[PDF] 38 Remarkable Shakespeare Plays

Below are links to all 38 Shakespeare plays in PDF. Comedies include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, All’s Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, plus others. Shakespeare play scripts that are histories include Richard III, Henry V, Henry VIII, King John, and more. Shakespeare scripts considered tragedies include Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus and Troilus and Cressida. Romances include Cymbeline, Pericles, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale. – Justin Cash

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Shakespeare Plays PDF by Genre

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Tragedies

Shakespeare’s tragedies include some of the greatest plays ever written. At just over 4,000 lines, the revenge tragedy Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play requiring more than four hours to perform uncut. King Lear is a brute of a play, so much so the title role has often been considered unplayable, such is the demand upon the actor. While Romeo and Juliet, with its star-crossed lovers, may well be love’s greatest tragedy.

Antony and Cleopatra (1607)

Coriolanus (1605–1608)

Hamlet (1599–1601)

Julius Caesar (1599)

King Lear (1606)

Macbeth (1623)

Othello (1603)

Romeo and Juliet (1591–1595)

Timon of Athens (1606)

Titus Andronicus (1588–1593)

Troilus and Cressida (1602)

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Comedies

What constituted comedy in Elizabeth and Jacobean England was somewhat different to our modern interpretation. Shakespeare’s comedies include elements of love, mistaken identity, cross-dressing, happy endings, dance, the supernatural, idyllic settings, deception, fantasy, marriage, farce, music, fate, merry-making, fools, disguised gender, and more. While some of Shakespeare’s comedies are darker than others, as a group most of them were what modern audiences would refer to as romantic comedies. Nevertheless, his comedies did differ in tone. The Taming of the Shrew, with its adult-oriented bawdy humour, was in stark contrast to the childlike magical realism of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its mix of human and fairy characters in a forest outside Athens.

All’s Well That Ends Well (1598–1608)

As You Like It (1599)

The Comedy of Errors (1594)

Love’s Labour’s Lost (1597–1598)

Measure for Measure (1604)

The Merchant of Venice (1596–1599)

The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595–1596)

Much Ado About Nothing (1598–1599)

The Taming of the Shrew (1590–1592)

Twelfth Night (1601–1602)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1589–1593)

The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613–1614)

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Romances

Shakespeare’s romance plays were all written at the tail end of The Bard’s career during the reign of King James I. They are a blend of both tragedy and comedy and therefore loosely considered tragicomedies.

Cymbeline (1611)

Pericles (1607–1608)

The Tempest (1610–1611)

The Winter’s Tale (1610–1611)

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Histories

Shakespeare’s ten history plays are all drawn from the lives and events of various Kings of England reigning from 1199 to 1547. “Now is the winter of our discontent” from Richard III remains one of the best known opening lines of any play in the English language.

Henry IV Part 1 (1596–1597)

Henry IV Part 2 (1596–1599)

Henry V (1599)

Henry VI Part 1 (1592)

Henry VI Part 2 (1591)

Henry VI Part 3 (1591)

Henry VIII (1613)

King John (1587–1598)

Richard II (1595)

Richard III (1592–1594)