Q 01/05

Macbeth is only slightly more than half the length of which other Shakespeare tragedy?

A) Hamlet

B) King Lear

C) Othello

D) Julius Caesar

Answer · why

A) Hamlet

Hamlet runs almost twice as long, and Macbeth's brevity has led many critics to suspect that the version we have was cut down for performance.

Q 02/05

Every modern edition of Shakespeare's Macbeth is based on which early printed text?

A) A 1608 quarto

B) The First Folio of 1623

C) A 1611 quarto

D) The Pavier Quartos of 1619

Answer · why

B) The First Folio of 1623

The First Folio of 1623 is the base because no quarto of Macbeth appeared before the Folio, so every later text descends from that one printing.

Q 03/05

Whose novel borrows its title, 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', from Macbeth?

A) Stephen King

B) Ray Bradbury

C) Shirley Jackson

D) Neil Gaiman

Answer · why

B) Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury took it for his 1962 carnival novel, and the couplet's first half, 'By the pricking of my thumbs', titled a 1968 Agatha Christie mystery.

Q 04/05

Shakespeare took the story of Macbeth mainly from which 1587 history book?

A) Camden's Britannia

B) Hall's Chronicle

C) Holinshed's Chronicles

D) Foxe's Book of Martyrs

Answer · why

C) Holinshed's Chronicles

Holinshed's Chronicles made Banquo an accomplice in Duncan's murder, but Shakespeare made him innocent, since the reigning king was thought to descend...

Q 05/05

Astrologer Simon Forman's notes record seeing Macbeth performed at which London playhouse?

A) The Rose

B) The Swan

C) The Curtain

D) The Globe

Answer · why

D) The Globe

The Globe, where Forman saw it, burned down in 1613 when a stage cannon fired during a performance set its thatched roof alight.