Plays by William Shakespeare

Plays by William Shakespeare
Name	William Shakespeare
Birth date	1564
Death date	1616
Notable works	Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet; Othello; King Lear; Macbeth; A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Tempest
Occupation	Playwright; Poet; Actor
Period	English Renaissance
Language	Early Modern English

Plays by William Shakespeare are a corpus of dramatic works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, produced and published in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The canon comprises tragedies, comedies, histories, and romances that have shaped English literature, English Renaissance theatre, and global dramatic practice; their composition, performance, and textual transmission intersect with institutions such as the King's Men, the Globe Theatre, and the Blackfriars Theatre.

Overview and Classification

Shakespearean drama is conventionally divided into categories: tragedies like Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth; comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Much Ado About Nothing; histories exemplified by Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Henry V, and Richard II; and the later romances including The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Editorial traditions embodied by the First Folio (1623) and earlier quartos (e.g., Q1 Hamlet, Q2 Romeo and Juliet) influence classification, while theatre practices at the Rose Theatre, Swan Theatre, and performances before Elizabeth I and James I inform genre boundaries.

Chronology and Dating

Dating Shakespeare's plays relies on documentary records such as registration with the Stationers' Company, entries in the Diary of Samuel Pepys, and publication dates like those of the First Folio. Internal evidence (metrical analysis, topical allusions to events like the Spanish Armada aftermath or the Gunpowder Plot), collaboration records with contemporaries like John Fletcher, and references in plays by Ben Jonson, Thomas Heywood, and Philip Massinger help establish relative chronology. Scholarship uses the papers of Edward Alleyn and performance records from the Lord Chamberlain's Men to place major works between the 1590s and 1613, with romances and late tragedies appearing c. 1608–1613.

Major Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories

Shakespeare's tragedies—Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Titus Andronicus—explore themes reflected in classical sources like Plutarch and in continental influences such as Seneca. Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, and The Comedy of Errors—draw on pastoral conventions seen in works by Geoffrey Chaucer successors and Italian sources like Ariosto. Histories—Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, Henry VI, Part 3, Richard III, and King John—interact with chronicles by Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall and formed a political stage alongside other Tudor-era dramatists including John Skelton and Thomas Kyd. Later romances—The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre—engage with voyages and colonial themes that resonate with figures like Sir Walter Raleigh and events such as the East India Company voyages.

Collaboration and Authorship Issues

Many plays present questions of multiple authorship; collaboration with dramatists such as Christopher Marlowe (speculative), John Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, George Peele, and Ben Jonson is evidenced in stylistic studies and documentary records. Works like Henry VIII and Titus Andronicus show contributions disputed among scholars using computational stylometry, examination of promptbooks held in archives like the British Library, and assessments found in editions by editors of the RSC and the Arden Shakespeare series. Debates over alternative claimants (e.g., Edward de Vere theories) intersect with archival evidence from Stratford and theatre company financial records.

Textual Transmission and Editions

Textual history rests on quartos (e.g., early Romeo and Juliet quartos), the First Folio compiled by John Heminges and Henry Condell, and subsequent folios and quartos that preserve variant texts. Editorial practices—collation, emendation, and conjectural restoration—have produced authoritative series such as the Arden Shakespeare, Oxford Shakespeare, and Cambridge Shakespeare. Manuscript fragments, stationers' entries, and contemporary copyists inform modern critical editions; issues include compositorial errors, actor's interpolations, and censorship mandated by the Master of the Revels.

Performance and Reception History

Performance history spans Elizabethan court entertainments for Elizabeth I to Jacobean staging for James I, and later revivals in the Restoration and Georgian periods. Notable actors and adaptors—David Garrick, Edmund Kean, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, and John Gielgud—shaped reception; 19th-century adaptations by Thomas Hookham and stage directors influenced romanticized stagings. Global dissemination occurred through translations into languages of the French Academy, Weimar Classicism circles (e.g., Goethe), colonial theatres in India and Australia, and modern productions at institutions like the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, and Broadway houses.

Influence and Adaptations

Shakespearean plays inspired works across media: operas by Verdi and Gounod, symphonies by Berlioz, ballets, film adaptations by Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa (influenced adaptations), Baz Luhrmann, and contemporary reworkings by playwrights such as Tom Stoppard and Tony Kushner. Literary responses include the critical writings of Samuel Johnson, the romantic readings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt, and modern scholarship in journals of New Historicism and Textual Criticism. The plays continue to inform curricula at universities like Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University, and institutions of dramatic training such as RADA.

Category:Plays by William Shakespeare