William Shakespeare began his career as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company. His works still in existence consist of thirty-eight plays, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other verses. His sequence of great comedies continue with Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. He introduced prose comedy in the histories of the late 1590s— Henry IV, part one and part two, and Henry V— after the lyrical Richard II. Julius Caesar introduced a new kind of drama.
Shakespeare wrote the so-called ‘problem plays’ in the early 17th century. Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All’s Well that Ends Well being a few of them. Until about 1608, he mainly wrote tragedies including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus— his last major tragedies, contain some of his finest poetry. He wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, in his last phase. These include Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
A true genius, Shakespeare’s popular characters and plots are studied, performed, reinterpreted, and discussed till today.