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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, listed by genre

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, listed by genre

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Welcome to the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.

For other Shakespeare resources, visit the Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet Web site.

The original electronic source for this server was the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare. The HTML versions of the plays provided here are placed in the public domain.

5/10/23: Current copy taken from https://github.com/TheMITTech/shakespeare/ and hosted by MIT IS&T in a static location.

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Welcome to the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993. For other Shakespeare resources, visit the Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet Web site.

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616). English poet and playwright - Shakespeare is widely considered to be the greatest writer in the English language. He wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets.
Short bio of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23rd April 1564.

His father William was a successful local businessman, and his mother Mary was the daughter of a landowner. Relatively prosperous, it is likely the family paid for Williams education, although there is no evidence he attended university.

In 1582 William, aged only 18, married an older woman named Anne Hathaway. They had three children, Susanna, Hamnet and Juliet. Their only son Hamnet died aged just 11.

After his marriage, information about the life of Shakespeare is sketchy, but it seems he spent most of his time in London - writing and acting in his plays.

Due to some well-timed investments, Shakespeare was able to secure a firm financial background, leaving time for writing and acting. The best of these investments was buying some real estate near Stratford in 1605, which soon doubled in value.

It seemed Shakespeare didn't mind being absent from his family - he only returned home during Lent when all the theatres were closed. It is thought that during the 1590s he wrote the majority of his sonnets. This was a time of prolific writing and his plays developed a good deal of interest and controversy. His early plays were mainly comedies (e.g. Much Ado about Nothing, A Midsummer's Night Dream) and histories (e.g. Henry V)

By the early Seventeenth Century, Shakespeare had begun to write plays in the genre of tragedy. These plays, such as Hamlet, Othello and King Lear, often hinge on some fatal error or flaw in the lead character and provide fascinating insights into the darker aspects of human nature. These later plays are considered Shakespeare's finest achievements.

When writing an introduction to Shakespeare's First Folio of published plays in 1623, Johnson wrote of Shakespeare:

"not of an age, but for all time"

Shakespeare the Poet

William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets mostly in the 1590s. These short poems, deal with issues such as lost love. His sonnets have an enduring appeal due to his formidable skill with language and words.

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:"

- Sonnet CXVI

The Plays of Shakespeare

The plays of Shakespeare have been studied more than any other writing in the English language and have been translated into numerous languages. He was rare as a play-write for excelling in tragedies, comedies and histories. He deftly combined popular entertainment with an extraordinary poetic capacity for expression which is almost mantric in quality.

"This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!"

- Lord Polonius, Hamlet Act I, Scene 3

During his lifetime, Shakespeare was not without controversy, but he also received lavish praise for his plays which were very popular and commercially successful.

His plays have retained an enduring appeal throughout history and the world. Some of his most popular plays include:

Twelfth Night

Henry V

Romeo and Juliet

Macbeth

Hamlet

King Lear

Othello

"All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances;
and one man in his time plays many parts..."

Death of Shakespeare

Shakespeare died in 1616; it is not clear how he died, and numerous suggestions have been put forward. John Ward, the local vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford (where Shakespeare is buried), writes in a diary account that:

"Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted."

In 1616, there was an outbreak of typhus ("The new fever") which may have been the cause. The average life expectancy of someone born in London, England in the Sixteenth Century was about 35 years old, Shakespeare died age 52.

Was Shakespeare really Shakespeare?

Some academics, known as the "Oxfords," claim that Shakespeare never actually wrote any plays. They contend Shakespeare was actually just a successful businessman, and for authorship suggest names such as Edward de Vere, the 17th Arguments have also been made for Earl of Oxford. Francis Bacon. The argument that Shakespeare was actually the Earl of Oxford relies on circumstantial evidence and similarities in his writing style and relationships between his life and the play of Shakespeare.

However, there is no hard evidence tying the Earl of Oxford to the theatre or writing the scripts. By contrast, there is evidence of William Shakespeare working in theatres and he received a variety of criticism from people such as Ben Johnson and Robert Greene. Also, the Earl of Oxford died in 1604, and it is generally agreed there were 12 plays published after this date. (Oxfords contend these plays were finished by other writers.)

It is also hard to believe the vain Earl of Oxford (who killed one of his own servants) would write such amazing scripts and then be happy with anonymity. Also, to maintain anonymity, it would also require the co-operation of numerous family members and other figures in the theatre world. The theory of other writers to Shakespeare only emerged centuries after the publishing of the First Folio.
Shakespeare's Epitaph
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare
Blessed by y man y spares hes stones
And curst be he y moves my bones

- More interesting facts on Shakespeare

Quotes on Shakespeare

"Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glorysmitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton's his compeer, not rival."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817)

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. "Biography of William Shakespeare", Oxford, www.biographyonline.net , 18th May 2006. Last updated 1 March 2019.

Popular quotes of Shakespeare

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

- Polonius, giving Laertes a pep talk. ( Hamlet)

"To be, or not to be: that is the question
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;"

- Hamlet

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."

