Best-known Shakespeare plays — the full ranked list
The complete ranking of best-known Shakespeare plays, in order, with what the ranking counts and how firm the figures behind it are. Free reference, no sign-up — and the guessing game that plays the same list.
All 38 plays, counting the 36 of the First Folio plus the two later added to the canon. Ordered by how widely known each one is rather than by any fact about it, which is a judgement and is why this list is marked as a soft ranking. The tragedies and the famous comedies come first; the history cycle is where almost everybody runs out.
No single authoritative source exists for this one. Estimates differ, sometimes widely, so read the order as an argument rather than a fact.
38 entries, in order.
- Romeo and Juliet
- Hamlet
- Macbeth
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Julius Caesar
- Othello
- King Lear
- The Tempest
- Much Ado About Nothing
- The Merchant of Venice
- Twelfth Night
- As You Like It
- The Taming of the Shrew
- Richard III
- Henry V
- Antony and Cleopatra
- The Comedy of Errors
- Titus Andronicus
- Coriolanus
- Measure for Measure
- The Winter's Tale
- Cymbeline
- Troilus and Cressida
- Love's Labour's Lost
- All's Well That Ends Well
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Timon of Athens
- Pericles
- King John
- Richard II
- Henry IV Part 1
- Henry IV Part 2
- Henry VI Part 1
- Henry VI Part 2
- Henry VI Part 3
- Henry VIII
- The Two Noble Kinsmen
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