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 is a melancholy lover in love with the idea of love, and he ends the play engaged to the page he had been sending to woo somebody else.

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 retort in Act II, Scene 3, and it makes him the play's spokesman for revelry against the steward's killjoy rule.

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

Greatness 'thrust upon them' is the line everyone credits to Malvolio, yet he is only reading aloud words a waiting-woman forged in Olivia's hand.

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 both toasted with bowls of 'lamb's-wool', a spiced ale.