The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

A little about the book

This collection offers a broad route through Shakespeare’s dramatic and poetic writing, from intimate arguments and comic mistakes to the struggles of rulers and the consequences of war. A reader can move between the dangerous ambition of Macbeth, the troubled household of Hamlet, the disguises and courtships of the comedies, and the competing claims of England’s history plays. The poetry adds another form of concentration, turning brief occasions into sustained questions about love, beauty, time, and change.

Reading the works together makes their range especially apparent. Familiar concerns return in different settings, but a jealous husband, a displaced ruler, or an inventive comic heroine never simply repeats another character’s experience. Verse, prose, songs, and theatrical exchanges give each work its particular movement. The collection can be explored in order or used as a library within a library, allowing readers to follow one genre, return to a well-known scene, or discover how much Shakespeare wrote beyond the small group of titles most often performed.

Things You May Not Know About The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

• Drama and poetry together. This edition includes the sonnet sequence alongside the plays, rather than presenting only Shakespeare’s work for the theater.
• One hundred and fifty-four sonnets. The numbered sonnet sequence contains 154 poems, exploring changing perspectives on affection, beauty, rivalry, and the passage of time.
• Different dramatic families. Comedies, histories, and tragedies offer useful starting points, although individual plays frequently complicate the boundaries between those categories.
• Verse is not the only medium. Shakespeare’s characters also speak prose, and the shifts between prose and verse can change a scene’s rhythm and social tone.
• A landmark after his death. The First Folio collected thirty-six plays in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death; later collected editions have their own contents.