The dramatic works of William Shakespeare with copious glossarial notes and a biographical notice by Robert Inglis

by William Shakespeare, Rob Inglis

King Lear. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Romeo and Juliet. Macbeth. Othello, the Moor of Venice. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Merchant of Venice. Lovers of literature will immediately recognize these as signature dramas of William Shakespeare, whose plays still rank as the greatest works ever produced for the stage. More than four centuries after they were written, they have yet to be surpassed for their poetry and their insight into the human condition.

William Shakespeare: Complete Plays collects all thirty-seven of the immortal Bard’s comedies, tragedies, and historical plays. In this volume all of Shakespeare’s memorable characters—star-crossed lovers, majestic monarchs, wise fools, lovable rogues, treacherous villains, conflicted heroes, cagey heroines, and creatures magical and mythic—strut and fret their hour upon the stage. These characters, and the roles they play, have influenced virtually all literature written since. For readers who appreciate the emotional power of the written word, and the heights of humor and the depths of drama that can be encompassed by a single type of literature, William Shakespeare: Complete Plays is an indispensable collection of timeless masterpieces.

Genres: Classics, Plays, Fiction, Shakespeare, Poetry, Romance, Literature

944 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1595

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Josh Caporale · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am rating this complete collection of plays as a book and not by each play, for each play serves as an individual work and has been or will be rated individually based on my thought on each. Why am I giving this book five stars? I am giving it five stars, because for someone that is not enthusiastic about Shakespeare like myself or for someone that likes to read and own books, but is on a budget, this is the only Shakespeare book you ever need to purchase. This has every legitimate Shakespeare play (Two Noble Kinsmen was strictly John Fletcher) and features the complete play from details regarding the character and setting to the entire script and its details. I have referred to this for Shakespeare related assignments and for Literary Gladiators discussions. This book is also very affordable and is often $7.98 at Barnes & Noble.

[Emily Gushue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the challenge I set myself for new years:to read all of Shakespeare's plays. I downloaded them onto my e-reader and started at the beginning and read straight through. I read on break at work, on buses, in waiting rooms, basically any time I would probably have done nothing. At home I read novels and other things. A usually read a few scenes a day. Let me tell you, a little Shakespeare every day is a very good thing. It's been a rough year, and this was wonderful.

Today, I finished. I feel a little at a loss, now. I'm strongly tempted to just start over.

[Arvind Radhakrishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have finished reading all the plays penned by William Shakespeare.I started this quest in the beginning of this year (January 18,2025) and then finished reading his 38th play today (on August 3,2025).It has been such a beautiful and rewarding journey.Shakespeare teaches one so much as his plays bear a fidelity to the truth of life.

[Kiran B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not fit to review these truly miraculous works. Instead, here are some of my favourites, in no particular order: Hamlet, Richard II, Richard III, King Lear, Macbeth, The Winter's Tale, Troilus and Cressida, Titus Andronicus.

I came very late to Shakespeare, in my mid-thirties, beckoned on by a group of friends who seemed to take the admittedly difficult but beautiful language in their stride. School utterly ruined Shakespeare for me, I had thought for life. Since then I've made my way through them, and finished the last one, Cymbeline, while struck down and in self-isolation.

I feel intensely sorry for anyone who has not discovered this canon, or for those whose potential love for the works was utterly destroyed for them by school. Pick them up again as an adult: all of life is in there, the richness of phrase is paralleled by nothing, whole other works of literature will be partially closed to you without the codes that come from these plays. Do it!

[B. P. Rinehart]

This book is the collection of all of Shakespeare's plays (that he wrote solo) and is taken from an edition published in 1904 and edited by Arthur Henry Bullen. This collection was published by Barnes & Noble and is basically Bullen's combining of the First Folio mostly with the Second Quarto parts inserted. It is a decent anthology although it does not include the original notes or supplement commentary that Bullen originally included (thou you can check all of that out on-line). If you just want a simple collection of all of Shakespeare's plays for a cheap price, this is the book. If you want a much more comprehensive reading of the plays, there are much better collections and publishers out there. Though I have individual plays by the Bard already, this is a nice collection of 36 plays-the majority which I would not spend money on individually.

