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Complete Works (First Folio)
10William Shakespeare
The collected plays of the writer who, more than any other, shaped how speakers of English think, feel, and curse — preserved by two friends seven years after his death.
GBM Assessment (Score: 10/10)
William Shakespeare's Complete Works represent the supreme achievement of English literature and arguably of Western drama as a whole. Across thirty-seven or more plays and 154 sonnets, Shakespeare coined over 1,700 words and phrases that have entered the English language. His tragedies (Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello), comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Twelfth Night), and histories (Henry V, Richard III) stand as the highest peaks of Western dramatic art.
Crafted during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods and performed at the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare's plays were preserved largely through the First Folio of 1623, which saved eighteen plays that might otherwise have been lost. Shakespeare is the most quoted author in the English language after the Bible and the most performed playwright in the world. His works have inspired thousands of adaptations across every medium and remain a core text in literary curricula everywhere.
Shakespeare & Cervantes, c. 1605-1623
Shakespeare and Cervantes die the same year (1616). Don Quixote — the first modern novel — appears while Shakespeare produces his greatest plays. The King James Bible (1611), commissioned by James I and translated by 47 scholars, gives English-speaking Protestantism its defining sacred text and profoundly shapes English prose for centuries. England's break from Rome under Henry VIII (1534) and the defeat of Spain's Armada (1588) have established England as a rising Protestant naval power; the KJV consolidates this identity. Jamestown is founded (1607). Galileo turns his telescope skyward. Bacon's Novum Organum lays foundations of empirical science.
Awards & Adaptations
Most performed playwright. Thousands of adaptations. Core everywhere.
Recommended Edition
First Folio (1623); G.B. Harrison (1948)
