Free William Shakespeare books to read and download in PDF. This collection brings together 41 titles: every tragedy, comedy and history play, plus the sonnets and poems.
Shakespeare wrote for the stage, not the page. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 and built his career in the theaters of Elizabethan London.
The plays he wrote for the Globe Theatre still work today. Whether you are a student assigned Romeo and Juliet or a reader who always meant to try the sonnets, start anywhere.
📚
Download every book on this page in one click
Sign in with Google and grab them all without going one by one.
We will redirect you to accounts.google.com to complete sign-in.
Email and name only · We never send spam
Access unlocked
Download every book on this page in one click
Get them all together, without going one by one.
Direct download · One ZIP file
Download started. Check your downloads folder for the ZIP.
Tragedies
William Shakespeare Tragedy Books
Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear all follow people undone by the very qualities that make them remarkable. These are the Shakespeare plays most often assigned, adapted and staged.
Shakespeare's longest and most quoted tragedy, following a prince who cannot decide whether to avenge his murdered father. The full five-act text with the soliloquies that shaped modern drama.
A Scottish general hears a prophecy and murders his way to the throne, then cannot live with what he has done. One of the shortest and fastest of the tragedies.
An ageing king divides his kingdom between his daughters and discovers too late what he has given away. Often considered the bleakest and most ambitious of the tragedies.
A wealthy Athenian gives away everything, is abandoned by the friends he funded, and turns on humanity entirely. The least performed of the tragedies and the last gap in the canon.
A sour, clear eyed retelling of the Trojan War in which nobody behaves heroically. Classed as a problem play for its refusal to settle into comedy or tragedy.
Mistaken identity, disguise and marriage drive Shakespeare's comedies, though the funniest carry a real edge. This section also holds the late romances like The Tempest, where comedy and loss sit side by side.
Four lovers, a troupe of amateur actors and a quarrelling fairy court collide in a wood outside Athens. The most performed of the comedies and a common first Shakespeare.
A shipwrecked woman disguises herself as a man and sets off a chain of mistaken identities and misdirected love. One of the most popular comedies and previously missing from this collection.
A merchant borrows against a pound of his own flesh and ends up in a courtroom that has been argued over ever since. A comedy with an uncomfortable centre.
Two sharp tongued rivals are tricked into admitting they love each other, while a second couple is nearly destroyed by a lie. The wittiest dialogue Shakespeare wrote.
A fortune hunter sets out to marry and subdue a woman nobody else will approach. An early comedy that still provokes argument about how it should be read.
A king destroys his family through baseless jealousy, then is given an impossible second chance sixteen years later. A late romance that moves from tragedy to reconciliation.
Four men swear off women for three years and break the oath almost immediately. The most verbally elaborate of the comedies, in a clean modern edition.
Friendship collapses when two young men fall for the same woman. Probably Shakespeare's first comedy and a sketch of themes he would return to for decades.
Falstaff tries to seduce two married women at once and is outwitted by both. The only comedy set entirely in contemporary England, with a designed cover.
A British princess, a wrongful accusation and a Roman invasion resolve in one of Shakespeare's most crowded final scenes. A late romance that gathers up his earlier plots.
Shakespeare turned two centuries of English royal history into stage drama, from King John through the Wars of the Roses to Henry VIII. Read in reign order, they form one continuous story.
A deformed duke charms and murders his way to the crown, confiding every step to the audience. The most performed of the history plays and previously missing here.
A king convinced of his divine right is deposed by a cousin he underestimated. Written entirely in verse and the opening move of the Wars of the Roses cycle.
Before and between the plays, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets and several long narrative poems. The sonnet sequence remains the most quoted body of verse in English.
All 154 sonnets, the most quoted body of verse in English, addressed to a young man and a dark lady who have never been identified. The single most requested Shakespeare text and previously absent from this collection.
The narrative poem that made Shakespeare's name in print, in which a goddess fails to seduce a reluctant young hunter. Presented with a designed cover.
If you would rather have everything in one file, this edition collects the complete works of Shakespeare in a single volume. It runs to more than 4,000 pages.
Every play, sonnet and poem in a single volume of over 4,000 pages. For readers who would rather keep the whole canon in one file than download plays individually.
These texts are in the public domain. You can download them, print them, and share them freely.
Shakespeare's colleagues gathered the plays into the First Folio in 1623, seven years after his death. Browse more writers like him in our classic authors collection.
