Shakespeare’s Play Types

What types of plays did Shakespeare write?

There have been many attempts to classify Shakespeare’s play types, using labels to place them into categories to define or restrict the ways in which we think about each play. Traditionally Shakespeare play types are defined as:

• Comedy plays
• History plays
• Roman plays
• Tragedy plays

with a number of additional categories proposed over the years:

• Lost plays
• Masque plays
• Problem plays
• Romance plays
• Tragicomedy plays

Here are the types of Shakespeare plays grouped by the standard comedy, history and tragedy classifications:

Shakespeare’s Comedy Plays

Shakespeare’s comedies are generally identifiable as plays full of fun, irony and dazzling wordplay. They also abound in disguises and mistaken identities, with very convoluted plots that are difficult to follow with very contrived endings.

All’s Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Cymbeline
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Measure for Measure
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merchant of Venice
A Midsummer Nights’ Dream
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona

Read more about Shakespeare’s Comedy plays

Shakespeare’s Tragedy Plays

The plays grouped as Shakespeare tragedies follow the Aristotelian model of a noble, flawed protagonist (the tragic hero) who makes a mistake and suffers a fall from his position, before the normal order is somehow resumed. These plays (and many others) are filled with tragic Shakespeare moments:

Antony and Cleopatra
King Lear
Macbeth
Othello
Titus Andronicus

When it comes to Shakespeare tragedies and  Shakespeare comedies there are a broad range of dramatic types in each and, whatever those two terms may mean, none of the plays fits comfortably into either of them.

• Antony and Cleopatra, shows the ultimate genius of a mind that doesn’t respect classification boxes in that it produces a real tragic feeling from a completely comic structure. That play alone confounds the efforts of all the scholars bent on classifying Shakespeare’s dramas.
• The Merchant of Venice, for example, traditionally a comedy, features Shylock, a tragic figure in every way, while the comic elements are only there to frame and heighten the tragic feeling. On the other hand, one of the ‘great’ tragic plays,
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its forbidden love, threatens to fall into a dark chasm of unhappiness for the characters but survives that danger amidst hilarity and joy.
• Much Ado About Nothing teeters on the brink of darkness but then comes out of it and proceeds towards a felicitous climax.
• Romeo and Juliet with the same theme of forbidden love seems to be developing towards a joyful conclusion but suddenly and unexpectedly falls into the deepest darkness. (Read about more Romeo and Juliet themes.)

Read more about Shakespeare’s Tragedy plays

Shakespeare’s History Plays

The history plays normally refer to the ten plays that cover English history from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and the 1399-1485 period in particular. Each play is named after, and focuses on, the reigning monarch of the period.

Henry IV Part 1
Henry IV Part 2
Henry V
Henry VI Part 1
Henry VI Part 2
Henry VI Part 3
Henry VIII
King John
Richard II
Richard III

Certainly, we can justify calling the Henry plays, the Richard plays and King John Shakespeare’s ‘history plays’ although that would be the most superficial kind of description, given the variety of action, mood, feeling, tone and structure within and between the plays.

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Shakespeare’s Roman Plays

The category of Shakespeare’s ‘Roman plays’ is simply a convenient description that scholars and critics have given to the four plays that Shakespeare set in ancient Rome – although Shakespeare experts don’t always agree on this.

Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Julius Caesar
Titus Andronicus

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Additional Shakespeare Play Categories

The original classification of Shakespeare’s plays  – ‘Comedies’, ‘Tragedies’, ‘Histories’ and ‘Roman plays‘ – don’t adequately describe all of Shakespeare’s plays, and scholars have come up with more names to do so. A nineteenth century critic, F.S. Boas, desperate to classify everything, coined the term ‘problem plays’ for some of them because of the difficulty he had squeezing them into any of the conventional slots. The plays Shakespeare wrote between 1601 and 1603 – All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida – seemed confusing to him as they lurch back and forth between dark drama and a light comic tone.

The most widely used categories are ‘Romance plays’, ‘Problem plays’, and Shakespeare’s ‘Tragicomedy Plays’. The plays in those categories have much in common, but there are enough differences to prevent some of them to fall into all three. The Winter’s Tale, for example is a play that does have the features of all three, however. The Winter’s Tale is usually put into the ‘problem play’ category as well.

Other people have also placed the Bard’s plays into other categories, such as ‘Lost plays‘, ‘Roman plays‘, ‘Romance plays“, ‘Tragicomedy plays‘, ‘Problem plays‘ and ‘Masque plays‘.

Here you can see the generally accepted categorization of these play types, along with further information:

Shakespeare’s Lost Plays

Shortly after Shakepeare’s death what is known as the First Folio was printed. We know, now, that he wrote several plays that were not included in that volume – plays that are often referred to as Shakespeare’s ‘lost plays’.

Cardenio
Love’s Labour Won

Read more about Shakespeare’s Lost plays

Shakespeare’s Masque Plays

A masque is a form of courtly entertainment containing music, dancing, singing and acting out a story.  It was popular in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although it originated in Italy.

Henry VIII
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Romeo and Juliet
The Tempest

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Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

In the problem plays the journey we take when we watch them we take on a dark road. While most of the protagonists end up in a reasonable place they are almost irretrievably scarred by the experience we have watched them endure.

All’s Well That Ends Well
Measure for Measure
Troilus and Cressida
The Winter’s Tale

Read more about Shakespeare’s Problem plays

Shakespeare’s Romance Plays

Shakespeare’s later plays had elements of comedy and tragedy as well as having a wider view of life. They have become a new classification, named Romance plays by scholars.

Pericles
Cymbeline
The Winter’s TaleThe Tempest

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Shakespeare’s Tragicomedy Plays

A tragicomedy is a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy, although it has the features of both. Whilst plays that fall between these two stools of tragedy and comedy are generally referred to as Shakespeare’s tragedies, they are sometimes referred to as ‘Problem plays’, making the whole area of play classification something of a grey area.

Cymbeline
The Merchant of Venice
The Winter’s Tale

Read more about Shakespeare’s Tragicomedy plays