Macbeth Book Quiz
Eight multiple-choice questions on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606) — plot, characters and the moments everyone quotes. Two minutes, instant score, every answer explained below. For the full mixed-classics version, take the original book quiz — 15 questions across the whole canon.
All 8 questions and answers
Prefer to read the quiz instead of taking it? Expand for every question, answer and a one-line explanation.
- What do the witches prophesy? — Macbeth will be king, and Banquo's descendants will be kings. Two truths and a time bomb: Macbeth's crown comes true fast, while Banquo's line — the Stuart kings James I traced himself to — gets the future.
- Who is killed so Macbeth can take the throne? — King Duncan, his guest and kinsman. Duncan is murdered in his sleep at Macbeth's own castle — the killing of a guest and a king, a double sacrilege the play never lets Macbeth forget.
- What does Lady Macbeth do with the bloody daggers after the murder? — Takes them back to smear the sleeping grooms. Macbeth refuses to look at what he has done, so she carries the daggers back and paints the king's guards with blood — 'the innocent sleep' scene.
- What is Lady Macbeth doing when she cries 'Out, damned spot'? — Sleepwalking, scrubbing invisible blood from her hands. Her guilt has broken through in sleep: she re-enacts the murder nightly in front of her doctor and gentlewoman, obsessively washing hands that are clean.
- Why does Macbeth believe no man born of woman can harm him? — The third apparition tells him so — and Macduff was born by caesarean. Every prophecy is worded to be literally true and spiritually fatal: Macduff was 'from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd'.
- What vision does Macbeth see just before killing Duncan? — A floating dagger pointing toward the king's chamber. 'Is this a dagger which I see before me?' — the air-drawn blade that pulls him toward the murder he has almost talked himself out of.
- Who appears sitting in Macbeth's chair at the banquet? — Banquo's ghost, his hair matted with blood. Macbeth is the only one who can see him; his terror in front of the thanes is the beginning of the end of his reputation.
- How does Macbeth die? — Killed in single combat by Macduff. Macduff, the man not of woman born, fights him to the end and brings the usurper's head offstage on a pole.
About Macbeth
A brave general hears a prophecy that he will be king, and his wife does the arithmetic: one murder, tonight, with the king sleeping under their roof. What follows is the tightest horror story Shakespeare ever built — a man who cannot stop killing and a woman who cannot wash her hands. The novel runs about 18,000 words (roughly 100 pages in a standard paperback) — about 1 hour and 16 minutes of reading at an average pace. Before you commit, see the full breakdown in how long it takes to read Macbeth or calculate reading time for any other book.
Easy-to-moderate — the shortest of the great tragedies, written at a gallop. The language is vivid rather than dense, and the story is pure noir: ambition, guilt, and a body count that keeps the pages turning. If you get 6 or more of the eight questions right, the book clearly stuck.
What this quiz covers
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth sits in our gothic & horror shelf, and the eight questions follow the book the way a reader experiences it: how the story opens, the turn in the middle, the characters who carry it, and the ending people still argue about. You will not be asked for page numbers or publication trivia — but three or four questions are built to separate people who read the book from people who read a summary. If a question stumps you, that gap is your reading list talking.
Fair warning for the ambitious: readers who clear this quiz often move straight to the reading-time breakdown for Macbeth to plan the reread, then test the rest of their shelf against the mixed classic literature quiz.
More book quizzes
Frankenstein quiz, Dracula quiz, The Picture of Dorian Gray quiz, Wuthering Heights quiz, 1984 quiz, Animal Farm quiz, Brave New World quiz — or browse every book quiz on the site. For scale, Macbeth is the 132nd longest of the 133 classics timed here — shorter than The Metamorphosis but longer than The Little Prince.
Doing the whole author? Our William Shakespeare plays in order guide lists every book with the best entry point.
Frequently asked questions
How many questions are in the Macbeth quiz?
Eight multiple-choice questions covering William Shakespeare's plot, characters and most famous moments. The quiz takes about two minutes and your score is instant.
Is the Macbeth book quiz free?
Yes — no signup, no email, nothing to install. Answer the eight questions and get your score immediately.
What score should I aim for?
8/8 means you know the book cold; 6+ is a solid score. Below 4, the book is calling you back for a reread.
Is the Macbeth quiz hard?
Easy-to-moderate — the shortest of the great tragedies, written at a gallop. The language is vivid rather than dense, and the story is pure noir: ambition, guilt, and a body count that keeps the pages turning. The questions themselves stick to famous, load-bearing moments — the scenes and lines the book is remembered for — so a genuine read usually scores 6+.
How long is the Macbeth reading itself?
About 18,000 words — roughly 100 pages, or about 1 hour and 16 minutes at an average pace. The full pace breakdown is in how long it takes to read Macbeth. It runs 5 acts, averaging 3,600 words each; see the book-count guide for its full structure.