Four plays are on this shelf: two comedies and two tragedies, each under 36,000 words, because plays are short when you take out the staging.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the friendliest of the four, and it is also the shortest at 18,000 words.
The four plays here are the ones most often taught and most often filmed, which is both a reason to read them and a reason to be suspicious of the list. Hamlet and Macbeth are studied to death; A Midsummer Night’s Dream is usually read as a comedy and works better on a stage than on a page; Romeo and Juliet is the one everybody thinks they know before they read it.
The word counts come from the texts on this site: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth about 18,000 each, Romeo and Juliet 25,000, Hamlet 35,005. At 300 words a minute that is an hour for the shortest and two for the longest, so the plays are short and the thinking about them is what takes a week. Read one aloud if you can; the verse was written to be spoken faster than it is read.
Start here: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. About an hour of reading, and it is built so that the confusion resolves: four lovers, a fairy quarrel, and a group of amateur actors who are funnier than they mean to be.
William Shakespeare: which book first
Every William Shakespeare title on editions.ink, with the reading time for each. The first row is the one to start with.
| Book | Year | Words | Read time |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Midsummer Night’s Dream — start here | 1600 | 18,000 | 1 h |
| Macbeth | 1623 | 18,000 | 1 h |
| Romeo and Juliet | 1597 | 25,000 | 1 h |
| Hamlet | 1600 | 35,005 | 2 h |
| All four | 96,005 | 5 h |
What to read after the first one
- Macbeth — the shortest tragedy, 18,000 words, and the fastest plot in the canon
- Romeo and Juliet — the one you think you know, which reads differently once you see how much of it is comedy
If you would rather see the whole shelf in chronological order first, the William Shakespeare books in order page lists every title by publication year with the same word counts. The William Shakespeare author page collects all the editions in one place,, and the author index has the other writers on the site. If you want a follow-up by a different author, the read next guide pairs ten classics with what to read after them.
Questions readers ask
Which Shakespeare play should I read first?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (18,000 words) or Macbeth (18,000). Both take about an hour; the first is a comedy, the second the shortest tragedy.
Are these plays complete texts?
Yes. Each edition is the full play text as prepared for this site, in EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB.
Why are Shakespeare’s plays dated 1597 to 1623?
Those dates mark first printing rather than composition. Romeo and Juliet appeared in 1597, Macbeth and Hamlet in the 1623 First Folio.