The Best William Shakespeare Plays and Books

Most Recommended Books

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

“This debate informs the drama of Macbeth: we’re supposed to be horrified at the killing of King Duncan but also supposed to celebrate the killing of the second king, Macbeth. That’s really what the play asks us to do. But the only reason that works is that Shakespeare scants the coronation scene—Macbeth just comes in with the crown and we see him as a usurper—and in the second half of the play he’s called a tyrant about eight times and acts like one, especially in ordering the killing of Macduff’s wife and children. There’s also all that animal imagery—that he is really not a human being but a dog, and so on. “

Robert S Miola,

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

“What I really like about this play is its sexual playfulness. It seems very modern in that way. There’s no way to play it straight.”

Emma Smith, Literary Scholar

King Lear by William Shakespeare

“Lear is about all sorts of things but one of the things it’s about is people getting old and not ceding what their kids think they should to them and the kids trying to bully them.”

Kathleen Taylor, Science Writer

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

“It’s a play about Shakespeare’s own art. He is writing about the art of theatre and, more generally, about the imagination.”

Stanley Wells, Literary Scholar

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

“Antony and Cleopatra is, in some ways, the most romantic of Shakespeare’s plays. It takes over, in a way, from Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet gives a wonderful exploration of young love, of first love, of romantic attitudes to love. Antony and Cleopatra are mature lovers. They are seasoned. They are disillusioned. It’s an extraordinarily rich play, poetically—as Romeo and Juliet is—but the poetry of Antony and Cleopatra is that of a mature person who has gone through a lot of experiences himself and is capable of expressing the disillusionment of middle-aged love as well as the raptures of it. “

Stanley Wells, Literary Scholar

Five Books has a series of interviews with world-leading Shakespeare scholars discussing the best William Shakespeare plays and the best books on William Shakespeare.

Disillusioned when forced to study him at school but ready to engage with Shakespeare plays again? Or do you already know your Hamlet from your Lear but are keen to explore more about the man? Even if you are completely new to Shakespeare, our interviews with the world’s foremost Shakespeare experts will set you on the right path.

These include:

Sir Stanley Wells, honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford, and General Editor of The Complete Oxford Shakespeare; Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University, and acclaimed expert of Shakespeare’s First Folio; and James Shapiro, Professor of English at Columbia University, and award-winning author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? and 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear.

We will continue to grow this series on Shakespeare plays and the best William Shakespeare books.

Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
(The Tempest, I. 2)