How to Read the Complete Works of Shakespeare in a Year (Recommended Reading Order)

So you want to read the entire works of Shakespeare in a year.

A very worthy literary challenge. And a rewarding challenge too! One that I completed myself almost a decade ago.

The English Language and Literature course at Oxford University demands you read everything the Bard ever wrote in your final year. It was no coincidence that I enjoyed my final year of reading the most.

But where do you start with reading the complete works of Shakespeare?

It sounds like a daunting challenge, but it’s actually easily achievable with the right game plan. And that’s what I’m going to give you – a game plan for tackling the complete works of Shakespeare in a year.

We’ll look at some reading principles to keep in mind. Then we’ll look at the best reading order for the complete works of Shakespeare. And I’ll also give you some recommended resources so you can really get the most out of your reading challenge. Instead of looking around for resources, you can just bookmark this page and use it as your guide throughout the year.

Shakespeare reading principles

Before we dive into the recommended reading order for the complete works of Shakespeare, here are a few principles to keep in mind as you undertake this journey.

#1: Watch the plays

Shakespeare wasn’t a novelist like Charles Dickens or Stephen King. He was a playwright. He wrote his works to be performed on the stage.

If he were alive today, he would be a director ranking alongside Scorsese, Kubrick, and Hitchcock.

You have to SEE Shakespeare. You have to HEAR Shakespeare. Shakespeare plays are an experience.

You only get 1% of Shakespeare’s power when confined only to the written page.

In this guide, along with the recommended reading order for Shakespeare’s plays, I will recommend some of the best film versions for each of the plays. I encourage you to either read along while watching, or read before or after viewing.

I also recommend you see a few of these plays at the theatre. Obviously it wouldn’t be feasible from a time and financial perspective for most people to see every stage production (plus the fact that many of these plays won’t be performed during the year). But I encourage you to keep an eye on your local theatre scene and book tickets for a few plays that particularly interest you.

My best experiences with Shakespeare are hands-down the ones where I experienced the play at the theatre. Pete Postlethwait as King Lear. Jude Law as Henry V. Paterson Joseph as Brutus in Julius Caesar.

And there are some superb film adaptations of the plays. Anything with Kenneth Branagh is tremendous, particularly his Hamlet (although there are certainly a lot of great Hamlet’s to choose from). Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet is gorgeous, but you could also try Baz Luhrmann’s version for something more modern. Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing is wonderful, but so is Kenneth Branagh’s starring Emma Thompson, Keanu Reeves, and Denzel Washington. Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth is a masterclass in Shakespeare. Lawrence Fishburne nails Othello. And Brando’s Mark Antony in Julius Caesar is masterful.

#2:Read the right editions

Your companions in print for this reading adventure will be the Arden editions of Shakespeare.

If you can spring for the individual volumes, I highly recommend you do so rather than simply getting the complete works. Or if you need to save money, grab the complete works and opt for getting a few specific volumes for the first few plays.

The introductory essays and footnotes in the Arden editions are unparalleled. Easily the best on the market and you’ll get the most out of the plays this way. Everything is explained in crystal clear and compelling detail.

If you want to take things further, I highly recommend the Helen Mirren MasterClass as she has some modules on Shakespeare which will thoroughly enthuse and enlighten you. I wish she had taught my Shakespeare modules at Oxford.

The Great Courses also have some fantastic lectures on Shakespeare, all of which are available on Audible. You can get a couple of audiobooks for free from Audible when signing up to their free trial.

#3: Familiarise yourself with summaries

Personally I’m a fan of reading works of literature first, then going back to the introductions. You could try that, and let the plays wash over you. But many also get a lot out of reading a quick summary before diving into the work.

Certainly you could check out a Wikipedia summary of the plot before you stick on one of the film versions. It will help you get your bearings better this way.

If you’ve got the Arden editions of the play, then you’ll be an expert on the play just from reading the introductions alone.

Remember you don’t need to read these introductions in detail. Skim and glean what you need, focusing in on what interests you and gliding over what doesn’t.

#4: Schedule your plays

You’ll get my recommended reading order for Shakespeare’s plays below. Make sure you schedule them. Write them in your diary at the beginning of the week and set aside some time to read and view them.

Maybe you could watch a film version on a Sunday evening. That’s only 2 hours tops. And maybe you could read the plays for 15-20 minutes in the morning.

Aim to read a Shakespeare play a week.

You could budget 7-10 days per play.

There are 38 Shakespeare plays in this recommended reading order, so you can see how you could easily read the whole Shakespeare canon in a year.

