Shakespeare's Plays and Poems

In a hurry? The Internet Shakespeare Editions has created focal Home Pages which collect links to everything related to a particular play or poem across the whole site.

The plays:

The poems:

Plays not by Shakespeare, but attributed to him and published in the Third Folio:

We are also publishing editions of plays written for the Queen's Men, many of which influenced Shakespeare. These plays are prepared for the project Shakespeare and the Queen's Men at the Universities of Toronto and McMaster. The first in the series is The History of King Leir.

We have included a search feature to showcase the power and flexibility of the living text.

Search the texts.

Our collection includes a growing number of facsimiles -- graphic images -- of the books as they were originally published. These images are kindly provided by libraries from around the world, and are accessible from the Home Page for each play or poem.

Explore the Facsimiles.

The Internet Shakespeare Editions publishes the original versions of the plays and poems, preserving as many of the physical characteristics that appeared in the Renaissance, including old spelling and format. We also publish modern versions of the plays and poems, edited by a team of scholars from around the world.

Fully edited plays are to be found in the Library; all others are in the Annex. Works that are published in the Annex have been carefully proofread, but have not yet had a full scholarly review. Our editors are currently editing Shakespeare's poems, all of which will be published by the end of 2005. Meanwhile, you can view the fully edited poem Venus and Adonis , and facsimiles of the Sonnets.

Taking a page from the Renaissance, we offer The Illuminated Text, a new resource which shows individual pages of folios, quartos and other original Shakespeare publications in an interactive, visually appealing display. Here you can research, compare, explore, copy and paste transcriptions or print facsimiles.

Example: Hamlet

1. Alphabetically
2. Chronologically
3. Or by version (Quarto and Folio)

• As You Like It
• Cymbeline
• Julius Caesar
• Romeo and Juliet
• The Tempest
• Troilus and Cressida
• Venus and Adonis
• The Winter's Tale

You can find out about the distinguished scholars who are working on the editions on these pages:

• Our team of editors
• Our advisory and editorial boards
• Our editorial principles and guidelines