Shakespeare Plays List

There are believed to be 37 to 40  Shakespeare plays but no one can know for sure because of  inexact documentation at the time the plays were first  organized and published.  The Two Noble Kinsmen and two lost plays attributed to Shakespeare, Cardenio and Love's Labour's Won, would make 40.

COMEDIES (14)

• All's Well That Ends Well (1602): 5 acts, 23 scenes, 26 characters. Described as unorthodox mixture of fairy tale logic, gender role reversals and cynical realism based on a tale of Boccaccio's The Decameron.
  Famous quote: All's well that ends well. | Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.
• As You Like It (1599): 5 acts, 22 scenes, 27 characters. Love is the central theme of As You Like It, like other romantic comedies of Shakespeare.  As You Like It is a tale of love manifested in its varied forms.
  Famous quotes: All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. | The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly. | Can one desire too much of a good thing? | I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it | Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude | The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool
• Comedy of Errors (1589): 5 acts, 11 scenes, 19 characters. Shakespeare, who  fathered twins,  tells the story of two sets of identical twins accidentally separated at birth in The Comedy of Errors.
• Love's Labour's Lost (1594): 5 acts, 9 scenes, 19 characters. Love's Labour's Lost explores the power and limitations of language with sophisticated wordplay, puns, and literary allusions. Reckoning absolute value is a slippery proposition indicated throughout the play, especially in rationalizing human flaws as the basis for falling in love.
  Famous quote: They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol'n the scraps.
• Measure for Measure (1604): 5 acts, 17 scenes, 24 characters
  Famous quote: Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. | Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.
• Merchant of Venice (1596): 5 acts, 20 scenes, 23 characters
  Famous quotes: If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? | All that glitters is not gold. | You speak an infinite deal of nothing. | But love is blind, and lovers cannot see | The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose | I like not fair terms and a villain's mind
• Merry Wives of Windsor (1600): 5 acts, 23 scenes, 24 characters
  Famous quote: Why, then the world 's mine oyster | This is the short and the long of it
• Midsummer Night's Dream (1595): 5 acts, 9 scenes, 23 characters
  Events surrounding the marriage of a duke to a former Queen of the Amazons includes four interconnecting plots with themes of male dominance, ambiguous sexuality, and loss of identity, and characters such as trickster fairies. 
  Famous quotes: Lord, what fools these mortals be. | The course of true love never did run smooth. | Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
• Much Ado about Nothing (1598): 5 acts, 17 scenes, 23 characters
  Famous quotes: Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps. | Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. | Everyone can master a grief but he that has it
• Taming of the Shrew (1593): 5 acts, 14 scenes, 36 characters
  Famous quote: I burn, I pine, I perish.
• Tempest (1611): 5 acts, 9 scenes, 21 characters
  Famous quote: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. | Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
• The Winter's Tale (1610): 5 acts, 15 scenes, 34 characters
  Famous quote: You pay a great deal too dear for what's given freely
• Twelfth Night or What You Will (1599): 5 acts, 18 scenes, 18 characters
  Famous quote: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. | If music be the food of love play on. | Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.
• Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594): 5 acts, 20 scenes, 17 characters

• Antony and Cleopatra (1606): 5 acts, 42 scenes, 57 characters
  Famous quote: My salad days, when I was green in judgment.
• Coriolanus (1607): 5 acts, 28 scenes, 60 characters
  Famous quote: Nature teaches beasts to know their friends
• Cymbeline (1609): 5 acts, 27 scenes, 40 characters
• Hamlet | The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark(1600): 5 acts, 20 scenes, 34 characters
  Famous quotes: To be, or not to be: that is the question. | Frailty, thy name is woman. | The lady doth protest too much, methinks. | Get thee to a nunnery. | To thine own self be true. | There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. | God has given you one face and you make yourselves another. | There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. | This above all: to thine ownself be true. | Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. | Conscience doth make cowards of us all. | The play 's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. | Brevity is the soul of wit. | Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love. | Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. | Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? | I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
• Julius Caesar (1599): 5 acts, 18 scenes, 49 characters
  Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. | Beware the Ides of March. | Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. | Et tu, Brute? | Sweets to the sweet.
• King Lear | The Tragedy of King Lear (1605): 5 acts, 26 scenes, 25 characters
  Famous quote: How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! | Nothing will come of nothing. | The wheel is come full circle: I am here. | Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest
• Macbeth | The Tragedy of Macbeth (1605): 5 acts, 28 scenes, 40 characters
  Famous quotes: Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? | Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. | Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
• Othello | The Tragedy of Othello, Moor of Venice (1604): 5 acts, 15 scenes, 26 characters
  Famous quote: I am one who loved not wisely but too well.
• Romeo and Juliet | The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (1594): 5 acts, 26 scenes, 33 characters
  Famous quote: Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? | What's in a name? A rose by any name would smell as sweet. | What light through yonder window breaks. | Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. | Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. | Good Night, Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow. | For you and I are past our dancing days | Young men's love then lies Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
• Timon of Athens | The Tragedy of Timon of Athens (1607): 5 acts, 17 scenes, 57 characters
  Famous quote: We have seen better days.
• Titus Andronicus (1593): 5 acts, 14 scenes, 30 characters
  Famous quote: These words are razors to my wounded heart
• Troilus and Cressida (1601): 5 acts, 25 scenes, 30 characters

HISTORIES (11)

• Henry IV, Part I (1597): 5 acts, 19 scenes, 34 characters
  Famous quote: The better part of valor is discretion. 
• Henry IV, Part II (1597): 5 acts, 20 scenes, 53 characters
  Famous quotes: A man can die but once. | Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
• Henry V (1598): 5 acts, 28 scenes, 46 characters
  Famous quote: I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety. | Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.
• Henry VI, Part I (1591): 5 acts, 27 scenes, 56 characters
• Henry VI, Part II (1590): 5 acts, 24 scenes, 67 characters
• Henry VI, Part III (1590): 5 acts, 28 scenes, 50 characters
• Henry VIII (1612): 5 acts, 18 scenes, 47 characters
• King John (1596): 5 acts, 16 scenes, 27 characters
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608): 5 acts, 26 scenes, 46 characters
• Richard II (1595): 5 acts, 19 scenes, 35 characters
• Richard III (1592): 5 acts, 25 scenes, 63 characters
  Famous quote: Now is the winter of our discontent. | Off with his head!