Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime.Ī third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.

In 15, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on erotic themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Performance at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London. Gustav Klimt – The Death of Romeo and Juliet. However, modern criticism has labelled some of these plays 'problem plays' that elude easy categorisation, or perhaps purposely break generic conventions, and has introduced the term romances for what scholars believe to be his later comedies.

The traditional division of his plays into tragedies, comedies and histories follows the categories used in the First Folio.

Many of his plays appeared in print as a series of quartos, but approximately half of them remained unpublished until 1623, when the posthumous First Folio was published. Traditionally, the plays are divided into the genres of tragedy, history, and comedy they have been translated into every major living language, in addition to being continually performed all around the world. The plays written by English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature.

The works of shakespeare