- Hamlet (to Horatio on seeing a ghost)

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

- The Tempest (Prospero)

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Julius Caesar (Cassius to Brutus)

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

- Macbeth (on learning of the death of Queen)

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

- Hamlet in Hamlet

"Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting."

-Dauphin in Henry V

"Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt."

-Lucio in Measure for Measure

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition at Amazon

Shakespeare: The Biography

Shakespeare: The Biography at Amazon
Related pages
Famous English people - Famous English men and women. From Anne Boleyn and Queen Elizabeth I to Henry VIII and Winston Churchill. Includes the great poets - William Shakespeare, William Blake and William Wordsworth.

Great Briton list - Top 100 famous Britons as voted by a BBC poll. Including Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, Thomas Cromwell and Queen Elizabeth I.

Writers and authors - Famous authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, William Shakespeare, J.K. Rowling, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway.

Other Biographies and Resources on Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616). English poet and playwright - Shakespeare is widely considered to be the greatest writer in the English language. He wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets. Short bio of William Shakespeare William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23rd April 1564.

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Globe Theatre, famous London theatre in which after 1599 the plays of William Shakespeare were performed.

Early in 1599 Shakespeare, who had been acting with the Lord Chamberlain's Men since 1594, paid into the coffers of the company a sum of money amounting to 12.5 percent of the cost of building the Globe. He did so as a chief shareholder in the company, and by doing so he helped to establish a uniquely successful form of commercial operation for the actors of the time. This investment gave Shakespeare and the other leading actors both a share in the company's profits and a share in their playhouse.

At this time, officially approved playhouses and officially approved acting companies had been in existence in London for only five years. The Lord Chamberlain's Men was one of only two companies licensed to perform within the London city limits. (For more on this subject, see Sidebar: Shakespeare and the Liberties.) The other company used the Rose playhouse, owned by an impresario and his ex-actor son-in-law.

The second best playhouse

Shakespeare's company built the Globe only because it could not use the special roofed facility, Blackfriars Theatre, that James Burbage (the father of their leading actor, Richard Burbage) had built in 1596 for it inside the city. The elder Burbage had a long history as a theatrical entrepreneur. In 1576 he had built the first successful amphitheatre, known as The Theatre, in a London suburb. Twenty years later, when the lease on The Theatre's land was about to expire, he built the theatre in Blackfriars as its replacement. But the wealthy residents of Blackfriars persuaded the government to block its use for plays, so Burbage's capital was locked up. He died early in 1597, his plans for the future of theatre in London frustrated.

Thus, the members of the Lord Chamberlain's Men were forced to rent a playhouse. At the end of 1598, they decided to build one for themselves. Because the inheritance of Burbage's sons, Cuthbert and Richard, was tied up in the Blackfriars, they formed a consortium with Shakespeare and four other actors, who became co-owners of the new Globe. The same shortage of cash made the consortium reluctant traditionalists; they gave up the idea of an indoor theatre in the city. The old playhouse was one of their few remaining resources, but they could not use it in situ because the lease had expired, so they dismantled it, took the timbers (illegally) to make the skeleton of their new amphitheatre, and kept the basic auditorium shape of The Theatre for the new building.

The success of the Globe

For all its hurried construction in 1599, the Globe proved a triumph. Its first decade of use made it a favourite not just with subsequent generations of theatregoers but with the company itself. In later years the troupe paid a lot to keep it going. At least two circumstances provide evidence for this statement. In 1608, when the company could finally fulfill James Burbage's original plan for the Blackfriars, the members chose, extravagantly, to operate the two theatres together, using the open-air Globe in the summer and the roofed Blackfriars in the winter. Had they chosen to, they easily could have rented one of the buildings to another company, since there was a shortage of playhouses in London in this period. But they kept both for themselves. They were given a second chance to transfer full-time to the Blackfriars in 1613, when the Globe burned to the ground, its thatch accidentally set alight by a cannon during a performance of Henry VIII. By then the Blackfriars was already beginning to bring better profits than the Globe, since the smaller house size was more than compensated by its higher prices. Instead, bearing the cost out of sentiment and traditional loyalty, the company members dug deep into their own pockets and rebuilt the Globe more splendidly than before.

Technically, the 1599 Globe and its 1614 replacement span an era in the history of theatre design. The first Globe, based on the skeleton of the original Theatre of 1576, was unique not just as the most famous example of that peculiar and short-lived form of theatre design but because it was actually the first to be built specifically for an existing acting company and financed by the company itself. Shakespeare designed As You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Pericles, and The Winter's Tale, not to mention Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens, for performance there.

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Globe Theatre | Definition, History, & Facts

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Globe Theatre, famous London theater in which after 1599 the plays of William Shakespeare were performed. The Globe was pulled down in 1644, two years after the Puritans closed all theaters. A reconstructed Globe opened at the original's location in 1997.

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Excuse me? Could you tell me how to get to the Globe, please?

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Excuse me? Could you tell me how to get to the Globe, please?

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Directions, information and map for easy access to the Globe Theatre!

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Shakespeare's Globe: Your Visit - Getting to the Globe / Shakespeare's Globe

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Details on how to get to the Globe Theatre.

