The scheming, physically disabled Richard of Gloucester narrates his own rise to the English throne through manipulation and murder, in one of Shakespeare's most vivid character studies of pure ambition.

The Roman general Mark Antony's love affair with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra pulls him away from his duties and into conflict with Rome, ending in the defeat and death of them both.

A long narrative poem, dedicated like Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton, telling the story of the virtuous Roman noblewoman Lucrece from Roman legend and history.

Often considered Shakespeare's earliest surviving play: two friends, Valentine and Proteus, fall out over the same woman while a female character disguises herself as a boy to follow the man she loves — a trick Shakespeare would reuse often.

Antonio borrows money from the moneylender Shylock, pledging a pound of his own flesh as collateral, to help his friend Bassanio court the wealthy Portia — a play whose treatment of Shylock has made it one of Shakespeare's most debated works.

A duke secretly observes his deputy Angelo's harsh, hypocritical rule over Vienna, in a dark comedy that weighs justice, mercy, and sexual coercion against one another.

Two teenagers from feuding Verona families, the Montagues and the Capulets, fall instantly in love and marry in secret — a chain of accidents and impulsive choices then drives them both to their deaths, uniting their families in grief.

Princess Imogen is falsely accused of infidelity by a scheming villain, flees in disguise, and is eventually reunited with her husband and long-lost brothers in a play that mixes tragedy, comedy, and fairy-tale coincidence.

Set during the Trojan War, this cynical, hard-to-classify play follows the love affair of Troilus and Cressida alongside a bitter, unheroic portrayal of the Greek and Trojan war effort.

Roman senators, fearing Caesar's growing power, assassinate him — only for Mark Antony's funeral oration ("Friends, Romans, countrymen...") to turn the people against the conspirators and plunge Rome into civil war.

Two pairs of lovers — one sincere, one who trade only in wit and insults — navigate a scheme of slander and disguise on the way to the altar, in one of Shakespeare's sharpest romantic comedies.

Dramatises the troubled reign of King John, weighing his contested claim to the throne against the French invasion and the death of his young nephew and rival, Arthur.

The first of Shakespeare's history plays chronicling the Wars of the Roses, dramatising England's losing struggle to hold French territory and the rise of factional conflict at home, including Joan of Arc's campaign against the English.

Shipwrecked and believing her twin brother dead, Viola disguises herself as a young man and enters the service of a lovesick duke, setting off a tangle of mistaken identity and unrequited love.

Co-written with John Fletcher, this late play follows two close friends and cousins who become bitter rivals after both fall in love with the same woman, glimpsed once from a prison window.

A comedy (uncomfortable to modern audiences in places) about the courtship of the strong-willed Katherina by Petruchio, framed as a play performed for a drunkard who has been tricked into believing he is a nobleman.

Co-written with John Fletcher, this late history play dramatises the fall of Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon — and was being performed at the Globe Theatre in 1613 when a misfiring stage cannon burned the playhouse to the ground.

Two Athenian couples flee into an enchanted forest, where the mischievous fairy Puck's magic causes lovers, a fairy queen, and a group of amateur actors to fall hilariously out of and back into the right pairings.

An aging king divides his kingdom between his daughters based on their professed love for him, banishing the one daughter who loves him truly — and descends into madness as the consequences of his error unfold.

The generous nobleman Timon showers his friends with gifts until his money runs out — and discovers, when he needs help in turn, that their friendship never went deeper than his wealth.

Spurred on by a prophecy from three witches and the ambition of his wife, the Scottish general Macbeth murders his king to seize the throne, then is consumed by guilt and paranoia trying to keep it.

Prince Pericles is separated from his wife and daughter by shipwreck and tragedy across years and many lands, in an episodic romance (probably co-written, and left out of the First Folio) that ends in a joyful reunion.

The Venetian general Othello is manipulated by his trusted ensign Iago into a consuming, baseless jealousy over his wife Desdemona, with devastating consequences.

King Leontes' sudden, groundless jealousy destroys his family and seemingly kills his wife Hermione — until, sixteen years later, a statue of her appears to come to life in one of Shakespeare's most striking final scenes.

The proud Roman general Coriolanus, unable to hide his contempt for the common people, is banished from Rome and turns against his own city in this study of pride and political manipulation.

As King Henry IV's health fails, Prince Hal must finally choose between his old companion Falstaff and the crown, closing with his famous, painful rejection of Falstaff upon becoming king.

The newly crowned Henry V leads England's invasion of France, culminating in the Battle of Agincourt and his stirring "St. Crispin's Day" speech to his heavily outnumbered troops.

The self-regarding King Richard II is deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke (soon Henry IV), in a play written almost entirely in verse that meditates on the nature of kingship itself.

Sir John Falstaff tries to woo two married women at once purely for their husbands' money, only to be repeatedly and elaborately outwitted by the wives themselves.

Continues the Wars of the Roses story as rival noble houses maneuver around the weak King Henry VI, building toward the popular rebellion led by Jack Cade and the outbreak of open civil war.

Shakespeare's shortest and one of his earliest plays: two sets of identical twins, separated since infancy and each unaware the other is in town, cause a cascade of mistaken identities in a single chaotic day.

A young woman recounts, to an old shepherd, how a persuasive young man seduced and abandoned her — printed alongside the Sonnets in their first 1609 edition.

The Wars of the Roses reach their bloodiest point, with the crown changing hands repeatedly and the ruthless Richard of Gloucester — the future Richard III — emerging as the trilogy's most memorable figure.

Prince Hal carouses with the disreputable, endlessly entertaining Sir John Falstaff while his father's throne is threatened by rebellion, setting up the prince's eventual turn toward responsibility.

The exiled magician Prospero, marooned on an island with his daughter Miranda, conjures a storm to bring his enemies to shore — likely Shakespeare's last solo-written play, often read as his farewell to the stage.

Banished to the Forest of Arden, Rosalind disguises herself as a young man to test the affections of Orlando, in a pastoral comedy that includes Jaques's famous 'All the world's a stage' speech.

Shakespeare's earliest and most violent tragedy, a Roman revenge drama in which the general Titus is drawn into an escalating spiral of vengeance against his enemies.

The King of Navarre and three companions swear off romance to focus on study, only for the arrival of a princess and her ladies to make the vow impossible to keep — famous for its dense wordplay and puns.

A short, dense allegorical poem mourning the death of an ideal, perfect love, represented by the mythical phoenix and the turtledove — first printed as an addition to another poet's longer work.

Prince Hamlet is visited by his dead father's ghost, who names his own brother — now king and married to Hamlet's mother — as his murderer, setting off Shakespeare's longest and most quoted tragedy of revenge and indecision.

Helena, a physician's daughter, cures the King of France and is granted her choice of husband — but the nobleman she chooses wants nothing to do with her, and she must win him over through her own cleverness.

A sequence of 154 fourteen-line poems, most addressed to a "Fair Youth" or a "Dark Lady," exploring love, beauty, time, and mortality — including Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") and Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds").