Curated category
Shakespearean tragedies
- MacbethMacbeth is the shortest tragedy William Shakespeare wrote, more than a thousand lines shorter than Othello and King Lear.
- HamletHamlet is the longest play William Shakespeare ever wrote, and it might require more than four hours to stage. A typical Elizabethan play needed two to three…
- Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet begins with a curse. Before a single scene has played out, a Chorus steps forward to tell the audience that two young lovers are already…
- OthelloOthello, written by William Shakespeare around 1603, opens with a secret. A Moorish general and a senator's daughter have eloped in the night, and before…
- Troilus and CressidaTroilus and Cressida, written by William Shakespeare probably in 1602, arrives with a strange and unsettling preface. One printing of the 1609 quarto…
- Antony and CleopatraThe story of Antony and Cleopatra begins in 1579 with a translation by Sir Thomas North. This English version of Plutarch's Lives provided the raw material…
- King LearKing Lear asks a question that has unsettled audiences for four centuries: what happens when a man with absolute power demands to be loved?
- CoriolanusCoriolanus is a Shakespeare tragedy that opens not with a king on his throne or a lover in a garden, but with a food riot.
- Julius Caesar (play)Julius Caesar, the play William Shakespeare wrote and first staged in 1599, begins with a paradox: it is named after a man who is not its hero.
- Shakespearean tragedySarah Siddons stood on the stage in 1784 as the Tragic Muse, her face painted with the gravity of centuries. Joshua Reynolds captured this moment in a famous…
- Titus AndronicusTitus Andronicus begins with a question no audience expects to face: what does a man do when Rome itself betrays him? William Shakespeare wrote this tragedy…