An actor and shareholder in a London playing company who wrote roughly thirty-eight plays and a sequence of sonnets. He never published his plays himself; friends assembled them after his death.
No writer has given English more of its phrases, or shown more convincingly how a mind changes while it speaks.
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
William Shakespeare · 1609
The love poem that quietly promises to outlive every summer.
To be, or not to be
William Shakespeare · Hamlet · 1601
The most famous think-out-loud in the language, plainly translated.
Macbeth — The Dagger Soliloquy
William Shakespeare · 1606
A man argues with a dagger he knows perfectly well isn't there.
Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
William Shakespeare · 1609
The anti-love poem that ends up the most honest love poem in English.
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
William Shakespeare · 1609
Love defined by what it survives, not by what it feels.
All the world's a stage
William Shakespeare · As You Like It · 1599
Seven ages of man, from the play's most cheerfully depressed courtier.
King Lear
William Shakespeare · 1606
A king divides his kingdom by asking his daughters to flatter him.
Othello
William Shakespeare · 1603
One rumour, repeated by a friend, destroys a marriage.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare · 1595
Four lovers, six actors, one forest, and a very petty fairy king.
The Tempest
William Shakespeare · 1611
A magician on an island stages a shipwreck for his enemies.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
William Shakespeare · 1608
A prince loses everything at sea and spends a lifetime getting it back.