List of settings for Shakespeare's plays
This article is about the settings of Shakespeare's plays, for the main article regarding this topic, see William Shakespeare's plays and William Shakespeare's works (disambiguation). This article is not to be confused with the cataloging reference article List of Shakespeare's works.
The following list of places that serve as the settings for all of Shakespeare's plays was compiled by Laura Estill when she was Assistant Professor of English at Texas A & M University. She is now Associate Professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.
| # in Riverside | Title | Genre | City | Country (modern) | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Comedy of Errors | Comedy | Ephesus | Turkey | |
| 2 | The Taming of the Shrew | Comedy | Padua | Italy | |
| 3 | The Two Gentlemen of Verona | Comedy | Verona | Italy | also Milan |
| 4 | Love's Labor's Lost | Comedy | Navarre | Spain | |
| 5 | A Midsummer Night's Dream | Comedy | Athens | Greece | |
| 6 | The Merchant of Venice | Comedy | Venice | Italy | |
| 7 | The Merry Wives of Windsor | Comedy | Windsor | United Kingdom | |
| 8 | Much Ado About Nothing | Comedy | Messina | Italy | |
| 9 | As You Like It | Comedy | Arden | (Fictional country) | sometimes considered to be in France |
| 10 | Twelfth Night | Comedy | Illyria | Yugoslavia | |
| 11 | Troilus and Cressida | Comedy | Troy | Turkey | |
| 12 | All's Well That Ends Well | Comedy | Rossillion [Roussillion] | France | also Paris, Marseilles, and Florence |
| 13 | Measure for Measure | Comedy | Vienna | Austria | |
| 14 | Henry VI, Part 1 | History | London | United Kingdom | also Orleans, France |
| 15 | Henry VI, Part 2 | History | London | United Kingdom | other UK locations |
| 16 | Henry VI, Part 3 | History | London | United Kingdom | also France |
| 17 | Richard III | History | London | United Kingdom | |
| 18 | King John | History | London | United Kingdom | also France |
| 19 | Richard II | History | London | United Kingdom | also Wales |
| 20 | Henry IV, Part 1 | History | London | United Kingdom | also Wales |
| 21 | Henry IV, Part 2 | History | London | United Kingdom | other UK locations |
| 22 | Henry V | History | London | United Kingdom | other UK locations; also France |
| 23 | Henry VIII | History | London | United Kingdom | other UK locations |
| 24 | Titus Andronicus | Tragedy | Rome | Italy | |
| 25 | Romeo and Juliet | Tragedy | Verona | Italy | also Mantua |
| 26 | Julius Caesar | Tragedy | Rome | Italy | other Italian locations |
| 27 | Hamlet | Tragedy | Elsinore Castle | Denmark | |
| 28 | Othello | Tragedy | Venice | Italy | |
| 29 | King Lear | Tragedy | Britain | mythic pre-Christian Britain | |
| 30 | Macbeth | Tragedy | Inverness | Scotland | other Scottish locations; British locations |
| 31 | Antony and Cleopatra | Tragedy | Alexandria | Egypt | spans three continents: also Rome, Messina, Syria, other places in the Roman Empire (including the sea) |
| 32 | Coriolanus | Tragedy | Rome | Italy | also Corioles, Antium |
| 33 | Timon of Athens | Tragedy | Athens | Greece | |
| 34 | Pericles | Romance | Tyre | Lebanon | other Mediterannean locations including Antioch, Tharsus, Pentapolis, Mytilene, others |
| 35 | Cymbeline | Romance | Britain | mythic pre-Christian Britain; also Italy | |
| 36 | The Winter's Tale | Romance | Sicilia | Italy | also Bohemia |
| 37 | The Tempest | Romance | (Fictional island) | (Fictional country) | |
| 38 | The Two Noble Kinsmen | Romance | Athens | Greece | also Thebes |