Shakespeare wrote twelve plays that are usually counted as comedies, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona around 1590 to All’s Well That Ends Well around 1605. If his late romances are added, including The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale, the total rises to seventeen.
The comedies are plays of love, disguise, and mistaken identity that move through confusion to reunion, and most of them end in marriage. They also include some of his darkest scenes, and several of the later ones are hard to call comedies at all. This guide lists every play usually counted as a comedy, in the order they were written, explains how the comedies are grouped, and sets out what they have in common. For the plays at the other end of the scale, see our guide to Shakespeare’s tragedies.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Shakespeare’s comedies for quick reference.
How Many Comedies Did Shakespeare Write?
Most modern lists give twelve, though the number depends on where the late plays are placed. The First Folio of 1623, which first sorted his plays into comedies, histories, and tragedies, printed fourteen comedies. Two of them, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale, belong to a group of late plays now usually called romances, along with Cymbeline, which the Folio printed as a tragedy, and Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen, which it left out. Counting all five romances as comedies gives seventeen.
Our list follows the modern practice of treating the romances as a separate group. It also leaves out Troilus and Cressida, which is sometimes discussed with the comedies but was printed among the tragedies and appears on our tragedies list.
The Complete List, in Order
The dates below are approximate, and the order of the early comedies in particular is disputed. Where a play has a full guide on this site, its title links to it.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (about 1590)
Two close friends, Valentine and Proteus, travel to Milan, where Proteus betrays both his friend and his own sweetheart, Julia, by pursuing Valentine’s love, Silvia. Julia follows him disguised as a boy. It is often thought to be one of his earliest plays.
The Taming of the Shrew (about 1591)
In Padua, Petruchio marries the sharp-tongued Katherine for her dowry and sets out to “tame” her, while suitors compete for her younger sister, Bianca. The whole story is framed as a play performed for a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly. Katherine’s final speech on wifely obedience has made it one of the most debated of the comedies.
The Comedy of Errors (about 1594)
Two pairs of identical twins, separated in a shipwreck, arrive in the same city on the same day, and nobody can tell them apart. It is based on a Roman comedy by Plautus, and it is Shakespeare’s shortest play. It was performed at Gray’s Inn, one of London’s law schools, on December 28, 1594.
Love’s Labour’s Lost (about 1595)
The King of Navarre and three of his lords swear to study for three years and avoid women, only for the Princess of France and three of her ladies to arrive. It is famous for its wordplay, full of puns, sonnets, and verbal games, and it is the only one of the comedies in which the courtships are left unfinished at the end.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (about 1595)
Four young lovers run away into a wood outside Athens, where a quarrel between the fairy king and queen and a mischievous spirit, Puck, turns their affections upside down. A group of workmen rehearses a play in the same wood, and one of them, Bottom, is given a donkey’s head. It is one of the most popular of all Shakespeare’s plays.
The Merchant of Venice (about 1596)
Antonio borrows money from the Jewish moneylender Shylock, pledging a pound of his own flesh as security, while his friend Bassanio woos the heiress Portia. Portia, disguised as a lawyer, saves Antonio in court. The treatment of Shylock makes it one of the most troubling of the comedies, and the quarto of 1600 called it a “Historie.”
The Merry Wives of Windsor (about 1597)
Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight of the Henry IV plays, tries to seduce two married women of Windsor at once, and they turn the tables on him. It is set in an English town of Shakespeare’s own day rather than in Italy or an imagined court, and much of it is written in prose.
Much Ado About Nothing (about 1598)
Beatrice and Benedick, who claim to despise each other, are tricked into falling in love, while a second couple, Claudio and Hero, are nearly destroyed by a slander on the eve of their wedding. The sparring of Beatrice and Benedick has made it a favorite on stage.
As You Like It (about 1599)
Rosalind, banished from her uncle’s court, escapes to the Forest of Arden disguised as a young man, Ganymede, and in that disguise coaches Orlando, the man she loves, in how to woo her. It contains Jaques’s speech beginning “All the world’s a stage.”
Twelfth Night (about 1601)
Shipwrecked in Illyria, Viola disguises herself as a young man, Cesario, and serves Duke Orsino, who sends her to woo the Countess Olivia, who falls in love with her instead. Meanwhile the household tricks the steward Malvolio into believing Olivia loves him. The earliest record of the play is a law student’s note of a performance at Middle Temple on February 2, 1602.
Measure for Measure (about 1604)
The Duke of Vienna leaves the strict Angelo in charge of the city, and Angelo sentences a young man to death for getting his fiancée pregnant. When the young man’s sister, Isabella, a novice nun, pleads for his life, Angelo offers to spare him in exchange for her virginity. It ends in marriages, but when the Duke proposes to Isabella in the final scene, twice, the text gives her no reply.
All’s Well That Ends Well (about 1605)
Helena, a physician’s daughter, cures the King of France and is rewarded with the right to choose a husband. She chooses Bertram, who does not want her and flees to war, and she wins him back through a trick. Like Measure for Measure, it keeps the shape of a comedy while leaving its audience uneasy about the ending its title promises.
How the Comedies Are Grouped
Critics usually divide the comedies into three rough groups. The early comedies, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to Love’s Labour’s Lost, lean on farce, formal wordplay, and the models Shakespeare inherited, including Roman comedy. The mature comedies of the late 1590s, above all Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, are the ones usually meant by “Shakespearean comedy”: they center on witty heroines, move between court and countryside, and mix laughter with sadness.
