Shakespeare and Me: The Man or the Myth?

The Plays

In order for all readers to fully engage with the rest of the book I thought it would be usefully to give a list of Shakespeare's great plays divided into the traditional 6 categories (see 'A Critical History of English Poetry by Herbert Grierson and J.C. Smith) as I may refer to individual works later in the book and listing them in this way will also enable you to appreciate the scale of the bard's genius including the breadth and variety of topics, themes and genres he explored:

The Prentice Group

'Titus Andronicus'

'The Comedy of Errors'

'Henry VI'

'Richard III'

'Love's Labour's Lost'

'The Two Gentlemen of Verona'

'The Taming of the Shrew'

The Lyric Group

'Richard II'

'Romeo and Juliet'

'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

The Historical-Comical Group

'King John'

'The Merchant of Venice'

'Henry IV'

'The Merry Wives of Windsor'

'Henry V'

'Julius Caesar'

'Much Ado about Nothing'

'As You Like It'

'Twelfth Night'

The Problem Plays

'Hamlet'

'Troilus and Cressida'

'All's Well that End's Well'

'Measure for Measure'

The Tragedies of Passion

'Othello'

'King Lear'

'Macbeth'

'Anthony and Cleopatra'

'Coriolanus'

'Timon of Athens'

The Romances

'Pericles'

'Cymbeline'

'The Winter's Tale'

'The Tempest'

(Henry VIII stands alone)

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