| Where did Shakespeare find the source material for the stories told in his plays? |
 | Shakespeare took many of the plots of his plays from existing literature:
- History books such as Holinshed's Chronicles (e.g. history plays and Macbeth)
- Translations of classic texts such as North's version of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (e.g. Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra)
- Stories such as Robert Greene's Pandosto (The Winter's Tale) and Cinthio's Hecatommithi (Othello)
Geoffrey Bullough's Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (8 volumes, 1957-75) reprints most of the major sources. |