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Wanna take a peek inside the Globe! Here is a chance for you to do so!

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Shakespeare: Original pronunciation (The Open University)

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What are some of the most famous Shakespeare quotes?

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What are some of the most famous Shakespeare quotes?

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Some William Shakespeare quotes are known for their beauty, some Shakespeare quotes for their everyday truths and some for their wisdom.

As the most quoted English writer, Shakespeare created more than his fair share of famous quotes. We often talk about Shakespeare's quotes as things the wise Bard is saying to us, but we should remember that some of his wisest words are spoken by his biggest fools. For example, both 'neither a borrower nor a lender be,' and 'to thine own self be true' are from the foolish, garrulous and quite disreputable Polonius in Hamlet.

Whilst it's hard to definitively say which are the most famous Shakespeare quotes, we've examined polls published around the world, combined these with feedback from website users, and added our own take on Shakespeare's words, and can now offer what we believe to be the 50 most famous Shakespeare quotes of all time (in no particular order!).

50 Of Shakespeare's Most Famous Quotes

2. 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.'
(As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7) (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2) (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2) (Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2) (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1) (Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1) (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2) (Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 4) (The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 7) (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2) (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1) (Richard III, Act 5, Scene 4)
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)

17. 'Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.'
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1) (Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1) (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)
21. 'This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle... This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.'
(Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1) (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2)
23. 'Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.'
(Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5)
24. 'Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.'
(Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2)
25. 'Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange.'
(The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)
26. 'A man can die but once.'
(Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, Part 2)
27. 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!'

28. 'Frailty, thy name is woman.'
(Hamlet Act 1, Scene 2)
29. 'If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?'
(The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1)
30. 'I am one who loved not wisely but too well.'

31. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.'
(The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1)
32. 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'
(Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)
33. 'To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.'
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3) (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1)
35. 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'
(Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)
36. 'Nothing will come of nothing.'
(King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1)
37. 'The course of true love never did run smooth.'
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1)
38. 'Lord, what fools these mortals be!'
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1)
39. 'The fault, dear Brutus, lies not within the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.'
(Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2)
40. 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.'

41. 'The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.'
(Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2)
42. 'But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.'
(Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2)
43. 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.'
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3)
44. 'We know what we are, but know not what we may be.'
(Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5)
45. 'Off with his head!'
(Richard III, Act 3, Scene 4) (The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 2)
47. 'This is very midsummer madness.'
(Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4)
48. 'Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.'
(Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 1)
49. 'I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.'
(The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 3, Scene 2)
50. 'We have seen better days.'
(Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 2)
51. 'I am a man more sinned against than sinning.'
(King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2)
What do you think - any famous Shakespeare quotes missing from the above list? As per his own words, Shakespeare may not have been born great, but he certainly managed to achieve greatness! Let us know your favourite William Shakespeare quotes in the comments section below.

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Shakespeare Quotes: 55 Famous Quotes From The Bard ✔️

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Some William Shakespeare quotes are known for their beauty, some Shakespeare quotes for their everyday truths and some for their wisdom. As the most quoted English writer, Shakespeare created more than his fair share of famous quotes.

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What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like 

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What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like 

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Watch two videos of how people used to speak in Shakespeare's time.

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What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like - and how we know

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Stratford-upon-Avon: the birthplace of William Shakespeare. 

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Stratford-upon-Avon: the birthplace of William Shakespeare. 

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The history, photo gallery and various articles on Shakespeare's famous hometown!

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It's impossible to mention Stratford, without referring to it being the birthplace of William Shakespeare. His plays are still regularly performed at both the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, whilst there is a large tourist trade grown up around the playwright. This is not all there is to Stratford however, with businesses such as Flower's Brewery also playing a major part in the town over the years.

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It's impossible to mention Stratford, without referring to it being the birthplace of William Shakespeare. His plays are still regularly performed at both the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, whilst there is a large tourist trade grown up around the playwright.

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It would seem a no-brainer: Combine the world's most revered dramatist with today's most popular medium. Alas, translating the Bard to the big screen has proved trickier than anyone ever thought. In ranking the 25 most successful attempts at Shakespeare movies, we tapped our Film and Theater experts. Their only ground rule: No plots about the playwright himself would be eligible. (Sorry, Shakespeare in Love fans). But any adaptations of the plays themselves, loose or faithful, were fair game. On our way, we found Oscar winners, foreign films and even a science fiction movie.

So if top-25 lists be the food of love, read on. And if we've forgotten your favorite title, please flourish your poison pen in the comments section below.

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The 25 best Shakespeare movies of all time

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It would seem a no-brainer: Combine the world's most revered dramatist with today's most popular medium. Alas, translating the Bard to the big screen has proved trickier than anyone ever thought. In ranking the 25 most successful attempts at Shakespeare movies, we tapped our Film and Theater experts.

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Are you in the mood to do puzzles and quizzes about Shakespeare and his plays?

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Shakespeare Games for Kids | Read | Globe Education / Shakespeare's Globe

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Kids' word games and quizzes to explore Shakespearean language.

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Puzzle: The Globe

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Shakespeare-globe-theatre-3 - jigsaw puzzle (60 pieces)