Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited. "The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions...

Suspicious King Leontes of Sicily accuses his pregnant wife Hermione of having an affair with his best friend, Polixenes, the King of Bohemia. Enraged at the alleged betrayal, he orders Polixenes poisoned, Hermione imprisoned, and her newborn daughter banished, leaving him a broken man. Sixteen years later, Perdita, the adopted daughter of a shepherd, falls in love with young Prince Florizel, much to the dismay of the boy's father, Polixenes. He disapproves...

Othello, a general in the Venetian army, has married the lovely Desdemona, and Roderigo is unhappy. He was hoping to woo Desdemona for himself. The villain Iago helps Roderigo extract revenge in one of William Shakespeare's most famous tragedies.

Betrayal and Honor-- Fearing that Caesar means to end the Roman republic and make himself the emperor, Brutus, Caesar's closest friend, allows himself to be caught up in a plot to kill Caesar. Once Caesar is killed Brutus realizes, too late, that there was far more to this than meets the eye. Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights; Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are...

First published in 1602 by William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor features the popular figure Sir John Falstaff, who first appeared in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. Some speculate that Merry Wives was written at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to see Falstaff in love; and that Shakespeare was forced to rush its creation as a result, and so it remains one of Shakespeare's lesser-regarded plays. The play revolves around two intertwined...

Fasten your seat belt so you don't fall off your chair laughing! Immerse yourself in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, a tale of mistaken identities, hilarious misunderstandings, and uproarious situations that is bound to leave you in stitches. In the play, the lost twin sons of an old merchant Egeon-both named Antipholus-who were accidentally separated at birth, find themselves in the Greek city of Ephesus. Neither son is aware of the other's...

This memorable historical drama concerns rebellion against King Henry led by Harry Percy ('Hotspur') and other nobles, complicated by the king's difficulties with his wayward son, Prince Hal. It features a superb blend of courtly intrigue, battlefield action, and low comedy featuring Sir John Falstaff, all expressed in fine blank verse and stirring prose.

Originally published in the First Folio of 1623, "Measure for Measure" is William Shakespeare's play which was likely written sometime in 1603 or 1604. The play begins with Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, who leaves the government in charge of the authoritarian justice, Angelo, when he departs the city on a diplomatic mission. Lord Angelo believes that there is too much debauchery in the city and seeks to more strictly enforce laws against certain...

It is entirely probable that the date of "The Tempest" is 1611, and that this was the last play completed by Shakespeare before he retired from active connection with the theater to spend the remainder of his life in leisure in his native town of Stratford-on-Avon. The main thread of the plot of the drama seems to have been some folk-tale of a magician and his daughter, which, in the precise form in which Shakespeare knew it, has not been recovered....