[Michael Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

good
it was my new year's resolution to finish this w/in a year and ,'o)
here are my rankings

1. King Richard II (the prison soliloquy is what made me fall in love w/ Shakespeare)
2. Hamlet (about as good as people say lol)
3. Macbeth (exciting and intense, ambition and paranoia themes)
4. Julius Caesar (best speeches, v thought provoking)
5. Much Ado About Nothing (platonic ideal of a comedy. Beatrice and Benedick are my faves)
6. The Tempest (lovely magical time, good setting and fun plot)
7. Romeo and Juliet (quite beautiful, some of Bill's best writing on Love)
8. King Lear (sad and upsetting but in a good way)
9. Cymbeline (VERY underrated, so much going on, subverts all expectations)
10. Othello (JEALOUSY!!! +not as racist as I thought it would be)
11. All's Well That Ends Well (easily the funniest comedy. Helena is great)
12. Merchant of Venice (one of the better problem plays. lots of things you can take from it)
13. King Henry V (nice nice finish for the Henriad. Fun and interesting char developmt)
14. As You Like It (i'm a sucker for the pastoral plays. very cute)
15. Antony and Cleopatra (good combo of engaging political plot and tragic romance)
16. A Midsummer Night's Dream (square crossed lovers. fun and magic)
17. King Richard III (hilariously evil Richard. great catharsis at end)
18. Pericles (very solid romance. latter half of the play is best)
19. Twelfth Night (crossdressing love triangles, lots of confusion. cool)
20. Titus Andronicus (lots of action, v little subtlety, but that can be good)
21. King Henry IV part 1 (hal-hotspur contrast is neat)
22. Measure for Measure (not the best not the worst. very horny play)
23. Love's Labour's Lost (last scene drags on but otherwise perfectly fine)
24. King Henry IV part 2 (love Henry IV's last speeches, hate Falstaff he's stupid)
25. King Henry VI part 3 (this series wasn't my fave but this one clearly the quality went up)
26. Troilus and Cressida (pessimistic commentary on heroism)
27. Coriolanus (what do men deserve? sort of interesting in some spots)
28. King John (pretty much a descriptive history in play form. Arthur is good tho)
29. Winter's Tale (doesn't suck, but attempts what Pericles/Cymbeline already did better)
30. Timon of Athens (moody and not much plot, but tbf Shakespeare did abandon this one)
31. King Henry VI part 1 (Shax still getting his grips but kind of interesting war play)
32. The Two Noble Kinsmen (not the worst but pretty basic)
33. Comedy of Errors (not v subtle, not the best, but i didn't hate it)
34. King Henry VI part 2 (Shakespeare hates women and Irish people)
35. Taming of the Shrew (sorta witty but the smugness w/ the horrifying plot is. not likeable)
36. Two Gentlemen of Verona (kind of a proto-Merchant of Venice but less developed)
37. Merry Wives of Windsor (insufferable. I hate Falstaff)
38. Henry VIII (incredibly boring, clearly just trying to please King James)

WAHOOOOOOO

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not read this whole book. I only read "The Tempest." I got this edition because it doesn't separate the plays into comedies and tragedies. It places them in chronological order as he wrote them.
I also like the typeface and text from the 1904 Stratford town edition.
The drawback is that there are no notes to accompany anything. No forward, afterward, anything at all. It's straight text from the plays.
I plan on revisiting each play here, as I study each play.

[S D]

He really likes Italy and people named Henry


Top 6

6-Julius Cesare
5-King Othello
4-Cominius
3-Hamlet
2-King Richard
1-Macbeth

Notes: Titus Andronicus is insane, as well as Midsummer’s Night Dream (though the Jiří Trnka adaptation is masterful)

The King Henry trilogy is awesome but a bit overly long

[Nicholas Auletti · Rating 4 out of 5]

After three months of re-wiring my brain behind Shakespeare's pomp and verse, I have finished his oeuvre. At least, I think. It is challenging at first, but once you get into the rhythm of the verse and the plot points, you can really appreciate the foremost dramatist of his era. I'm glad I read it; I will return to this later.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read several of these and enjoyed more than half of them for all different reasons. Only a few that I was disinterested in.

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my quarantine project. This and Unus Annus and the end of Supernatural defined my year.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better watched than read obviously 🥰

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

The great advantage of this collected plays of Shakespeare on Kindle is that it is virtually free (49p), easily accessible and can be personally annotated. It also comes with 14 essays covering Shakespeare's life, the development of drama pre-Renaissance, a discussion of Elizabethan theatre and London, a brief overview of the non-dramatic works, the sequencing of the writing of the plays, and their grouping into four periods.

The distinct disadvantages are that none of the plays is annotated, Two Noble Kinsmen is omitted (therefore not 'complete'), and those essays are both rudimentary (at O Level standard), hardly and poorly referenced, and seem to belong to the 1910s, occasionally referencing works of the 1900s, and so, despite their basic analyses, are not in the main current of modern scholarship benefiting from a hundred years plus since. They are also raddled with superlatives like 'superb' and 'gorgeous' and denigrations such as 'riffraff', and the terms 'masterly' and 'genius' are grafted onto most statements about the 'supreme heights' of Shakespeare's art (loc. 69824), peaking sonorously in 'the welding fire of genius' (loc. 69747). That said, they do give a feel of what Renaissance theatre was like, and teach enough of the basics of the development of the medieval miracle and morality plays and the interludes of the 14th century which led to the Renaissance plays born of Senecan (~65 AD) tragedy and Plautine (~184 BC) comedy, as well as the early modern history genre - plays which Marlow, Kyd, Shakespeare, Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher et al inherited - and the rise of the romance (tragicomedy) from 1608, indebted to the latter two.

While this is a cheap and highly self-reliant introductory way to read Shakespeare, the best collection for non-scholarship reading is the RSC Complete Works edition of 2007, which provides more comprehensive and up-to-date introductory materials, good brief introductions to each play, and non-invasive annotations in footnotes in situ (whereas the Penguin individual series, for example, has the annotation/commentary at the end), replicating much of their individual works, and including the two larger poems and all the sonnets (154), and still is only £20. It also includes The Two Noble Kinsman, still not yet available in their individual series, but more readable from a lay perspective than the degree-level scholarly version in the excellent Arden third series.

Consequently, with such a serious list of disadvantages, shortfalls and omissions, I would, to use the parlance of the essays attached to this collection, direct the 'general student' (I presume the 1910s version of the GCSE student) to the RSC Complete Works, and skip cheap compilations such as this. Four of these essays, numbered the four periods of Shakespeare's plays, should not be read before the actual plays, since their summaries tell all the plots, but they are the most enjoyable, and make you re-think the plays with affection (R&J, MND, RII, MOV, 1HIV, HV, MA, AYL, TN, MFM, KL, CYM, WT, TEM...). Finally, I would also say, that while the summation of Richard II's character is remarkably accurate, as are most of the synopses, some of the analysis presented in these essays should be taken with a deal of healthy scepticism, since, for example, the same essay criticises Richard III, in neighbouring paragraphs, both as 'lack of development of character' and 'the character which the dramatist powerfully developed' (loc. 69637). The best of them are the four on periods.

My mark is based upon detailed appreciation of the plays (in other editions), rounded down according to the demerits of the outdated essays.

[Vilja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vaikea antaa kokonaisarvosanaa, kun tässä on neljä toisistaan täysin eriävää näytelmää. Hamletista pidin paljon, Romeo ja Julia oli kiva lukea kun tarina on niin tuttu, Venetian kauppias oli porukan yllättäjä, pidin valtavasti ja kuningas Lear hiukan blaah. Lear kärsi kyllä myös huonosta lukijasta, olin tänään todella väsynyt ja kahlasin tätä silmät puoliummessa kotimatkalla. Kokonaisuutena kuitenkin reippaasti positiivisen puolella, Shakespeare vain vaatii tietynlaisen mielentilan.

[Takaya Kawai · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Oxford Bookworms Library; Level 2
2. 5/27 = 60 minutes
3. friend - London - theatre - actor - poet - playwright - read
4. What kind of books do you like?
- I like nobel.
5. It is good to know about Shakespeare. I am interested in reading or watching a movie of his things, such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.

[Camille Alexander · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not Helpful for Students

I'm currently writing my dissertation and I just needed to know what lines referenced Sycorax. Imagine my frustration when I realized that this edition did not have line numbers. This edition was very inexpensive, but if I had known about this short-coming, I would have paid more for a better copy.

[Bcoghill Coghill · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Juneau we are reading all of the First Folio plays. One of our local theaters, Theater in the Rough, has talented actors reading parts (with a few non-actors reading non-lead parts). It is great to read in the original language with the original spelling. Having a wonderful time.

[Kaitlin]

Lovely edition. I am excited to use it!

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does this even need a recommendation?!

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The dazzles even God.

[Narcis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will, always Will !!!

[May Barbieri]

Li só Hamlet, não terminei o livro inteiro (mas esse nunca foi a pretensão). (Hamlet is a little bitch)

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most comprehensive

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive

[Altea · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good, really enjoyable tbh, especially Romeo and Juliet!!