William Shakespeare's plays

We know of 39 plays by William Shakespeare, including a few collaborations with other playwrights. One play, Cardenio, was performed at court in the 1612–13 season, but the text has been lost. The other 38 are listed here.

Shakespeare’s plays are traditionally divided into the three categories of the First Folio: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The plays within each grouping vary widely. Among the comedies, for example, one can find sunny works filled with the banter of witty lovers; hilariously complicated farces; and darker, more sober plays such as The Tempest.

For more information about Shakespeare's poetry, visit William Shakespeare's poems.

The following pages provide a rich assortment of Folger resources for each play, including images from the Folger collection, links to full-length digital facsimiles of early printed editions, and materials ranging from Folger Theatre productions in the Folger's Elizabethan Theatre, Exhibitions at the Folger, Folger Consort performances, to classroom lesson plans, videos, audio podcasts, blog posts, recordings, websites, and shop items. Each page includes a short introduction to the play adapted from the Folger paperback edition, a list of related books, and, where available, a list of related movies.

Shakespeare's works are available online at Folger Digital Texts and in print from Simon and Schuster. A selection of works are available as ebooks from Simon and Schuster. The Folger has also published two collections of Shakespeare's works, Three Comedies, which includes A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night, and Three Tragedies, which includes Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet.