Shakespeare's Comedies

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When the First Folio (the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays) was published in 1623, all the plays were divided into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. Moreover, modern scholars argue for a fourth category, romance. It is about the specific types of comedy like As You Like It or Twelfth Night that appear in Shakespeare's later works.

William Shakespeare’s Comedies and Their Characteristics

Comedy is a genre section of William Shakespeare's work, including almost half of his plays. As it was mentioned above, experts classify some of the comedies as “romantic works”, and some as “problem plays”. The first work of this genre was the "student" "Comedy of Errors", and subsequently Shakespeare regularly turned to comedies, alternating them with tragedies and historical chronicles.

Shakespeare comedies (or the plays of Shakespeare that are generally categorised as comedies) are commonly known as plays that include a lot of fun, irony and exquisite wordplay. They are also full of disguises and mistaken identities. But convoluted plots are difficult to follow with very intricate and sometimes unpredictable endings.

Comedy by William Shakespeare

This alphabetical list presented below includes everything listed as a comedy in the First Folio, in addition to the two quarto plays (The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre). These works which are not included in the Folio but generally recognised to be William Shakespeare's own.

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