 26Bernhardt fell out with her own son in the 1890s by publicly defending which French army officer?
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus: she stood with Zola for the captain wrongly convicted of treason while her adored son Maurice took the other side, a quarrel that split her household as it split France.
Q 27Which Russian writer, then a 21-year-old reviewer, was unimpressed when Bernhardt played Moscow in 1881?
Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov: still a medical student paying his way with journalism, he granted her intelligence and taste but found every sigh and tear a lesson learned by heart, the enchantment smothered in artifice.
Q 28Which Shakespeare title role did Bernhardt take on in 1899, in a French prose version she commissioned?
Hamlet
Hamlet: at 54 she threw out the brooding dreamer and played the prince as quick, energetic and resolute, a reading some London critics met with jokes at her expense.
Q 29In Rostand's L'Aiglon (1900), Bernhardt played which historical figure?
Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt
Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt: at 55 she cropped her hair, studied how young cavalry officers walked, and played the prince who died at 21; the play ran for most of a year.
Q 30Which Irish writer threw lilies at Bernhardt's feet when she landed in England?
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde: he wrote Salomé in French, and she was rehearsing it in London in 1892 when the censor refused a licence because it put biblical characters on stage; she never played it.