Things get a teeny bit anti-Semitic when a Venetian noble defaults on a loan to a Jewish merchant.
It’s the uber-love story, the template for every tale of doomed romance ever written. Everything else is just a variation.
Full of magic and spectacle, Shakespeare’s deeply layered final play also tends to look bloody spectacular when staged.
A big, grown-up comedy about identity and lost love that rewrites, supercharges and outclasses all his previous comedies.
The most powerful play about racism ever written, but moreover a terrifying study in the destructive power of jealousy.
The last of Shakespere’s great tragedies, this wild, elemental play about a tyrant losing his mind in old age is a haunting vision of collapse.
Full of gags and one-liners, it's one of Shakespeare's biggest crowd pleasers about how bloody hilarious it is when people make a big hullabaloo about nothing.
A bunch of insane fairies attempt to solve the romantic problems of some mortals lost in a wood.
A Scottish lord is persuaded to commit brutal murder by his wife, who promptly gets all guilty about it.
It reputation is so towering it’s hard to be objective about it, but this epic about a young man contemplating his own mortality while attempting to avenge his father is certainly a pretty hot contender for the greatest thing ever written in English.