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 is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William
Shakespeareabout two young "star-cross'd lovers"[1] whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding
families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.

m
 
 belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. Its plot is
based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as  
 
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 byArthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in     by William Painter in
1582. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but, to expand the plot, developed supporting
characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed written between 1591 and 1595, the play
was first published in a quarto version in 1597. This text was of poor quality, and later editions
corrected it, bringing it more in line with Shakespeare's original.

"King Lear and the Fool in the Storm" by William Dyce (1806±1864)

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  is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1603
and 1606. It is considered one of his greatest works. King Lear descends into madness after
wrongly distributing his estate on the strength of flattery. The play is based on the legend of Leir
of Britain, a mythological pre-Roman Celtic king. It has been widely adapted for stage and
screen, with the part of Lear played by many of the world's most accomplished actors.

There are two distinct versions of the play:    

   
   

  

  , which appeared in quarto in 1608, and  
 
, a more theatrical version, which appeared in the First Folio in 1623. The
two texts are commonly printed in a conflated version, although many modern editors have
argued that each version has its individual integrity.[1]

After the Restoration, the play was often modified by theatre practitioners who disliked its dark
and depressing tone, but since the 19th century it has been regarded as one of Shakespeare's
supreme achievements. The tragedy is particularly noted for its probing observations on the
nature of human suffering and kinship.

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, or more simply 
, is a tragedy by William
Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark,
recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius for murdering the old King
Hamlet, Claudius's own brother and Prince Hamlet's father, and then succeeding to the throne
and marrying Gertrude, the King Hamlet's widow and mother of Prince Hamlet. The play vividly
charts the course of real and feigned madness²from overwhelming grief to seething rage²and
explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption.

The play's structure and depth of characterization have inspired much critical scrutiny, of which
one example is the centuries-old debate about Hamlet's hesitancy to kill his uncle. Some see it
as a plot device to prolong the action, and others see it as the result of pressure exerted by the
complex philosophical and ethical issues that surround cold-blooded murder, calculated
revenge and thwarted desire. More recently, psychoanalytic critics have examined
Hamlet's unconscious desires, and feminist critics have re-evaluated and rehabilitated the often
maligned characters of Ophelia and Gertrude.
c

 is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in
1602. The play (also described as one of Shakespeare's problem plays) is not a conventional
tragedy, since its protagonist (Troilus) does not die. The play ends instead on a very bleak note
with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus and
Cressida. Throughout the play, the tone lurches wildly between bawdy comedy and tragic
gloom, and readers and theatre-goers have frequently found it difficult to understand how one is
meant to respond to the characters. However, several characteristic elements of the play (the
most notable being its constant questioning of intrinsic valuessuch as hierarchy, honor and love)
have often been viewed as distinctly "modern," as in the following remarks on the play by author
and literary scholar Joyce Carol Oates:




The wrestling scene from ½ 

, Francis Hayman, c. 1750.

½ 
 is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in
1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The work was based upon the early
prose romance m   by Thomas Lodge. The play's first performance is uncertain, though
a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility. ½ 

 follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncle's court, accompanied by her
cousin Celia and Touchstone the court jester, to find safety and eventually love in the Forest of
Arden. Historically, critical response has varied, with some critics finding the work of lesser
quality than other Shakespearean works and some finding the play a work of great merit.

The play features one of Shakespeare's most famous and oft-quoted speeches, "All the world's
a stage," and is the origin of the phrase "too much of a good thing." The play remains a favourite
among audiences and has been adapted for radio, film, and musical theatre.
 

    
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 is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written
between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain
aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for
its dramatic scenes, and is best known for Shylock and the famous 'pound of flesh' speech.

The title character is the merchant Antonio, not the Jewish moneylender Shylock, who is the
play's most prominent and most famous character. This is made explicit by the title page of the
first quarto:  
 
 
     
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 is a Jacobean comedy, first published in 1634 and attributed to John
Fletcher and William Shakespeare, based on "The Knight's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's  
' . Formerly a point of controversy, the dual attribution is now generally
accepted by the scholarly consensus.[1]Researchers have applied a range of tests and
techniques to determine the relative shares of Shakespeare and Fletcher in the play²Hallet
Smith, in  m
(
" %, cites "metrical characteristics, vocabulary and word-
compounding, incidence of certain contractions, kinds and uses of imagery, and characteristic
lines of certain types"²in their attempts to distinguish the shares of Shakespeare and Fletcher
in the play. Smith offers a breakdown that agrees, in general if not in all details, with those of
other scholars:

c 
 c  is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of
1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies,[1]some modern editors have relabeled the
play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics, among them W. W.
Lawrence,[2] consider it to be one of Shakespeare's "problem plays", because the first three acts
are filled with intense psychological drama, while the last two acts are comedic and supply
a happy ending.

Nevertheless, the play has been intermittently popular, revived in productions in various forms
and adaptations by some of the leading theatre practitioners in Shakespearean performance
history, beginning after a long interval with David Garrick in his adaptation called è 
) 

 (first performed in 1754 and published in 1756.  *
+  was revived again in
the 19th century, when the third "pastoral" act was widely popular). In the second half of the
20th century  *
+  in its entirety, and drawn largely from the First Folio text, was
often performed, with varying degrees of success.
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