Shakespeare's Girls Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rosalind in "As You Like It"

Elizabethan gender-benders ... Shakespeare used the girl-disguised-as-a-boy plot twist in several plays, including the wrong answers here, a useful device when all roles were played by males. However, only in "As You Like It" were the audience treated to the delight of a boy actor playing the role of a girl disguised as a boy pretending to be a girl! Confused? Rosalind's fella, Orlando, is, but it all turns out happily in the end as they marry in a quadruple wedding ceremony. Yes, quadruple. This play does nothing by halves.

Answer: Nerissa in "The Merchant of Venice"

Nerissa is one of the maidservant-companion-friend characters who often accompany Shakespeare's heroines, especially in the comedies. She is on Portia's side, talks common sense, and is generally a loyal side-kick to the more intelligent and intrepid Portia.

Her actions mirror Portia's - she falls in love when Portia does, marries when she does, takes on a male disguise at the same time, falls out with her husband and makes up with him again.

Answer: Ophelia in "Hamlet"

Ophelia doesn't really count as feisty, does she, poor lamb. Why she gets so grief-stricken over her father's death is beyond me, after he's wrecked her relationship with Hamlet with his meddlesome suspicions. However, after that, when she's not spending her time singing faintly dirty folk-songs, she's hanging around the river picking water-flowers, and once she's fallen in, she's got little hope of getting out again, given the voluminous clothes she would have been wearing. Shame. Yes, the other girls in the wrong answers all have problems with their daddies too.

Answer: Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

I can't quote what the mischievous fairy Puck tells his master Oberon, the Fairy King, when he reports back what happened when Titania woke up, because he uses a synonym for the word donkey which some of our quiz fans might find offensive! The point about the donkey's head (which Puck magicked onto this guy, who is a craftsman and an amateur actor, so he is low down the Elizabethan social scale, twice), is that in England, donkeys have always been proverbially stupid animals, which makes it all the more stupid for Titania to fall in love with him.

This is what a love potion can do to even an intelligent person. Dear reader, be warned!

Answer: Lady Macbeth in "Macbeth"

All these women are forces to be reckoned with, capable of pretty bloodthirsty acts. Tamora and Margaret plead revenge as a motive and even Goneril (and her equally nasty sister Regan) argue their father's unreasonable behaviour as a cause for their actions; Lady Macbeth stands alone in blatantly seeking power by whatever means, without apology. I never quite believe her claim that she would pluck her nipple from the boneless gums of her own infant and dash its brains out ... but then again ...

Answer: Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing"

The subplot in "Much Ado" of the "kind of merry war" between Beatrice and Benedick appealed so strongly to audiences that in the eighteenth century the play was actually renamed "Beatrice and Benedick", down-playing the main Hero-Claudio story. The great appeal of Beatrice and Benedick to 50% of any audience is that Beatrice wins absolutely every confrontation between the pair! And I defy any woman not to fall at least a little in love with Benedick by the end of the play.

Answer: Mistress Page in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"

Of course, the legend goes that having enjoyed the Henry IV plays, Queen Elizabeth I demanded to see Falstaff in love, and for this reason Shakespeare wrote "The Merry Wives of Windsor", though love is hardly the appropriate word for Falstaff's attempt to gain money by simultaneously wooing two respectably married ladies! Several characters from the Henry IV plays, including Mistress Quickly, crop up in "Merry Wives." Uniquely in the comedies, interest focuses on a pair of older, married women rather than the young lovers (Anne and Fenton), and the friendship between Mistress Page and Mistres Ford gives a heart-warming dimension to this farcical comedy.

Answer: Cleopatra in "Antony and Cleopatra"

Of course this is that "Serpent of old Nile", Cleopatra, arguably the feistiest of Shakespeare's feisty females. The play's title may suggest the lovers are of equal importance in the drama, but we know who the significant figure really is, don't we, ladies? Anyway, Shakespeare kills Antony off (in a rather undignified death) a whole act before the end of the play, leaving Cleopatra to outwit the dull Octavius Caesar and embrace the asp with royal courage.

Answer: Bianca in "The Taming of the Shrew"

Hero is pretty much biddable, Celia and especially Imogen know when to put their foot down and strike out for some independence, but Bianca is an out-and-out devious minx who manages to fool almost everybody into thinking she is a sweet and docile child whilst she is actually manipulating every man in her vicinity.

The only character in the play who sees through her is her obstreperous sister Kate, the Shrew of the title. But who's squeaking shrilly by the end of the play?

Answer: Maria in "Twelfth Night"

Yes, it's Maria in "Twelfth Night" seeking revenge on Malvolio for trying to spoil the party. Maria has tried to curb the excesses of the drunken revellers Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Feste but comes down firmly on their side when Malvolio gets above his station. Maria's glee in hatching the "sportful malice" of the spurious love-letter is infectious, and she shows no compunction in getting Malvolio proclaimed a madman and locked in a dark cell. Towards the end of the drama, she fades from the action and her marriage to Sir Toby is simply reported by a minor character in the final scene of the play.