William Shakespeare wrote about thirty-nine plays between 1590 and 1613, and they are usually divided into four large groups: histories, comedies, tragedies and romances. Understanding these categories helps us recognise the themes, the tone and the type of ending we should expect when we open one of his works.
Who Shakespeare was and why his plays still matter
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 and died in the same town in 1616, after a brilliant career in London as actor, poet and playwright. He worked for a theatrical company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later renamed the King's Men when King James I became their patron in 1603. Most of his plays were performed at the Globe Theatre, an open-air wooden building on the south bank of the Thames where rich and poor citizens stood or sat together. His works are still relevant because they explore feelings and problems that belong to every generation, such as jealousy, ambition, love and the fear of growing old. Think about a modern Netflix series like Succession: the rivalry between brothers and a powerful father reminds us strongly of King Lear or Hamlet. This is why directors continue to set his plays in modern offices, high schools or even on the moon, and audiences still understand them.
The histories: kings, power and national identity
The histories dramatise the lives of English monarchs from the late medieval period, especially the kings of the houses of Lancaster and York during the Wars of the Roses. Famous examples are Richard III, Henry IV (in two parts), Henry V and King John, all written mainly in the 1590s when Queen Elizabeth I was still on the throne. Shakespeare did not write neutral documentaries: he shaped events to please his Tudor audience and to reflect on the nature of good and bad government. A central question in these plays is what makes a legitimate ruler, and whether a charismatic person without moral values, like Richard III, can hold power for long. Imagine a podcast today comparing two political leaders: one honest but boring, the other clever but dishonest. That is exactly the kind of debate the histories invite, only with swords instead of microphones. Through these works the English public also learned a shared version of its past, almost like a national television series.
The comedies: love, disguise and happy endings
The comedies are plays full of misunderstandings, mistaken identities and clever heroines, and they always end with one or more weddings that restore harmony to the community. Typical titles are A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice, even if this last one contains very dark elements. A recurring device is the girl who dresses as a boy, like Viola or Rosalind, which allowed Shakespeare to play with gender roles in a society where female parts were performed by young male actors. The settings are often forests, islands or foreign cities, places that work as a kind of magical laboratory where ordinary rules are suspended. Think of a school trip abroad: students far from home behave differently, fall in love, fight and discover new sides of themselves, exactly like the lovers lost in the wood near Athens. At the end, however, everyone goes back to the city, wiser and ready for adult life.
The tragedies: great heroes and fatal flaws
The tragedies focus on a noble protagonist who is destroyed by an internal weakness, called the tragic flaw or hamartia, and by hostile external circumstances. The four mature masterpieces are Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, written roughly between 1600 and 1606, a period of personal grief and political tension after the death of Elizabeth I. Hamlet hesitates too much, Othello trusts the wrong person, Lear judges his daughters by their flattery, and Macbeth lets ambition push him into murder. The endings are violent and the stage is usually covered with bodies, but the audience leaves the theatre with a sense of catharsis, a deep emotional cleansing described already by Aristotle. A modern parallel is a sports champion who reaches the top and then loses everything because of a single bad decision, like doping or gambling: we feel pity and fear, exactly the emotions Shakespeare wanted to produce. These plays also raise philosophical questions about fate, free will and the meaning of life, summarised in Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be".
The romances and the language of the stage
The last group, written between 1608 and 1611, is usually called romances or tragicomedies, and includes Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. These plays mix tragic events such as shipwrecks, lost children and false accusations with a final atmosphere of forgiveness, reconciliation and almost magical wonder. The Tempest, set on a mysterious island ruled by the magician Prospero, is often read as Shakespeare's farewell to the theatre and to his own art as a creator of illusions. From the point of view of language, all his plays combine prose, used mainly by lower-class characters or in comic scenes, with blank verse, that is unrhymed iambic pentameter, used for noble characters and serious moments. This rhythm of five accented beats per line sounds close to a natural English heartbeat, which is why actors find it surprisingly easy to speak even today. If you compare it to a modern rap verse, you notice the same attention to stress, pauses and powerful images, even without a fixed rhyme scheme.
Ricorda
- Shakespeare's plays are traditionally grouped into histories, comedies, tragedies and romances, each with its own typical themes and endings.
- The histories discuss legitimate power, the comedies celebrate love and social harmony, the tragedies show the fall of a noble hero, and the romances move from suffering to forgiveness.
- Most plays were staged at the Globe Theatre and use a flexible mix of prose and blank verse to fit different characters and situations.
- Recurring themes such as ambition, jealousy, appearance versus reality and the conflict between fathers and children make Shakespeare's works still meaningful today.
Quick check on your notebook: choose one title for each of the four groups (history, comedy, tragedy, romance), write the approximate year of composition next to it and, in one full sentence in English, explain why that play belongs to that specific group. Then add one short personal sentence in which you compare a Shakespearean character to a character from a film, a series or a book you know well.