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Little is known about William Shakespeare - some critics even claim that he was merely a front for another playwright. What is known, however, is that he was universally popular in his own time and his works have been heralded as the finest ever examples of the use of the English language.

Shakespeare was adept at crafting words and sentences for maximum effect and, because of this, he was instrumental in the changes that were occuring to the English language during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Shakespeare's power with language was coupled with a remarkable poetic ability evident throughout his plays and in his collection of sonnets.

In the world today, Shakespeare's plays are performed more than those of any other dramatist; standing testiment to the timeless nature of his works.

Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed below according to their folio classification as comedies, histories and tragedies.[180] Shakespeare did not write every word of the plays attributed to him; and several show signs of collaboration, a common practice at the time.[181] Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with scholars agreed that Shakespeare made a major contribution to their composition.[182] No poems were included in the First Folio.
In the late nineteenth century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, his term is often used.[183] These plays and the associated Two Noble Kinsmen are marked with an asterisk (*) below. In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet.[184] "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may...