| Title | Author | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| All's Well That Ends Well | Shakespeare, William |
To paraphrase another of his plays, Shakespeare’s decision to use All’s Well that Ends Well as the title for his play of 1602-3 is a case of protesting too much. The line is used twice towards the end of the ... read more» |
| Antony and Cleopatra | Shakespeare, William |
Antony and Cleopatra is possibly the grandest of the tragedies, and the greatest of Shakespeare’s Classical plays, offering his own slant on Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Life of Markus Antonius. Written probably in 1606-7, its epic sweep covers the ... read more» |
| As you Like it | Shakespeare, William |
With One Duke exiled, his younger brother takes his place in the court; a pair of girls, Rosalind and Celia, the daughters of each Duke, are forced by the new Duke’s anger and their ties of friendship to travel into ... read more» |
| The Comedy of Errors | Shakespeare, William | |
| Coriolanus | Shakespeare, William | |
| Cymbeline | Shakespeare, William | |
| Hamlet | Shakespeare, William |
Hamlet is probably Shakespeare’s best known play; a tragedy of monumental depth and linguistic brilliance. The play opens to an atmosphere of darkness and confusion. The scene is Elsinore; the royal castle of Denmark, where King Claudius and Queen Gertrude’s ... read more» |
| Henry IV, Part 1 | Shakespeare, William | |
| Henry IV, Part 2 | Shakespeare, William | |
| Henry V | Shakespeare, William | |
| Henry VI Part 1 | Shakespeare, William | |
| Henry VI, Part 2 | Shakespeare, William | |
| Henry VI Part 3 | Shakespeare, William | |
| Henry VIII | Shakespeare, William | |
| King John | Shakespeare, William |
The Life and Death of King John is cited by Francis Meres in 1598 as one of the plays demonstrating Shakespeare's talent and status as the English Ovid, and was popular throughout Victorian times, but has been one of the ... read more» |
| Julius Caesar | Shakespeare, William | |
| King Lear | Shakespeare, William | |
| A Lover's Complaint | Shakespeare, William | |
| Love's Labour's Lost | Shakespeare, William |
The Duke of Navarre persuades his three friends to foreswear with him the company of women, and to devote themselves to study. Almost immediately afterwards, the Princess of France arrives with her three female friends. It does not take the ... read more» |
| Macbeth | Shakespeare, William |
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays, despite being supposedly cursed: in theatrical circles its name is taboo, and it is referred to simply as ‘the Scottish play.’ It is also one of the shortest plays, at just over half ... read more» |
| Measure for Measure | Shakespeare, William |
As equivocal and all-encompassing as its title suggests, ‘Measure for Measure’ is one of Shakespeare’s first forays out of Renaissance pomp and convention into the more complicated sensibilities of the Jacobean era. Probably written while the playhouses were closed between ... read more» |
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| The Merchant of Venice | Shakespeare, William | |
| The Merry Wives of Windsor | Shakespeare, William | |
| A Midsummer Nights Dream | Shakespeare, William |
One of Shakespeare’s most enduringly popular plays, and also one of the most frequently reinterpreted. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was systematically cut and blended with other works, David Garrick’s version (1755), entitled The Fairies, contained, for example, ... read more» |
| Much ado about Nothing | Shakespeare, William | |
| Othello | Shakespeare, William | |
| The Passionate Pilgrim | Shakespeare, William | |
| Pericles | Shakespeare, William | |
| The Phoenix and the Turtle | Shakespeare, William | |
| The Rape of Lucrece | Shakespeare, William | |
| Richard II | Shakespeare, William | |
| Richard III | Shakespeare, William | |
| Romeo and Juliet | Shakespeare, William |
Probably composed in late 1596, Shakespeare’s version of ‘the greatest love story ever told’ marks a new stage in his writing career. Ever versatile, Shakespeare now creates pathos from the forbidden love plot that he had previously parodied in the ... read more» |
| Sonnets | Shakespeare, William | |
| The Taming of the Shrew | Shakespeare, William | |
| The Tempest | Shakespeare, William |
The Tempest is generally accepted as Shakespeare’s last complete play, with a performance date around 1611. In the 1623 First Folio of his collected works its novelty is probably the reason for its being placed first; its opening storm scene ... read more» |
| Timon of Athens | Shakespeare, William | |
| Titus Andronicus | Shakespeare, William |
Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s first Classical play, written in the early 1590s, and his first tragedy. It has obvious classical influences, notably from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is discussed onstage, and from Seneca’s graphic tragedies written in Neronian Rome. It has ... read more» |
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| Troilus and Cressida | Shakespeare, William |
The siege of Troy provides the backdrop for Troilus and Cressida, but – like Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde, the play’s most obvious source – Shakespeare opens by claiming that he "leaps o’er...those broils" of the war itself. But, like ... read more» |
| Twelfth Night | Shakespeare, William | |
| Two Gentlemen of Verona | Shakespeare, William | |
| The Winters Tale | Shakespeare, William |
The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's last plays, and distinguished as one of the most sharply divided 'problem plays,' or tragicomedies, split between scenes of psychological tension and pastoral clowning, and concluding with an apparently happy ending. This division ... read more» |
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