William Shakespeare
English playwright, poet, and actor of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and a pre-eminent dramatist. Author of tragedies, comedies, and histories including Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream; associated with the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men theatre company.
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
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1. Love Sonnets Of Shakespeare
A compact sequence of sonnets that probes the many faces of romantic attachment—tender devotion, passionate desire, jealousy, betrayal and the ache of absence—while also meditating on time, mortality and the power of verse to preserve beauty. Using tight rhyme and vivid imagery, the poems address beloved figures and rivals, moving between celebration and doubt as they argue that love can both wound and transcend through language.
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2. Shakespeare's Play A Winter's Tale
A jealous Sicilian king falsely accuses his wife of infidelity with a childhood friend, unleashing a chain of tragedies—imprisonment and the presumed death of the queen, the loss of the king’s young son, and the abandonment of their newborn daughter, who is raised by shepherds—only for the pastoral and court worlds to collide sixteen years later when that daughter falls for the friend’s son, leading to recognitions, revelations (including a famous moment where a presumed-dead woman is revealed alive), and a moving story of repentance, forgiveness, and the healing power of time.
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3. Enrique Vi
A sweeping chronicle of a weak young king whose inability to control ambitious nobles plunges the realm into factional violence: competing Lancastrian and Yorkist factions, opportunistic magnates, shifting loyalties, military disasters, and the rise and fall of bold commanders drive a country toward chaos, betrayals, and civil war, with dramatic episodes—including the capture and martyrdom of a charismatic foreign warrior—that reveal how personal ambition and political failure destroy order and seed dynastic conflict.
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4. El Sueño De Una Noche De Verano
En una noche mágica, una comedia de enredos entrelaza a cuatro jóvenes amantes a punto de casarse, a un grupo de artesanos que ensaya una obra ridícula y a las disputas entre los reyes de las hadas en un bosque encantado; por los errores de un duende travieso y los hechizos de amor se multiplican las confusiones, se transforman apariencias y se provoca la hilaridad romántica, hasta que los equívocos se corrigen y todos celebran bodas y reconciliaciones bajo la luna.
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5. Los Dos Hidalgos De Verona
Dos jóvenes amigos de Verona ven puesta a prueba su lealtad cuando el destino los separa: uno se enamora de una dama en la corte de Milán y el otro, enviado lejos, traiciona su amistad al cortejar también a esa misma mujer. Intrigas, celos y disfraces —incluida una amante que se disfraza de paje— generan enredos y conflictos que terminan en confrontaciones, arrepentimientos y finalmente reconciliaciones que subrayan lecciones sobre el amor, la traición y el perdón.
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6. La Comedia De Los Errores
Dos pares de gemelos separados al nacer —dos señores y sus sirvientes— coinciden por accidente en la misma ciudad, desencadenando una serie de enredos y equívocos entre identidades, acusaciones, arrestos y malentendidos amorosos que generan comedia hasta que se revelan las verdades familiares y las familias se reconcilian.
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7. Ricardo Iii
A ruthless, physically deformed nobleman schemes to seize the English crown, using charm, lies, and murder to eliminate rivals — brothers, nephews, and former allies alike — and even manipulates a grieving widow into marriage to further his designs. He corrupts institutions and courts with calculated cruelty, believing power justifies any atrocity, yet his reign of terror breeds conspiracies and prophetic guilt. In the end a Lancastrian challenger rallies opposition, defeats him in a decisive battle, and ends his bloody ascent, paving the way for national reconciliation.
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8. Riccardo Iii
A ruthless, physically twisted nobleman manipulates, seduces and murders his way to the English throne, turning friends into enemies and sowing terror through calculated cruelty; as guilt, paranoia and opposition grow, displaced heirs and former allies unite against him, and his violent, unscrupulous rise ends in defeat on the battlefield and the restoration of order.
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9. Sogno Di Una Notte Di Mezz'estate
Una commedia leggera in cui le relazioni amorose di giovani ateniesi si complicano quando, fuggiti nella foresta, diventano oggetto dei giochi e delle vendette di esseri fatati; il sovrano e la regina delle fate litigano mentre un folletto combina guai usando una pozione d’amore che provoca scambi d’affetto e buffe incomprensioni, e un gruppo di attori dilettanti aggiunge ulteriore caos prima che tutto si risolva in riconciliazioni e un festoso lieto fine matrimoniale.
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10. Amleto
Prince of Denmark
A Danish prince is plunged into turmoil when his father's ghost reveals that the new king—his uncle—murdered the monarch and quickly married his mother. Tormented by grief and doubt, he adopts an erratic demeanor to conceal his intentions, stages a play to unmask guilt, and becomes entangled with a thwarted love, a spying court, and escalating schemes. A spiral of intrigue, duels and poisoned plots culminates in multiple deaths, forcing a violent reckoning that probes revenge, corruption, appearance versus reality, and the fragility of life.
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11. Pericles Prince Of Tyre
A young prince, forced to flee after solving a deadly riddle that exposes a corrupt king, endures a series of voyages, storms and losses before marrying a princess and fathering a daughter; when his wife is seemingly lost at sea and his fortunes collapse, he wanders in grief while his daughter grows into a virtuous young woman who survives corruption and violence, and after long trials of separation, danger and mistaken identities the family is ultimately restored through reunions, forgiveness and the intervention of compassionate strangers.
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12. King Henry Iv, Part 2
An aging monarch struggles with illness and the fracturing realm he once subdued, as nobles plot rebellion and the kingdom reels from lawlessness and exhaustion from endless war. Amid the political turmoil, the wayward prince continues his riotous companionship with a larger-than-life tavern companion and a band of roisterers, whose comic excesses contrast with the grim business of state. As conspiracies simmer and loyalties shift, the prince is forced to confront his public duties, ultimately rejecting his former life and companions to assume the responsibilities of kingship, while the play examines themes of authority, legacy, and the costs of power.
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13. Winters Tale
The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, many modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics consider it to be one of Shakespeare's "problem plays" because the first three acts are filled with intense psychological drama, while the last two acts are comic and supply a happy ending. The play has been intermittently popular, having been revived in productions and adaptations by some of the leading theatre practitioners in Shakespearean performance history. In the mid-18th century, after a long interval without major performances, David Garrick premiered his adaptation Florizel and Perdita (first performed in 1753 and published in 1756). The Winter's Tale was revived again in the 19th century, when the fourth "pastoral" act was widely popular. In the second half of the 20th century, The Winter's Tale was often performed in its entirety, drawn largely from the First Folio text, with varying degrees of success.
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14. King Henry V
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