Understanding Shakespeare: The Sonnets by Robert A. Albano - HTML preview

play and the latter is labeled a tragedy. The reason for this is that the history plays are generally those that concern English history (but not, for example, Roman history).

Shakespeare's career as a playwright falls, for the most part, into two distinct decades:

1590's      Comedies and Histories

1600's      Tragedies

But the student should also note that Shakespeare did write some comedies after 1600 and some tragedies before 1600. Shakespeare's tragedies, especially, have been translated into numerous languages. And every student of English literature should be familiar with these plays:

In some cases the exact date of composition is unknown. Shakespeare's plays were not published when he wrote them, but historical records do usually indicate when the plays were first performed in London.