Although I suggested making the plays part of your daily reading, if you can afford to read them all in one go I certainly recommend that. Plays are supposed to be viewed primarily, but secondly they should, like short stories or novellas, be read in a single sitting to get their benefit as a literary unit.

But no worries if you can’t do that. There are also benefits to reading the plays bit by bit over a week.

Maybe you read Act One on Monday, Act Two on Tuesday, finish the play on Friday and even afford to watch it over the weekend. That way you really live with the play for longer, absorb its message, and it will likely have a more lasting impact.

Basically, there are no hard and fast rules here. Make it work for you.

#5: Don’t try to work out “what Shakespeare meant”

I’m getting awful high school flashbacks.

“Ben, what do you think Shakespeare was trying to say about love with this metaphor?”

“Ugh.”

Just enjoy the story for what it is!

Marvel at the characters, their psychological complexity. Relish the poetry.

Endlessly analysing Shakespeare is not going to help you get into Shakespeare.

You don’t appreciate a dance performance by breaking down all the composite steps comprising a choreography. You don’t pause a boxing, football, or cricket match every two seconds and try to work out how the athletes did it. And you don’t stop playing the Rolling Stones in the middle of Shine A Light to deconstruct their musical influences.

Sure, when you become a connoisseur, you might want to do that stuff. But as a newcomer to anything, first and foremost just enjoy the experience for what it is.

Shakespeare uses old language. You don’t need to know what every word means. This is why you need to see his plays performed. You’ll get the meaning and the power if the play is produced well enough.

I’ve seen Japanese Noh and Kabuki plays. Even being able to speak modern Japanese, I don’t understand much. But I understand themes of love and hate and jealousy and greed on a visceral human level. I can laugh. I can cry. I can be moved. Great art does that.

Do you need to know the scientific terminology for describing a sunset in order to feel its power? To feel the sense of mortality weighing upon you when you see those yellow beams? Do you need to understand a sunrise? Or do you feel hope and ambition in your gut as a new day dawns?

That’s Shakespeare.

#6: Have fun and enjoy yourself

When reading these plays, become at home in the world, become one of the population, befriend the characters.

Try also to reserve criticising or judging the plays until you understand them.

On your first read through, just try to understand what’s going on and what the story is. Once you know what’s going on, then you can have an opinion on whether you like it or not.

For fun, give the play a grade or ranking when you’ve finished with it.

For me, King Lear is an A+ play, whilst Pericles is a D- and The Merchant of Venice a B+. But my rankings will differ from your rankings.

The beauty of art, including literature, is all down to the pleasure we get from intimate acquaintance from it. All that matters is whether you like it or not.

But try to approach these plays, to steal advice from Kurt Vonnegut, as though ‘only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze’.

Also take this advice from Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book (which I consider essential reading before you embark on this Shakespeare quest):

When you read a play, you are not reading a complete work. The complete play (the work that the author intended you to apprehend) is only apprehended when it is acted on a stage. Like music, which must be heard, a play lacks a physical dimension when we read it in a book. The reader must supply that dimension.

The only way to do that is to make a pretence of seeing it acted. Therefore, once you have discovered what the play is about, as a whole and in detail, and once you have answered the other questions you must ask about any story, then try directing the play. Imagine that you have half a dozen good actors before you, awaiting your commands. Tell them how to say this line, how to play that scene. Explain the importance of these few words, and how that action is the climax of the work. You will have a lot of fun, and you will learn a lot about the play.

This is advice I came to on my own at university thanks to my Biochemist friend.

He saw that I was struggling with Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays and, being a huge history buff, decided he could invigorate my reading experience.

We sat down together, divvied up the cast roles, and acted the play out!

We put on different voices, jumped up and down, and had a blast.

Yes, it was nerdy. But, yes, it was also one of the best reading experiences of my life and that’s with plays I hated to begin with!

But I see two problems with reading Shakespeare in chronological order.

The first problem is we don’t actually know the exact chronological order. We have pretty good guesses, but the fact that there’s no first production date for each of Shakespeare’s plays means we don’t have definitive answers.

The second problem is that reading Shakespeare in rough chronological order simply isn’t the most rewarding reading method for newcomers to the Bard.

Shakespeare is difficult enough. I don’t recommend reading his earlier, less polished, less refined plays. It will be a slog. And you’ll have to delay Shakespeare’s best works, the works most likely to make you fall in love with Shakespeare and motivate and enthuse you to keep going.

Why read 22 plays before you get to Hamlet?

Or 28 plays before you get to King Lear?

Some might argue you won’t appreciate these great works of art until you’ve become acquainted with Shakespeare, but I don’t buy it.

You don’t need to see the sketches of Da Vinci in his teenage years before you can be blown away by The Last Supper.

You don’t need to listen through all of Beethoven’s early sonata’s before appreciating his Ninth Symphony.

And you don’t need to forgo visiting La Sagrada Familia in favour of viewing Gaudi’s lesser known architectural accomplishments.

So we don’t need to do so with Shakespeare, and I believe it’s counter intuitive to do so.

On a personal note, my two favourite Shakespeare plays of all time, King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing, were also among the first Shakespeare plays I studied. I certainly did not need to wade through Shakespeare’s early historical plays before I could appreciate them.

So what other reading orders are there for Shakespeare?

Well, you could read Shakespeare by genre.

The First Folio collection of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623 groups the works together by Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.

You’ll see a lot of modern collections of the complete works of Shakespeare group the plays this way.

You could simply read all of the comedies, then all of the histories, then all of the tragedies. You could either do that in the order suggested by the First Folio or whichever complete works of Shakespeare edition you have. Or you could go through a cycle, picking one of each and then repeat.

A benefit to this approach is that you would learn the nuances of each genre. But a drawback would be you still leaving some of Shakespeare’s best plays until the end of your reading experience.

So what’s the best reading order for the complete works of Shakespeare?

Here’s the best reading order for the complete works of Shakespeare.

My recommendation is to read the Shakespeare plays generally considered his best first, but with the caveat that the historical plays will be read in order.

The historical plays are really like one long series (a bit like Game of Thrones), so you’ll get a lot more out of reading them in order. That doesn’t mean you have to read them back to back. We’ll break them up, but they’ll still be in order.

This means that some of the best of Shakespeare’s plays will be saved towards the end of the reading because the best historical plays aren’t Shakespeare’s first ones.

But we’ll be reading the best of the best of Shakespeare’s plays first.

That means you’ll be treated to some of the greatest art ever created by man right out of the gate.

Then when you get to his lesser known, less polished plays later, you’ll be more equipped to appreciate them (not the other way around).

However, even though we’re reading the best plays first, I don’t like the idea of ending this reading journey on a dud with one of Shakespeare’s worst plays. I’d much rather we go out on a bang. So I’ll be holding back one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, one of his most underrated, to the very end as a treat.

Obviously, there’s not objective ranking of which of Shakespeare’s plays are the best. But there are some fairly unanimous opinions.

You’ll see the same plays take the number one spot or hit the top ten lists time and again. They are in those lists for a reason.

Another thing to point out is you won’t necessarily find the best plays to be your favourites.

Hamlet most often takes the number one spot for the best Shakespeare play, but it’s not my personal favourite (I favour King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing). Yet I still appreciate its power, its poetry, and the magnitude of its magnetic ability to capture the essence of the human condition.

I’ll recommend a reading order that is informed by all of those “Best Shakespeare Plays” lists, but with my own personal twist.

Having studied every single work of Shakespeare in-depth, I feel qualified to weigh in on recommending which plays should be read first.

I’ve suggested a reading order that will front load the masterpieces, the great works of art.

But I’ll try to break up the plays so you don’t have too many tragedies back to back. In Shakespeare’s day, the double bills would often be a light comedy and a dark tragedy.

This order isn’t a definitive ranking of what I feel the best plays are (I’ll do that in 2020 once I’ve rewatched and reread them all). It’s an order that I feel will be most enjoyable for the relative newcomer to Shakespeare.

Another note, I’ve listed 38 Shakespeare plays here.

In recent years, there’s been some discussion amongst scholars as to whether Shakespeare wrote a few more plays (like Love’s Labour Won, Cardenio, and Edward III). I’ve not listed those plays here, but feel free to pursue them at the end of your journey if you’re interested.

What about Shakespeare’s poems?

No reading of Shakespeare’s works would be complete without the poems.

He wrote 154 sonnets, 14-line poetic meditations on the nature of love (some of the best love poetry ever penned).

He also wrote five different narrative poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, A Lover’s Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim, and The Phoenix and the Turtle.

My advice would be to spread the sonnets out over the year.

If you read a sonnet every other day, you’ll read all of them in a year.

Maybe you’ll binge a few in one day. Maybe you’ll be so struck by one sonnet that you’ll stretch it out over a week. Do however you see fit.

My recommendation is to pick up the excellent Arden collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets and keep it on your bedside table.

Make sure you read the poems aloud too and really feel the rhythm. You could also go to YouTube and find an abundance of beautifully recorded, expertly narrated renditions of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

As for the other poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece are rather long, whilst the other three are short. There are two options.

Either read these as and when you fancy, taking your time with them. Or you could break up the plays by dedicating a week or so every 9-10 plays as a palette cleanser.

