Shakespeare's Plays

Summaries of William Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare's plays portray recognisable people in situations that we can all relate to - including love, marriage, death, mourning, guilt, the need to make difficult choices, separation, reunion and reconciliation. They do so with great humanity, tolerance, and wisdom. They help us to understand what it is to be human, and to cope with the problems of being so.

Click on a play to read a full synopsis.

All's Well That Ends Well

Antony and Cleopatra

As You Like It

The Comedy of Errors

Coriolanus

Cymbeline

Hamlet

Henry IV Part 1

Henry IV Part 2

Henry V

Henry VI Part 1

Henry VI Part 2

Henry VI Part 3

Henry VIII

Julius Caesar

King John

King Lear

Love's Labour's Lost

Macbeth

Measure for Measure

The Merchant of Venice

Merry Wives of Windsor

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Much Ado About Nothing

Othello: The Moor of Venice

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Richard II

Richard III

Romeo and Juliet

Taming of the Shrew

The Tempest

Timon of Athens

Titus Andronicus

Troilus and Cressida

Twelfth Night

Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Winter's Tale

Because Shakespeare's plays are written to be acted, they are constantly fresh and can be adapted to the place and time they are performed. Their language is wonderfully expressive and powerful, and although it may sometimes seem hard to understand in reading, actors can bring it to vivid life for us. The plays provide actors with some of the most challenging and rewarding roles ever written. They are both entertaining and moving.

In the first Folio of 1623, the earliest edition of Shakespeare's collected plays, they are divided into Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. Over time, these have been further divided into Romances which include The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and Pericles. The term ‘Problem Plays’ has been used to include plays as apparently diverse as Measure for Measure, Hamlet, All's Well that Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida.

In his history plays, Shakespeare sometimes had the same character appear over and over. For example, the character 'Bardolph' appears in the the most plays of any characters, including Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.