Shakespearean comedy


In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies; and modern scholars recognise a fourth category, romance, to describe the specific types of comedy that appear in Shakespeare's later works.

Plays

This alphabetical list includes:
  • everything listed as a comedy in the First Folio of 1623;
  • one play widely regarded as a comedy but listed among the tragedies in the First Folio; and
  • the two quarto comedies which are not included in the Folio but generally recognised to be Shakespeare's own.
Plays marked with an asterisk are now commonly referred to as the romances. Plays marked with two asterisks are sometimes referred to as the problem plays.