Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
1603 · 406 pages
Hamlet's father appears as a ghost and demands revenge, and the prince spends the play failing to take it. Four centuries of readers have found their own divided minds in his hesitation.
★ 9.9
Browse by time · decade
1600s
1600 – 1609
Showing 6 books from the 1600s
King Lear
1607 · 316 pages
An old king divides his kingdom by asking his daughters how much they love him, and the truthful one says least. Shakespeare wrote nothing bleaker, and the last scene is unbearable.
★ 9.8
Don Quixote
1605 · 940 pages
An old man reads himself mad on chivalry, names himself a knight, and rides out with a farmer for a squire. Four hundred years on the book is still hilarious and still heartbreaking.
★ 9.7
Macbeth
1606 · 223 pages
Witches promise a soldier the crown, and he and his wife murder their way to it. Shakespeare's shortest tragedy moves like a nightmare, and the guilt arrives before the blood dries.
★ 9.4
Othello
1603 · 314 pages
Iago tells the audience exactly how he will destroy his general, then does it with a handkerchief and patient lying. His reasons never explain it, and watching Othello believe him is agony.
★ 9.0
As You Like It
1600 · 320 pages
Banished from court, Rosalind hides in the Forest of Arden in men's clothes and coaches the man she loves in how to court her. She talks rings around everyone in Shakespeare.
★ 7.2