Q 01/05

What name does shipwrecked Viola adopt when she disguises herself as a page to the Duke of Illyria?

A) Ganymede

B) Fidele

C) Cesario

D) Balthazar

Answer · why

C) Cesario

Cesario is the page Olivia promptly falls for, and Viola keeps the disguise so long that her own twin is later mistaken for him.

Q 02/05

Which character, in love with the idea of love, opens Twelfth Night with 'If music be the food of love, play on'?

A) Malvolio

B) Orsino

C) Olivia

D) Sebastian

Answer · why

B) Orsino

Orsino spends the play sending a page to court a countess for him, then ends it engaged to that page once she is revealed as a woman.

Q 03/05

Sir Toby Belch asks Malvolio whether, because he is virtuous, there shall be no more of what?

A) Wine and song

B) Bread and circuses

C) Beer and skittles

D) Cakes and ale

Answer · why

D) Cakes and ale

Cakes and ale is Sir Toby's jab at the steward who breaks up his late-night party, and Somerset Maugham took the phrase as the title of a 1930 novel.

Q 04/05

The forged letter Malvolio reads says some are born great, some achieve greatness; how do the rest get it?

A) Thrust upon them

B) Bought with gold

C) Stolen by night

D) Earned by toil

Answer · why

A) Thrust upon them

Thrust upon them is often quoted as Malvolio's own wisdom, yet he is only reading aloud a letter forged to make a fool of him.

Q 05/05

In English Twelfth Night cake tradition a bean made its finder king; what hidden token made a woman queen?

A) A coin

B) A clove

C) A pea

D) A nutmeg

Answer · why

C) A pea

A pea crowned the queen while the bean crowned the king, and Robert Herrick's 1648 poem has the whole party toast the pair from a bowl of 'lamb's-wool...