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.