The Lady, or the Tiger? quiz
By Frank Stockton
Two identical arena doors, a princess who knows the secret, and a choice the story refuses to finish
21 questions · about 22 minutes
Questions and answers
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Question 1. Which literary form best describes "The Lady, or the Tiger?"?
- Correct answer: Puzzle story (an unsolved dilemma the reader must resolve)
- Gothic romance (supernatural terror in a haunted castle)
- Historical chronicle (a factual record of medieval Europe)
- Naturalist case study (characters trapped by heredity and environment)
- Courtly epic (heroic quests and chivalric codes of honor)
Stockton withholds the outcome and hands the final judgment to the reader, which is the classic design of a puzzle story. The tale also works as an allegory of justice, jealousy, and choice, but its fame rests on that unsolved dilemma.
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Question 2. How does the narrator first present the king?
- A fully civilized monarch who copies every custom of his Latin neighbors
- A named medieval emperor who rules a documented European kingdom
- Correct answer: A semi-barbaric king who turns his private fancies into facts
- A weak figurehead controlled by priests, gladiators, and the crowd
He is a "semi-barbaric king," with ideas "polished and sharpened" by "distant Latin neighbors" yet still "large, florid, and untrammelled." His authority is so complete that "he turned his varied fancies into facts." The story never names him, and he is no figurehead: hitch in the system only makes him "blander and more genial" as he crushes "uneven places."
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Question 3. What is the king's arena built to do?
- Correct answer: Punish crime or reward virtue by impartial chance
- Stage gladiator fights until one combatant finally dies
- Let priests judge heretics thrown to the hungry beasts
- Entertain the court with plays, music, and public debates
The amphitheatre is "an agent of poetic justice" where crime is punished or virtue rewarded "by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance." It is not for "the rhapsodies of dying gladiators" or for religious prisoners and "hungry jaws." The accused opens one of two identical doors: tiger means guilt and death; lady means innocence and instant marriage.
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Question 4. In what year was the story first published?
- 1865
- Correct answer: 1882
- 1899
- 1902
Stockton published "The Lady, or the Tiger?" in The Century Magazine in November 1882. It became an immediate public debate piece.
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Question 5. What waits behind the two doors in the arena?
- A royal judge and a written pardon for the accused
- A chest of gold and a dungeon waiting under the floor
- A waiting priest and a choir ready for a wedding
- Correct answer: A hungry tiger and a lady suited to his station
The doors are "exactly alike and side by side." Behind one is "a hungry tiger" that tears the accused to pieces as punishment; behind the other is "a lady, the most suitable to his years and station," to whom he is married at once as a reward. A priest and choristers appear only after the lady's door is opened, not as the hidden choice itself.
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Question 6. Why is the young courtier sent into the arena?
- Correct answer: He dared to love the king's daughter, which no subject had done
- He stole a fortune in gold from the locked royal treasury
- He refused to take his place as a gladiator in the arena
- He insulted the hired mourners posted on the outer rim
He is "of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance." When the king discovers the affair, "the youth was immediately cast into prison." "Never before had such a case occurred; never before had a subject dared to love the daughter of a king." Everybody already knows he loved her; the trial still proceeds because the king will not let a known fact interfere with his tribunal.
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Question 7. What does "untrammelled" mean in this story?
- Carefully measured and bound by the strictest palace rules
- Decorated with flowers, gold leaf, and royal ornaments
- Correct answer: Not restricted, limited, or held back by any constraint
- Shared equally between two rival claimants at court
The king's ideas, though polished by "distant Latin neighbors," were still "large, florid, and untrammelled, as became the half of him which was barbaric." Untrammelled means not held back by restraint, which fits a ruler who turns fancies into facts.
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Question 8. How does the princess learn what waits behind each door?
- The king whispers the secret to her from his throne
- Correct answer: Gold and the power of her will buy her the secret
- Her lover inspects the doors and then signals her
- Hired mourners leak the arrangement to the whole court
She does "what no other person had done": she "possessed herself of the secret of the doors." The doors are "heavily curtained with skins," so no sound can leak out, "but gold, and the power of a woman's will, had brought the secret to the princess." Even the king does not know she has it; her lover expected that she would find out.
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Question 9. What does the princess know about the woman behind one door?
- The lady is her sister, and the king has named her
- The lady is a stranger brought in from a distant land
- Correct answer: The lady is a court damsel whom the princess already hates
- The lady is a priestess chosen by a vote of the crowd
She knows not only which room holds the lady but "who the lady was": one of the "fairest and loveliest of the damsels of the court." The princess has seen, or imagined, this woman glancing at her lover, and "the princess hated her." The story never names the lady, the princess, or the king.
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Question 10. How does the princess answer her lover's silent question, "Which?"
- Correct answer: She raises her hand and makes a slight motion right
- She stands and points openly at the left-hand door
- She tosses him a flower to mark the safer choice
- She shakes her head hard so that he will refuse both doors
"Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight, quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her." He then goes to "the door on the right." The story never says what that door hid.
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Question 11. Besides her will, what helps the princess learn the secret of the doors?
- A stolen map of the vaults
- A prophetic dream from the king
- Correct answer: Gold, plus the force of her will
- A confession from the arena priest
The narrator is blunt: "gold, and the power of a woman's will, had brought the secret to the princess."
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Question 12. What does the young man do after he reads the princess's signal?
- He pauses, then asks the king to choose a door for him
- He opens the left-hand door to prove he is independent
- Correct answer: He turns and walks without hesitation to the door on the right
- He refuses both doors and is dragged from the arena
He had "expected her to know it" and trusted that she would never rest until she learned a thing "hidden to all other lookers-on, even to the king." After her gesture, "without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it." His trust is total; the story still will not say what met him.