The third group is the problem plays, Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well, usually joined by Troilus and Cressida. The critic F. S. Boas gave them that name in 1896, in his book Shakespeare and His Predecessors, because they did not fit comfortably into either comedy or tragedy. They follow the pattern of comedy but deal with sex, power, and death in ways that make their happy endings hard to accept. After them, Shakespeare’s late romances returned to the reunions of comedy by way of loss and long separation.
What Shakespeare’s Comedies Have in Common
The comedies are built around love and courtship, and most of them end with one or more marriages, or the promise of them. Their plots run on confusion: identical twins in The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, magic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and overheard conversations and deliberate tricks in Much Ado About Nothing. Several of the heroines disguise themselves as young men, among them Julia, Portia, Rosalind, and Viola, and the disguise lets them say and learn things they otherwise could not.
Many of the comedies send their characters out of the city into a wood or forest, where the ordinary rules are suspended before everyone returns changed. They make room for clowns and fools, parts written for the company’s comic actors, and for songs. They are also full of wordplay, and several are written largely in prose. For more on how the comedies work, see our guide to Shakespeare’s comedic style.
Comedy in Shakespeare does not mean the absence of pain. Shylock leaves the stage ruined, Malvolio is locked in darkness and told he is mad, and the lovers of Much Ado About Nothing pass through a scene in which the bride is shamed at the altar and presumed dead. The comedies end happily, but they often leave someone outside the celebration.
Which Comedy to Read First
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the easiest way in. It is short, its plot is simple to follow once the four lovers are sorted out, and the workmen’s scenes are funny on the page as well as on stage. Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing make good next steps: both are stage favorites, and both balance wit with a darker thread.
As You Like It rewards readers who enjoy talk more than plot, since much of it is conversation in the forest. The Merchant of Venice and the problem plays are best read once the conventions of the comedies are familiar, because much of their force comes from the way they strain against them.
The Lost Comedy: Love’s Labour’s Won
A complete list of Shakespeare’s comedies has one gap. In 1598 the writer Francis Meres praised Shakespeare as the best English writer for both comedy and tragedy and named six of his comedies: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and a play called Love’s Labour’s Won. A bookseller’s list from August 1603 also includes “loves labor won,” which suggests it was printed.
No copy is known to survive. Some scholars think it was a sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost, whose courtships are left unfinished. Others think it was an early title for a play we already have, most often suggested as The Taming of the Shrew, which Meres does not mention, or Much Ado About Nothing. The question remains open.
A Closer Reading: “Jack Hath Not Jill”
Shakespeare’s characters know the rule of comedy as well as his audience did. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as Puck puts the love charm right on the sleeping Lysander, he sums up where the play is going in a country proverb: “Jack shall have Jill; / Nought shall go ill.” The lovers will wake paired correctly, and the play will end in weddings. That is what a comedy promises.
In Love’s Labour’s Lost, written around the same time, the same proverb appears with the opposite meaning. News of the King of France’s death arrives in the last scene, the Princess and her ladies set their suitors a year of penance, and the weddings are put off. Berowne turns to the audience’s expectations directly:
Our wooing doth not end like an old play;
Jack hath not Jill: these ladies’ courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
When the King replies that it wants only “a twelvemonth and a day, / And then ’twill end,” Berowne answers, “That’s too long for a play.” The joke carries a real point about the form. A comedy’s happiness depends on its time limit. It can promise that Jack will have Jill because the play stops at the wedding, before anyone has to find out what comes next. Love’s Labour’s Lost lets the real world, in the form of a death, arrive before the curtain, and the comedy cannot close.
The later comedies keep testing that limit. Twelfth Night pairs off its lovers, but Malvolio’s last words are “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you,” and the play closes with Feste alone, singing that “the rain it raineth every day.” All’s Well That Ends Well puts the comic promise in its title, and then ends with a husband who has had to be tricked into accepting his wife. By the problem plays, the rule Puck states so cheerfully has become a question. Shakespeare kept the shape of comedy for more than a decade, and he kept asking what it had to leave out to end well.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Shakespeare’s comedies, answered briefly.
How Many Comedies Did Shakespeare Write?
Twelve, or seventeen if the late romances are counted. The First Folio of 1623 printed fourteen plays as comedies, including The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale.
What Makes a Play a Shakespearean Comedy?
A plot built on love and confusion, often involving disguise or mistaken identity, that is resolved in reunion and usually marriage. The comedies also share clowns, songs, and wordplay, but the happy ending is the defining feature.
What Was Shakespeare’s First Comedy?
Probably The Two Gentlemen of Verona or The Taming of the Shrew, both written in the early 1590s. The order of the earliest plays is uncertain, and The Comedy of Errors is also early.
Is The Merchant of Venice a Comedy?
It was printed among the comedies in the First Folio, and it ends with the lovers reunited in Belmont. The treatment of Shylock, who is ruined and forced to convert, makes it feel much darker to modern audiences, and it is sometimes grouped with the problem plays.
What Are Shakespeare’s Problem Plays?
Measure for Measure, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida. They follow parts of the pattern of comedy but raise questions about sex, power, and justice that their endings do not resolve.
What Is Love’s Labour’s Won?
A comedy by Shakespeare named by Francis Meres in 1598 and listed by a bookseller in 1603, of which no copy survives. It may have been a lost sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost or another title for a play we already have.
Start With the Best-Known Comedies
Three full guides to the comedies most often read and performed.