If you do so whilst following my recommended reading order below, you’d read Venus and Adonis in between A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Julius Caesar; you’d read The Rape of Lucrece in between All’s Well That Ends Well and Henry VI Part 2; you’d read A Lover’s Complaint between King John and Two Noble Kinsmen; and you’d read The Passionate Pilgrim along with The Phoenix and the Turtle between Pericles and Anthony and Cleopatra.

1. Hamlet

Watch the glorious Kenneth Branagh version. You’ve also got another great thespian here with Derek Jacobi, along with Kate Winslet, Robin Williams, Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston, Judi Dench, and John Gielgud.

For fun, and to see how a different actor took on Hamlet, check out Laurence Olivier’s soliloquy.

Another great actor who took on Hamlet, John Gielgud, breaks down and analyses the play here.

2. King Lear

Watch the Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson version.

If you become really enamoured with this play (like me) and want to see an experimental adaptation, try the bleak Peter Brook version.

For deep cuts and to claim the title of top Shakespeare connoisseur, check out Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, a gorgeous Japanese epic inspired by King Lear.

3. Much Ado About Nothing

Watch the Joss Whedon modern black-and-white adaptation with jazz music for a change of pace.

Or if you want to try something a bit more traditional, Kenneth Branagh directs a star-studded cast in his version with the likes of Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington.

4. Romeo and Juliet

Choose the Franco Zeffirelli version. It looks beautiful and is quite faithful to the script, although it was mired in controversy when it came out due to Juliet’s nude scene.

If you enjoyed The Great Gatsby, you might prefer Baz Lurhman’s modern adaption, with guns instead of swords, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

5. Othello

Go for the Lawrence Fishburne version. The great actor captures the Moor’s jealousy masterfully, and Kenneth Branagh (who seems to always appear in the best Shakespeare adaptations) makes a fine Iago.

6. The Tempest

Choose the Dame Helen Mirren version from 2010, as she is one of the best actresses to perform Shakespeare and does a delightful job as Prospera.

I also recommend her MasterClass for her modules on Shakespeare appreciation.

7. Macbeth

Check out the 2015 version of Shakespeare directed by Justin Kurzel and starring Michael Fassbender who was born to play Macbeth. Marion Cotillard also does superbly well as one of Shakespeare’s most nuanced female characters, Lady Macbeth. This film is gorgeous and cinematographically perfect.

You could also go deeper and watch the brutal 1971 Roman Polanski adaptation of Macbeth.

8. Richard II

Go for the 2012 version directed by Rupert Goold starring Ben Whishaw and Patrick Stewart.

9. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

If you want to go for a classic, watch the beautiful and mesmerising 1935 Max Reinhardt version.

If you want something more modern, choose the 1999 Michael Hoffman version starring Christian Bale, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kevin Kline.

Poem break: Venus and Adonis

10. Julius Caesar

Hands down, you have to watch the 1953 version of Julius Caesar starring Marlon Brando as Mark Antony. His eloquence at handling Shakespeare proves him to be one of the best, if not the best, actors of all time. You’ve also got the great John Gielgud playing Cassius.

11. Henry IV Part 1

You might want to check out Orson Welles’ 1965 adaptation of five of Shakespeare’s historical plays rolled into one, following the character of Falstaff, Chimes At Midnight. This interpretation does not follow the play chronological and takes lines from one play and inserts them elsewhere, but it’s considered one of Welles’ best works and a fitting ode to one’s love of Shakespeare.

12. Henry IV Part 2

If you want to watch an extremely loose adaptation of the Henry IVs, check out Gus Van Sant’s 1991 My Own Private Idaho starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix who plays a gay sex worker with narcolepsy.

13. As You Like It

There haven’t really been any decent film adaptations of As You Like It. You could try the 1992 adaptation that sees the action take place in an industrial wasteland, but I’d recommend you opt for the stage version starring Helen Mirren as Rosalind and filmed by the BBC in 1978, which is actually rather good.

There’s also the 2006 adaptation by Kenneth Branagh, which sees the action take place in Japan.

14. The Merchant of Venice

Go for the 2004 version starring Al Pacino, Ralph Fiennes, and Jeremy Irons. Pacino plays Shylock supremely well, and his “Hath not a Jew eyes” monologue gives me chills every time I watch it.

15. Henry V

Choose the 1989 Kenneth Branagh version. I love how he conceptualised the Battle of Agincourt. This is one of those few films that has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

16. Twelfth Night

Go for the 1996 Trevor Nunn version starring Helena Bonham Carter and Richard E. Grant.