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Question 13. What conflict tears the princess as she decides which door to indicate?
- Duty to her father versus loyalty to the watching crowd
- Fear of the tiger versus fear of public shame and exile
- A sudden hunger for the throne versus pity for the waiting lady
- Correct answer: Love for her suitor versus jealous hatred of the lady
The narrator asks us to judge "that hot-blooded, semi-barbaric princess, her soul at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and jealousy. She had lost him, but who should have him?" She imagines the tiger's fangs in horror, yet "how much oftener" she imagines his "rapturous delight" with the other woman. Love and jealous possession pull opposite ways; Stockton will not tell us which won.
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Question 14. What does "moiety" mean in this story?
- Correct answer: A portion or share, especially one of two equal parts
- A royal decree that no subject of the kingdom may ever appeal
- A secret passage running under the floor of the arena
- A wedding hymn sung by the hired choristers at court
"Had it not been for the moiety of barbarism in her nature, it is probable that lady would not have been there." Moiety means a portion or half-share: the princess, like her father, is only partly civilized, and that barbaric half keeps her in the gallery.
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Question 15. What does the story reveal about the door the lover opens?
- The tiger springs out and kills the young man at once
- Correct answer: The narrator never reveals whether the lady or the tiger came out
- The lady steps out and they marry immediately in the arena
- The king stops the trial and names a winner himself
After he opens the right-hand door, the narrator stops the plot: "Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady?" He refuses to "set myself up as the one person able to answer it" and leaves the question "with all of you: Which came out of the opened door,--the lady, or the tiger?" Any claim that she chose the lady or the tiger as fact is outside the text.
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Question 16. What does the story's repeated word "semi-barbaric" emphasize?
- Correct answer: A thin polish of civilization over still-barbaric passions
- A fully medieval Europe copied from historical chronicles
- A modern democracy hiding behind royal names and pageantry
- A peaceful court that has completely outgrown public violence
The king's barbarism has only been "semified" by borrowed Latin notions. The princess has a "moiety of barbarism" and loves with "an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong." Civilization here is a veneer: the arena, the wedding bells, and the talk of "perfect fairness" dress cruelty as culture. The setting is a fable, not medieval Europe.
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Question 17. When the narrator says the arena's "perfect fairness is obvious," which device is at work?
- Metaphor (comparing the king's justice to a balanced coin)
- Correct answer: Verbal irony (praising as fair a system that is neither)
- Foreshadowing (hinting in advance that the tiger always wins)
- Personification (giving the twin doors human thoughts and motives)
The claim is verbal irony. The accused "could not know out of which door would come the lady" and has "the slightest idea whether, in the next instant, he was to be devoured or married." Guilt is not proven; chance decides, and a married man may still be forced into a new wedding. Calling that "perfect fairness" exposes the king's spectacle, not a balanced coin or a predicted tiger.
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Question 18. How does the princess signal her lover?
- Her left hand, raised high in full view of the court
- Both hands, so the whole crowd can see the choice
- Neither hand; she only meets his eyes and nods
- Correct answer: Her right hand, in a slight, quick movement
"Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight, quick movement toward the right." Only he sees it.
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Question 19. Where and when did Stockton first publish this story?
- Harper's Weekly, January 1865
- Atlantic Monthly, April 1899
- Correct answer: Century Magazine, November 1882
- Scribner's Monthly, December 1876
"The Lady, or the Tiger?" first appeared in The Century Magazine in November 1882. Written as a debate piece, it became a sensation; Stockton later wrote a companion, "The Discourager of Hesitancy" (1885), that offers another unsolvable dilemma instead of an answer.
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Question 20. Why did the title become a common English idiom?
- It names a famous pair of touring circus performers
- It describes any wedding that ends in a public riot
- It refers to a documented historical custom of the ancient Roman arena
- Correct answer: It names an unsolvable choice with two high-stakes outcomes
Because Stockton never tells us which figure came out, "the lady or the tiger" entered the language as a name for any dilemma with two equally consequential, unknowable outcomes. The phrase works only because the story itself is unsolved; it is not a record of Roman custom or a circus act.
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Question 21. Which of these events actually happened in the story?
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The narrator calls the king semi-barbaric.
Happened
The opening sentence places us with "a semi-barbaric king," and the story repeats that word for his justice and his daughter.
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Behind one door waits a hungry tiger; behind the other, a lady.
Happened
The two doors are identical; one hides death, the other an immediate marriage to a woman the king has chosen.
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The young man is imprisoned because he loved the princess.
Happened
When the king discovers the affair, the youth is cast into prison. No one denies that he loved her.
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The princess learns the secret of the doors.
Happened
Gold and force of will buy her knowledge of which room holds the tiger and which holds the lady.
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The princess hates the court damsel waiting behind one door.
Happened
She knows who the lady is and hates her for glancing at, and perhaps talking with, her lover.
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She makes a slight, quick movement toward the right.
Happened
Her right arm is on the parapet; she raises her hand and motions right. Only her lover sees it.
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He opens the right-hand door without the slightest hesitation.
Happened
Trusting her completely, he walks straight to that door and opens it.
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The narrator asks the reader which came out and does not answer.
Happened
The last line is the unanswered question: "Which came out of the opened door,--the lady, or the tiger?"
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The story tells us the princess chose the tiger.
Didn't happen
That is the famous trap. Stockton never reveals what came out of the opened door.
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The lady behind the door is given a name.
Didn't happen
She is one of the "fairest and loveliest of the damsels of the court," but she is never named.
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The king is given a name.
Didn't happen
The king, the princess, and the lover are all unnamed.
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The princess signals with her left hand.
Didn't happen
It is her right arm on the cushioned parapet, and she motions toward the right.
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