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Curated playlist

Shakespearean comedies

  • The Tempest14 minThe Tempest opens with a ship shattering apart in a storm, sailors screaming, and a king convinced he is about to drown. Then, in the very next scene, a young woman named Miranda watches from the shore and weeps for the strangers she sees…
  • As You Like It13 minAs You Like It, William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy believed written in 1599, opens not with a grand battle or a royal proclamation but with a wrestling match. A young man named Orlando steps into that ring carrying nothing but his…
  • Twelfth Night12 minTwelfth Night, or What You Will opens with a shipwreck and a woman washing up on a foreign shore, alone, believing her twin brother has drowned. From that moment of grief and isolation, William Shakespeare built what many have called "The…
  • All's Well That Ends Well9 minAll's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare that has puzzled audiences and critics alike for centuries. It first appeared in the First Folio of 1623, listed among the comedies, yet it has never quite behaved like one. Its…
  • Measure for Measure14 minMeasure for Measure takes its name from the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7 provides the phrase: judge as you wish to be judged, and expect the same measure returned. Shakespeare wrote the play in 1603 or 1604. Its first recorded…
  • Much Ado About Nothing6 minWilliam Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing during the years 1598 and 1599. The play first appeared in print when stationers Andrew Wise and William Aspley published a quarto edition in 1600. This early text described the work as…
  • The Winter's Tale7 minThe play The Winter's Tale draws its main plot from Robert Greene's pastoral romance Pandosto, published in 1588. Shakespeare made uncharacteristically slight changes to the source material, especially given the undramatic nature of the…
  • The Merchant of Venice10 minThe Merchant of Venice, a play by William Shakespeare, hinges on a single clause in a loan agreement: if the borrower defaults, the lender may cut exactly one pound of flesh from the borrower's body. That condition was not written as a…
  • Shakespearean comedy5 minShakespearean comedy arrived at the world's attention not through a single celebrated play, but through an act of editorial sorting. When Shakespeare's fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell compiled the First Folio in 1623, they…
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream15 minA Midsummer Night's Dream opens in Athens, four days before a wedding, with a father dragging his daughter before a duke and invoking a law that would see her put to death for refusing to marry the man he chose. That is the trigger. What…
  • Cymbeline13 minCymbeline begins with a king who has already lost almost everything. His two infant sons were stolen years before the play opens. His daughter, Imogen, has married in secret against his wishes. And his new wife, the scheming Queen, is…
  • The Taming of the Shrew15 minThe Taming of the Shrew opens not with a wedding or a courtship, but with a prank. A mischievous nobleman finds a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly passed out, and decides to convince him he is a nobleman himself. Servants dress Sly in…
  • The Two Noble Kinsmen10 minWilliam Shakespeare wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen in 1613 or 1614, his final play before he retired to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he died in 1616. He did not write it alone. Another dramatist's name sits beside his on every surviving copy,…
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre11 minPericles, Prince of Tyre arrived in print in 1609 as a quarto edition and was reprinted five times before 1635, making it one of the most popular plays of Shakespeare's era. Yet it was left out of the First Folio in 1623, the great…
  • The Comedy of Errors10 minThe Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays, and it gave the English language something most plays never do: a common idiom. To call a chaotic string of blunders a "comedy of errors" is now perfectly ordinary…
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona10 minThe Two Gentlemen of Verona holds a peculiar distinction among Shakespeare's works: it may be the play that started everything. Written somewhere between 1589 and 1593, it features a cast of characters so small that no other Shakespeare…

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