17. Henry VI Part 1

Go for the 2016 adaptation part of The Hollow Crown Series.

18. All’s Well That Ends Well

Choose the 1981 version from the BBC collection.

Poem break: The Rape of Lucrece

19. Henry VI Part 2

Once again, go for the 2016 adaptation part of The Hollow Crown.

20. The Winter’s Tale

Go for Branagh’s filming of his stage adaptation in 2015 with Judi Dench.

21. Love’s Labour Lost

I recommend another Kenneth Branagh adaptation, with this movie from 2000 feeling like a classic 1930s musical.

22. Henry VI Part 3

Round off this story with the 2016 adaptation.

23. Measure for Measure

Go for the 1979 BBC version.

24. Richard III

Choose the 1955 Laurence Olivier version. His monologue, the famous “Now is the winter of our discontent”, is unparalleled.

I also recommend, if you want to dive deeper into this great play, you check out Looking For Richard, a documentary directed by Al Pacino, which highlights some of the best parts of this play and also examines the relevance of Shakespeare today.

25. The Taming of the Shrew

Go for the 1967 Franco Zeffirelli version starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. What other famous couple would be fit to play this tempestuous duo?

If you want a modern adaptation that doesn’t stick to the script, check out 10 Things I Hate About You, starring Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

26. Coriolanus

Opt for the 2011 version directed by, and starring, Ralph Fiennes along with Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, and Brian Cox. This film is generally regarded as one of the best film adaptations of Shakespeare.

27. Titus Andronicus

Go for the 1999 adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins as the tragic Roman general and directed by Julie Taymor.

28. Timon of Athens

Choose the 1981 BBC version directed by Jonathan Miller.

29. King John

Go for the 1984 BBC TV drama entitled The Life and Death of King John.

Poem break: A Lover’s Complaint

30. Two Noble Kinsmen

I can’t recommend any film versions of this for you. Although you could try out the audiobook recording from Simon Russell Beale. You could even get it for free through an Audible free trial if you haven’t already signed up.

31. Troilus and Cressida

Go for the 1981 BBC version directed by Jonathan Miller.

32. The Comedy of Errors

There’s only one feature film adaptation of this play and it’s a 1982 Bollywood adaptation called Angoor. It’s a great movie and well worth checking out, but if you want something more faithful to the original play you might want to opt for the 1983 filmed stage adaptation from the BBC starring Cyril Cusack.

33. Cymbeline

Choose the 1982 BBC version with Robert Lindsay and Helen Mirren.

34. The Merry Wives of Windsor

Go for the 1982 BBC version with Alan Bennett, Richard Griffiths, and Ben Kingsley.

35. Henry VIII

Go for the 1979 BBC version with John Stride.

36. The Two Gentleman of Verona

Go for the 1983 BBC version with John Hudson.

37. Pericles

Go for the 1984 BBC version.

Poem Break: The Passionate Pilgrim and The Phoenix and the Turtle

38. Anthony and Cleopatra

Choose the 1972 version directed by and starring Charlton Heston.

Recommended resources for Shakespeare

So that’s my recommended reading order for Shakespeare. Now here are a few resources that I recommend to make your journey that much easier and more pleasurable.

A decent complete works of Shakespeare. I love the Riverside Shakespeare.
Decent individual companions. Go for the Arden Editions and choose the plays that most interest you or the first ones on the list (I’d consider Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, etc. to be must-haves).
The Shakespeare Collection. If you’ve got cash to splash, you could invest in this gorgeous BBC DVD box set containing the most ambitious Shakespeare film project ever undertaken.
Amazon Prime and Audible. A bunch of the recommended film adaptations and some great audio versions of the play are available from Amazon.
The Great Courses Plus has a few different lecture series on Shakespeare that are well worth checking out.
MasterClass – particularly the Helen Mirren MasterClass with her modules on Shakespeare.
Issac Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare. This is a great, compelling, and thoroughly interesting guide to the complete works of Shakespeare from the daddy of science-fiction.
BenjaminMcEvoy.com – check back here throughout the year to follow along with my viewing, reviewing, and ranking of all the Shakespeare plays.

Further resources:

Now go enjoy your journey through the complete works of Shakespeare.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below and I’ll be happy to answer them.

Comments

Matt Gordon says

December 12, 2019 at 3:32 pm

I have a goal of reading all of Shakespeare in 2020, and had been searching for just this sort of information. This post is by far the best advice I’ve found on how to achieve this reading goal, so I’ll definitely bookmark this page and refer back to it many times over the next year. Thanks!
- Ben McEvoy says
  
  December 18, 2019 at 9:09 am
  
  Thank you, Matt! So excited to hear how you get on!!